PSA: Bound Wards Can Change the Bind Status of Enchantments

You may or may not have stumbled upon several threads and theories about Enchantments suddenly becoming bound. It’s weird, to say the least, because in many cases the cause of this apparently random incident couldn’t be tracked so far. Now however this mystery has finally been solved. Customer support acknowledged that the change of the bind status is probably an unintended gameplay bug. Whenever you use bound Wards in the upgrade process, the involved Enchantment has a chance to become bound as well. “Chance” hasn’t been further clarified by the customer support.

[su_quote]We understand that the bind status of your enchantment has changed. We are unable to change any item’s bind status. You will just have to continue playing the game with what you currently have. With that said, having reviewed the information you supplied, we’ve come to the conclusion that this may be the result of an unreported gameplay bug.  Regretfully, we don’t have a resolution for the issue at this time.[/su_quote]

Very Annoying for Players

This is annoying on multiple levels. First of all, using a bound Ward apparently always comes with the risk of binding the Enchantment in the upgrade process as well. Second, the costumer support refuses to change the bind status although they acknowledged it’s a bug. And last, the devs know about the issue, but it doesn’t seem to top their priority list. This is an unfortunate combination of factors working against the players. You can’t do anything against it and if it happens, nobody will help you. So your best bet for now is simply not using bound Wards on unbound Enchantments.

You can of course still use bound Wards on items that are already bound themselves, like Artifacts or Artifact Gear. The effect also works the other way round by the way. You can indeed unbind Enchantments (again) by using unbound Wards. That however is probably not a great workaround and we certainly hope that this nasty bug will be squashed soon.


Have you encountered suddenly bound Enchantments that you couldn’t make sense of? Or is this the first time you hear about this bug? Share your stories on our social channels, in the comments below, or visit the corresponding thread on our message board!

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7 thoughts on “PSA: Bound Wards Can Change the Bind Status of Enchantments

  • March 14, 2018 at 4:06 pm
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    Is this a result of the new mod hitting on PC? Or has this always been around? I’ve never heard of anyone complaining about this on XB1 (that being said, I’ve only been playing for 6 months).

    • March 15, 2018 at 12:02 am
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      We’re not sure when this started happening, but at this point it’s only confirmed for PC.

  • March 14, 2018 at 7:10 pm
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    That Customer Support response is bullshit and is what most people will get from junior tiers of “support” if they do not persist with their ticket and take it up the line of management. In fact, it is a LIE, because it most certainly is NOT an “unreported bug”. It has be happening since at least Mod 5.

    Support can DELETE and REPLACE the Bound enchant with an Unbound one. No need to “change” the bind status at all. Just REPLACE THE DAMNED THING.

    They’ve done it for me, so it is not impossible. In the past, you would lose any excess RP already in the enchant from over-refining. Now that you can put in only precisely enough for the next rank, this is less likely to happen.

    You MUST remain calm, polite and friendly and only get firm and stroppy if the staff member is being particularly obtuse, incompetent, dim or dishonest or, my personal favourite, tells YOU to be more careful in future or demonstrates in any other way that they have not read the ticket properly.

    In that case, demand they escalate it to their line manager immediately, with all the reasons they would be dismissed for gross misconduct and incompetence if they worked in your company, plus a note of how much money they will lose because all Zen purchases have now ceased because of THEM, and suggest they multiply that figure by every other ticket they have mishandled.

    If they will not escalate the ticket, respond to one of the feedback requests naming them, the ticket number and vent your spleen in a rationale manner. Then let the ticket close and file a new ticket with a slightly different title and it will doubtless be picked up by someone else.

    I have quite a good rapport now with some of the most senior support staff. Just never swear, insult or use profanity. Some people may claim that being given documentary evidence of their own incompetence may be “offensive” or “insulting”, but you have not been offensive or insulting. You have been brutally honest and frank and they have just “felt” insulted and taken offense.

    Tough Shit.

    It’s a hard life.

    Evidence and facts outweigh feelings.

    >x

  • March 15, 2018 at 3:43 am
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    Wards that are bound due to contaminated Zen will always bind an enchant to account by design (not sure about character). The”bug” reported in this Blog seems to be a side effect of that crappy policy, where Preservation Wards that are BtC or BtA due to being from an Event or a promotion box can also do this as an unintended side effect.

    EG 1. A friend of mine on PC who funded her main by making Rank 10 enchants to sell on the AH had several thousand Zen. During one of the 50% Sales (last Summer Festival, IIRC), she spent a few dollars on her Steam Wallet that was there as a gift to buy a few hundred extra Zen for Neverwinter so she could get extra Pres Wards. Error, Captain!

    Due to Steam in Australia and NZ at the time recognising international consumer law on electronic goods and services, whereas the Chinese PWE does not, PWE’s policy is that ALL Zen purchased through Steam is contaminated and your account is on probation until the payment is cleared (even if it is a Steam Wallet purchase where the payment was made to Steam and has already cleared), in case you do a charge back.

    Any keys used to open lock boxes will yield bound prizes.
    Any Wards purchased and used will yield bound enchants.
    ALL 12,000 Zen you already have will be thus contaminated, even by a paltry extra 1000 Zen via Steam.

    Even when off probation, any keys, lock box contents, enchants made and Wards purchased will remain contaminated and BtA.
    A similar thing happens to new players who are First Time Buyers even when they buy Zen for the first time from Arc and are “on probation”. Such players cannot even use the ZAX.

    ~

    EG 2. Back when I still used to PvP (mod 2 to 7) I had several rank 8 and 9 Silveries in Utility slots of my BoP PvP gear from Seals of Triumph, so I could buy artifacts with Glory to use as feeders.

    At some point, despite:
    never using Steam,
    never using anything from Fey or QM drops,
    never refining a bound enchant and using them only as a reagent (like when we needed a refined rank 7 + an unrefined rank 7 to make a rank 8),

    three of my newly upgraded rank 9 and 10 Silvery enchants were bound to account when I unslotted them from the gear. The weird thing was that my BtC PvP chest armour was also now BtA and could be shared with other DCs. My artifact neck and belt, helm and feet were still BtC.

    This is when I learned that Support claim they cannot change the binding status by “flicking a switch” in the code, but they CAN replace the bound enchants with unbound ones of the same rank, but any excess RP in the enchants will be lost.

    All of the above is on PC.

    🙂

  • March 18, 2018 at 12:15 am
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    then they should effective immediately make all wards unbound….. i mean, its not like people make shit tons of money on them now!!!!!!

  • July 24, 2018 at 3:15 pm
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    I tried the suggested method above, of using an unbound ward to unbound the enchant – didn’t work. Barkshield still bound to character ?

    • July 24, 2018 at 8:51 pm
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      Unfortunately it’s not guaranteed that it works. An unbound Ward just has “a chance” of changing the bind state.

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