Tower of Fantasy: what a ★6 weapon really costs
A fully advanced weapon is 7 copies. At 1% per Special Order with a 120-order exchange, the ceiling is 840 orders — and most of the ATK you are paying for arrives at two specific stars.
Taking a Tower of Fantasy weapon to ★6 takes 7 copies of it: the weapon itself, then one of its own Fusion Cores for each of the 6 advancement stars. On a Special Order banner the chance-UP weapon drops 1% of the time, and every 120 orders can be exchanged for it outright. So the worst case for a full ★6 is 840 orders.
The odds behind one copy
Each Special Order has a 2% chance of an SSR weapon, pity included, and half of that is the banner's chance-UP weapon: 1% per order. A separate counter guarantees an SSR every 80 orders, but that SSR is not necessarily the chance-UP one. The counter that matters for a specific weapon is the 120-order exchange, which counts orders on that banner only.
For the first copy, that works out to about 70 orders on average. About 70% of the time the weapon drops before you reach 120; the other 30% of the time you get there and take it from the exchange. Every further copy is the same roll again, and none of them can cost more than 120 orders.
The first copy unlocks the weapon. The next 6 decide how strong it is.
What each star adds
Every advancement star raises the weapon's base ATK and HP growth. For 54 of the 66 SSR weapons the ladder is identical:
| Star | Base ATK growth | Base HP growth |
|---|---|---|
| ★0 | +0% | +0% |
| ★1 | +16.7% | +16.7% |
| ★2 | +49.3% | +33.3% |
| ★3 | +66% | +50% |
| ★4 | +114.7% | +66.7% |
| ★5 | +131.3% | +83.3% |
| ★6 | +148% | +100% |
HP climbs a flat +16.7% per star. ATK does too, plus two extra bonuses: +16% at ★2 and +32% at ★4. That makes ★4 the single biggest step on the ladder, +48.7% ATK growth in one star. It is worth knowing where it falls: it takes the weapon plus 4 cores, well short of the full 7 copies.
The weapons that do not follow this ladder are not weaker, just differently built. Every SSR ends at the same combined +248% of ATK plus HP growth at ★6. The exceptions shift some or all of the bonus growth from ATK to HP. Each weapon's own ladder, with the effect every star unlocks, is on the advancement page.
Levelling is the cheap part
Levelling cost barely depends on the weapon. Every weapon needs exactly 113,760 weapon EXP to reach Lv.200. For 60 of the 66 SSR weapons, the breakthroughs along the way cost 76,000 gold and 379 breakthrough materials in total. Those are costs you can grind. The copies are not. When you plan a weapon, plan the orders; the levelling will follow.
The weapon growth calculator shows any weapon's stats at any level and star, and the pull rates page lists every item in every Special Order pool with its chance.