How is expected cost calculated when failures drop the level?

When a failure knocks you down a level, reaching the target is a random walk. The tool computes the expected attempts to advance each level given the success chance and the down-on-fail rule, then sums across all levels and multiplies by cost per attempt.

What if failures do not lower the level?

If a failure simply wastes the attempt without dropping you, each level needs on average 1/p attempts where p is the success chance. The total is the number of levels times 1/p times the cost per attempt.

Why is the real cost so much higher than levels times cost?

Because success is probabilistic. A 25 percent chance means four attempts on average per level even before any down-on-fail penalty, so a five-level climb at 25 percent already averages twenty attempts, not five.

Does this guarantee my actual spend?

No. It returns the statistical expectation. Real runs vary widely around it — you may get lucky or spend two to three times the expected amount. Treat the figure as a budgeting average over many upgrades, not a promise.

How do I find my per-attempt success rate?

Most games publish or community-document the success percentage at each enchant level. Use the rate for the level you are pushing into; if it changes per level, run the calculator separately for each band and add the results.

Final Fantasy XIV Enchant & Gear Score Calculator

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Enchanting is gambling with a known house edge. This calculator turns the per-attempt odds and cost into the figure that actually matters: the expected number of tries — and total currency — to reach your target level.

How it works

If a failure does not drop the level, each level needs on average 1/p attempts. If a failure knocks you down one level, advancing is a random walk and the expected attempts to climb from level k to k+1 is larger. The tool computes, for the down-on-fail case, the expected attempts E(k) to gain a level using:

no-down:   attempts per level = 1 / p
down-fail: E(k) = 1/p + ((1 − p)/p) × E(k − 1)   (recurrence, E at floor = 1/p)
total cost = (sum of attempts across levels) × cost per attempt

The recurrence captures the compounding pain of being knocked back: each early level you might re-clear inflates the expected attempts for the levels above it.

Example and tips

Going from +0 to +5 at a flat 25% success with no down-on-fail averages 5 × (1/0.25) = 20 attempts. Turn on down-on-fail and the same climb balloons because every failure can undo progress. Always check whether your game protects levels or drops them — it changes the expected cost by an order of magnitude.