Taking bets on how soon the Deathgauntlet is supplanted by something newer. Lol.
Meanwhile, without hunter medal farming to slow me down, I farmed enough conqueror medals to unlock the Warbringer Longblade. With +40 pierce and one forge slot, this was the 3rd best offensive PvP weapon in the game, behind Aqua Glaive (+45) and Elite Warbringer (+60).
..."Was" 3rd best until the release of the Cronus Astaroth monster last month, one of the big-deal alchemies from which is Astaroth Blade. This is a 3-stage project weapon that finishes with 140 pierce and 2 forge slots. Naturally you'd plug a silver pierce ingot (45) and a bronze pierce stack (35) in there for a total of 220 pierce, which equals or exceeds my entire current pierce build. I thought the Rat Horde alchemy projects were pretty crazy; Astaroth and Thanatos gear is just way beyond my aspirations unless I hit the lottery.
Perhaps especially if I hit the lottery.
Incidentally, I think the release of the new Thanatos monster revealed an annual cycle of new gear releases. Last year the new Shalazar~Gorgon alchemy path was created by loading new drops on existing late-game monsters, and Death Rats and Cassandra the Gorgon were added. This year's cycle started off with Thanatos, giving Thanatos Plate (140 resist, 2 forge slots) and Thanatos Gauntlet (85 resist, 2 slots) alchemies. From Cronus Astaroth we got Astaroth Blade (140 pierce, 2 slots) and Astaroth Amulet (85 resist, no slots). I expect there will be a third monster released soon with new best-in-game boot and/or magic alchemies, or perhaps an entirely new class of gear.
Why "way beyond my aspirations"? Because the assured-drop threshold for ONE legendary Thanatos Reborn loot item is upward of 90 million. 10 each of the 2 different kinds of legendary lewtz are needed for the first-stage armor alchemy. If the damage I do on rats is indicative of what I can do on Thanatos Reborn, then I get about 1M damage per 100 stam. I get about 700 stam per refill, and 2 refills is close to a speed level-up for me, figure 2000 stam (20M damage) per level. So each assured legendary Thanatos drop would make me at least 4 levels fatter, or 80 levels (vs. my current lvl 740ish) just for one first-stage armor. And that's in the unlikely event I get all the required numbers of different legendary and epic drops in 20 kills.
But that's just the first stage alchemy, Dragon Plate. The second stage, Dracolich Plate, combines THREE of those (240 levels!) with a Dragon Glove (only epics, but 45+ of them - minimum 30 levels but probably more like 40+). And the third stage, Thanatos Plate combines 2 Dracolich Plates (600 levels?) and further requires ownership of some elite conquest whizzies plus a Dracolich Gauntlet. The Gauntlet is another Dragon Armor (80 lvls) plus 3 Dragon Gauntlets (3x40 lvls). So I could easily double my level trying to farm all that junk. And that's not even counting all the levels I'd grind acquiring the elite hunter medals to meet the ownership requirements.
Of course credit-card players with thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars in the game can manage that. I'm more interested in what kinds of bones Kabam is going to throw to more casual players, who cannot hope to complete these projects before next year's Big New Things.