The upgrade system in this game is utterly horrendous, it should not cost me 500 to 2.5m silver to max out a piece of armour or banner etc. It galls me I swear to god.

Yes i have spent over 3 million upgrading an amulet in the last 2 days, the last attempt (going from 15 to 16) used 1.5 million silver and failed.

Looks like a stealth nerf

There has been no nerfs to artifact upgrades. 

During this enhancement event I did have some really expensive attempts to +16 but on the other hand I also had some lucky runs that didn't take much silver to finish. While I agree that cost reduction should be considered, the upgrade attempts themselves are just RNG. 

You may need to count the number of times for each level up. Rumor said it never reach 34. Those said that could not tell why, they just counted and thought so. 

(What I think of:)

It based on a simple idea, the maximum/highest cost for upgrading an artifact (not amulet/ring/banner) will not exceed 1mil silver per level. Plarium coders divided 1M silver to highest upgrade cost (i.e 6*) to that 33/34 number. 

If you happen to count 1 level more than 34, it means Plarium already nerf artifact upgrading.

(To many ppl in this forum and reddit, all my theories are untrustable, trust or not is your choice)

I definetly had upgrades that did cost more than a million silver. But why do you think that is because of a nerf? Is there any proof for your 34-theory?