Heya,
I've been farming the new uniques since this server started and I'm getting there slowly, but feeling very demoralised. Some people are very lucky, and can make an excellent within a day or two, for others it literally takes weeks and hundreds of millions of gold. Eg I've been farming podons for over a week now, I've spent >400m gold and still no luck. The drop rate is good, but the refine rate combined with the cost is terrible. Each week, any gold I get from sieges is swallowed up in a couple of days by the refinery, selling lvl 1 stones helps a bit, but it's not enough to break even and I'm getting to the stage where I will soon have to stop playing for 3 or 4 days a week because I don't have any gold left to refine the drops I make.
I can live with the terrible refine rate - yes it sucks, yes it is infuriating when 48 rings give you 3 glorious and all the rest archondrite, but excellents are supposed to be hard to get. But please, please, please drop the cost of the refine rate? I know you said there is a lot of gold on the server, but if there is I wonder if it is just in a couple of players storage?
100,000 - 300,000 gold per refine is accessible, 1m - 3m isn't.