Transcendental is acutally +200 (should be 216 i.e 6x36 but he rounded I guess)
That's exactly what he did, yes. Technically Belzamus is correct if you want to use the best math for balancing things at the highest levels- UK, however, doesn't like things to get too complex, so he rounded off as you said. Each DM can decide for himself/herself exactly how to handle it- I, for example, have no problem with complexity (or using calculators to figure out big numbers) so I used +216. That number, incidentally, is of course what leads to 1272 in Belzamus's post (216x6 = 1272).
I had rules in my game for exactly this situation, putting an Epic spell in an item- I'm not sure ever posted them here but if I did it was years ago (so a very old thread). I don't have them handy right this second, so I'll see what I can do when I get home.hi
for example an artifact that reproduce an epic spell
like the soul drinker for ELH but with hellball instead of energy drain
the base price would be
10(epic spell) * caster level * 2000 + 200(XP for hellball) * 100
an example of a bastard sword +10 of hellball with caster level 30
10 * 30 * 2000 * 2 + (for hellball) 1200000
200 * 100 * 5 (for the XP cost of the hellball) 100000
10 * 10 * 20000 (+10) 2000000
base price 3,300,335 GP
cost to create: 1,600,000 GP and 62000 XP
It's worth noting, however, that two very important things with Epic spells are (A) they have no caster level by definition, so caster-level-based costing doesn't work fairly, and (B) they're customizable, even to the point of getting a spell's Spellcraft cost down to ridiculously low numbers, using mitigating factors. This has to be taken into account if you allow them in items.