Rank 9 (Fourth Cast)

Rank 9 Fourth Cast gear (R9999, R9R4, R9CN), otherwise known as Boundless gear, is the third upgrade of Rank 9 gear. It was released on April 13th, 2016 with the PWI Elysium expansion. It was originally the third cast of rank 9 available in the Chinese version of the game. Perfect World International's third cast rank 9 was custom-made and is not available in any other version of Perfect World. Although it was advertised to be oriented towards PvP combat compared to the third cast version of rank 9, Boundless gear is generally considered a "side-grade" rather than an upgrade.

Rank 9 Fourth Cast gear can also be used to create the third cast of Twilight Warsoul Gear using materials from Twilight Temple Revisited and Reshape Crystals from the Boutique.

Differences Between Third and Fourth Cast
Before deciding to manufacture Boundless gear, it is important to weigh the options on whether it will benefit your play-style especially because it is not necessarily an upgrade. Fourth cast gear cannot be reverted back to third cast once it has been upgraded.

One of the main differences between rank 9 third cast and fourth cast is that the rank 9 fourth cast belt can be refined. The belt originally starts with lower physical and elemental defenses (360 of each), however have the potential to gain an extra 1575 physical and elemental defense when refined to +12, making it more defensive than its third cast equivalent. A popular trend among players is for support oriented classes, such as Cleric or Venomancer, to upgrade their rank 9 ring and belt to fourth cast. This way they gain additional defense levels and resistances due to the set bonus and the ability to refine the belt. However, this greatly reduces the offensive power of a character so it is only recommended for players planning to play as full support.

Magic users in particular are affected by the changes from third cast to fourth cast in regards to the Purify Spell on their weapon. For fourth cast weapons, the chance for Purify Spell to activate is actually lower than that of the third cast weapon. This resulted in many players requesting for their fourth cast weapons to be reverted to their previous third cast weapons, though this is not possible anymore.

Requirements
All rank 9 third cast pieces, including the ring, can be upgraded to fourth cast. The materials required to upgrade each piece can only be obtained from the Boutique. There is also a silver coin fee for manufacturing the gear.

Cost
Below is the cost for each component needed to manufacture rank 9 fourth cast gear. Gold prices while Sale is on.

Materials:
 * Quadium Crystal (1 gold)
 * Orichalcum Ingot (1 gold)
 * Wishalloy Bar (1 gold)
 * Adamantine Powder (50 silver)

Orichalcum Ingot should not be confused with Oricalcum Ore, a material used for Rank 8 Recast, or Orihalcum, a material used for upgrading Warsoul Weapons.

Ring:
 * 10 Quadium Crystals (10 gold)
 * 350 Adamantine Powder (175 gold)
 * = 185 gold plus 50,000,000 silver coins in fees

Weapon:
 * 100 Orichalcum Ingots (100 gold)
 * 500 Adamantine Powder (250 gold)
 * = 350 gold plus 90,000,000 silver coins in fees

Armor:
 * 10 Wishalloy Bars (10 gold)
 * 200 Adamantine Powder (100 gold)
 * = 110 gold plus 20,000,000 silver coins in fees (individual)
 * = 440 gold plus 80,000,000 silver coins in fees (all armor)

Belt:
 * 10 Quadium Crystals (10 gold)
 * = 10 gold plus 50,000,000 silver coins in fees

Total:
 * 20 Quadium Crystals (20 gold)
 * 100 Orichalcum Ingots (100 gold)
 * 40 Wishalloy Bars (40 gold)
 * 1,650 Adamantine Powder (825 gold)
 * = 985 gold plus 270,000,000 silver coins in fees

If the player desires to do so, they may also spend 3 Supply Tokens and 5,000,000 silver coins to visually change a piece of their rank 9 fourth cast armor, or 1 Supply Token for their belt or ring, to the older rank 9 gear look. This does not affect the gear in any way stat-wise. The gear can be reversed to its original look at the same cost. The weapon cannot be transformed in this way.

Set Bonus
There is a set bonus for having the fourth cast chest, gloves, leggings, boots, belt, and ring. The weapon is not included in the set bonus. Similar to rank 9 third cast, there are two different set bonuses - one for arcane armor, and one for light and heavy armor. For reference:
 * Arcane Armor = Cleric, Mystic, Psychic, Stormbringer, Venomancer, Wizard
 * Light Armor = Archer, Assassin, Duskblade
 * Heavy Armor = Barbarian, Blademaster, Seeker

Equipment
All rank 9 fourth cast armor comes with a guaranteed 4 sockets, while weapons come with a guaranteed 2 sockets. You can only obtain this gear once, and it cannot be rerolled for better stats. Everything can be refined including the belt.

All of the rings for each class are identical, save for their name and gear set that they belong to. All of the rings can be refined. Archer=

Archer
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Assassin=

Assassin
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Barbarian=

Barbarian
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Blademaster=

Blademaster
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Cleric=

Cleric
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Duskblade=

Duskblade
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Mystic=

Mystic
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Psychic=

Psychic
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Seeker=

Seeker
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Stormbringer=

Stormbringer
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Venomancer=

Venomancer
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Wizard=

Wizard
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