Least Expensive Refinement Method?

I'm having trouble refining A and S and was wondering if I'm doing anything wrong.
From 0 to B I use whatever ore keeps me under 50% failure, or orchalicum if past 50% failure rate. Once I'm past 50% failure I start using anti-degradation.
Trying to get to A I'm using Orchalicum and Anti-deg which should give me a 2.5% success rate?
And then S I would switch to my luck refiner and use hematite and Anti-deg.

Am I doing anything sub-optimally?

Is it worth using high-purity orchalicum at any point?

I met someone selling +S service for 5,000,000. I feel like I spend more on Orchalicum stacks than that just to reach +A, how are they making any money?

 

They just use common ores (hematite and mithril ore) and antideg. The chance is 1% for these. B4 bots' ban, antideg was 300k, they could just burn 1 bazilion of those since it was cheap (it still is btw). You waste 16k per try using orichalcum, we just use 200 or less if using cheaper ores with luk refiner. 2.5% isn't much better than 1%, so it's better using those I mentioned.

HPO isn't better than cheaper ores case (not now bc antideg is cheap), but it's way faster than them.

 

So still use Anti-deg and hematite for A and S just like before 4 tier skills.

 

0 to +D mihtril ore
+D to +B orichalcum+antideg
+B to +S hematite/mihtril ore+antideg with luck refiner

 

Well, the reason why refine was quite expensive because of the back and forth on C-B when you degrade from A cost you alot of orichalcum. These days C-B is much easier, that's why the refinement cost is much cheaper than before. High purity + lvl 4 refine is just an alternative if you want some quick refine, but its still rng anyway, so it might cost you much more than you expected.

 

This is what I do, and I believe it's very efficient

General Prices
Mithril Ore 20k per 99
Mithril 400k per 99
Ori NPC for 16k ~1.6m per 99

0-7 : Mithril Ore, no degrade
8 : Mithril Ore, or Mithril if you want to save time, no degrade
9 : Mithril, no degrade, unless you want to save time.
E(10) : Mithril, with degrade
D(11) : Mithril, with degrade (I assume a lot people use Ori here, Mithril is better I believe). You can use Ori if you want to save time.
C(12) Ori, with degrade
B(13) Ori, with degrade. (if you downgrade here from A, don't forget to swap back to your refine character. )
A(14) Mithril Ore, with degrade (remember to swap to luck character)
S(15) Same as above.

Before refine skills lvl 4, getting to S appeared mathematically impossible, but now it's quite viable.

Also, if you keep downgrading, don't worry about it. You consume the most percentage of Spina on the C to B stage. If you downgrade to E, don't fret because it's so easy to get back to C with little Spina consumed overall.

Be mindful refining to S is almost literally the definition of depression. You're constantly pushing the same button over and over failing for hours. Realize this, and it won't appear frustrating.

Expect approx. 1-3 hrs to refine to 0 to S.

Btw, here is some math if you are frustrated at the A or S stage- you should expect to downgrade approx. 4 times before success.