Today I've spent 200K just to upgrade from 12 to 13 and then more 400K trying to reach 14. I gave up just before depleting all my silver. I'm not going to accomplish my Monthly Challenge because of this particular final quest...  and in two days the whole challenge will reset. I'll need to restart all this stuff and then fail against the odds again. 

This is really frustrating. 

@DonHawk the general rule of thumb is, to prepare 2 million silver to upgrade from 12 to 16

If you're talking about the monthly quests, no, they don't reset every month. They stay open until you finish them. Though ideally you do want to finish them as quickly as possible after the 30 days, so it can reset and start counting again towards the next set of rewards. Same with the weekly rewards - which you can actually do every 5 days, but if you have one or two left open, it will stay open until you finish those. 

But those amounts are pretty normal - for level 16, it's quite normal to need several million of silver, most of it just for the last increase from 15 to 16. If you can do 1-16 for anything less than 1.5 million silver, you're lucky. 

@L9753 and if it's for the monthly quest, it doesn't have a minimum * requirements right?

So why not just use any 1* from some easy campaign level? It would get to lvl 16 cheap.

Because if I'm going to waste a lot of silver on getting a gear piece to 16, I'd personally rather do it on a piece I will actually use... sure, you'll spend less silver on the 1* piece than on a 5* or 6* one, but it's still a decent amount of silver thrown down the drain. 

@L9753 I quickly test this, going to lvl 1 of Normal Kaerok Castle, get a 1* Sword,  leveling it up to 16 cost me a bit less than 200k silver. But considering the alternative for @DonHawk , sitting there for God knows how long it will take him to get 2mil silver, I would just consider using a 1* artifact, just consider the 200k silver a cost to buying a Yellow shard (the prize for monthly quest) and to reset the quest ASAP so he can get the montly quest prizes again.

people who are playing the game are going to get frustrated if they are not able to figure out the logic, it becomes frustrating beyond a certain point, plarium should focus on introducing new champions, new dungeons and other puzzles/contests. there are many points in the game when you feel you are stuck.

I look at these upgrades to L16 in two ways:

First way is to get the challenge bonuses for monthly quests, to upgrade two artifacts to L16.  I find that the cost for each upgrade goes by the number of stars on the item.  So I use the lowliest 1* common artifact I can get from the campaign.  One can track the cost in silver from L1 to 4, 5 to 8, 9 to 12, 13-16.  Most of the total cost is in the last 2 levels.  The total cost in silver will vary depending on how many fails you get.

Doing it this way costs me approx 500k in silver, give or take. The artifact does not have to be assigned to any champ, and you can sell it for pennies once you are done.

The second way is the lowly grind most are familiar with.  I gather my silver via many boring runs through the campaigns.  But just when I think I can guess how many tries each level should take, I meet another ripoff along the way.  I just took 34 tries to get from L11 to L12 on a 4* Epic.  That is plain obscene! I expect that from L15 to L16 but not L11 to L12.  I realize that in many ways the game is a ripoff but on the other hand I have confidence that the odds will roll my way eventually.  Just have to gather more energy to hit the campaigns for silver and useless artifacts to sell.

 I just don't understand how there can be like L35 players in the Arena with 4 Legendary champs, and not the crappy ones, but TOP of the GAME ones, like Valkyrie, Bad el Kazaar,  Lilitu etc.  No matter what color shard I open, and no matter how many, I mostly get the junkiest low review "rejects" only good for food.  I see those commentators on the U-tube videos have many dozens of good Legend champs, all L60 with L16 artifacts, but when they open 20 shards or so they get zip zilch nada.

Gotta be a Black Friday market out there, lol.

Lol. Those are the easy bot wins! Everyone should have classic arena figured out by now... seriously 

Silver costs for upgrading gear is too high. That's the barrier I have with this game. Use all my energy to get as much silver as I can, spend it all to upgrade gear and, for the last 3 days now, not gained a single level. It's too much. 

What should happen is, each time you make an upgrade attempt, you gain a very slight increase in chance for your next attempt being a success. Similar to the mercy system for summons. That seems fair to me.

Yes, point taken, it can be too much but honestly, I don't mind spending 2 mil+ silver from 12- 16. I mean, 16  is the max level, right? I once spent 3 mil upgrading a piece from 11 to 12; which I call bad RNG but spending the same for 15- 16 is only fair.