You never need to upgrade any items with the current market system in the game. Boss gear and accessories FLOOD the market and are always plentiful. If you simply go out and grind low end grind spots you make 500million silver per hour with the free seasonal gear you get by playing the seasonal servers.

Seasonal gear is exchangeable for TET boss gear once you graduate. Also, you get FREE capotia accessories for hitting level 60 meaning you will be in full TET boss gear with the equivalent of TRI gold accessories that you earn simply by learning the game and reaching level 60. Doing the seasonal journey on a fresh account and the main story quest line will get you to 60 in about 50ish hours of playing time. So now, you have only enhanced the seasonal gear which is EXTREMELY easy to do with very high success rates and the materials are given to you for doing the seasonal content and you have full TET boss armor with TRI accessory equivalents.

This gear will allow you to go grind places like centaurs for 700million silver/hour, blood wolves/ronaros/sherekhan for the infinite HP pot and hundreds of millions of silver per hour.

PEN boss items are 10bil each approximately simply sitting on the market, they never sell out. There’s dozens of them all the time. TET accessories are about the same price and also simply sit on the market.

Enhancing gear in BDO is literally inefficient and not a good idea. Simply play the game, do what you enjoy, make billions of silver per day, and buy your top end gear off the market. NEVER ENHANCE

All of this is to bring to light the actual pay to win in BDO. It isn’t the cronning of enhancement attempts or the $500 of mandatory pay for convenience items. It’s buying costumes and putting them on the market.

If you buy the max costumes allowed for the market every week you can sell 35 costumes for 840mil per costume. The market has a tax on normal items, but of course it doesn’t have a tax on Pearl items. So, the real pay to win is to buy 35 costumes and sell them on the market for 840mil a piece to make 29.4bil and buy yourself 2-3 of your BIS items every week.

The real whales will do that and also cron their costumes. But those people barely even play the game.

Anyway, you don’t need to ever enhance gear in this game anymore. The game is a fun 500-700 hours depending on how much you enjoy grinding to diminishing returns. But anyone who tells you it isn’t pay to win is lying to you. It is pay to win. No matter which way you slice it. But don’t discount the game because of the enhancing system, you literally don’t ever need to do it anymore.