The fear shards are simply too rare to even think about grinding out. I just spent the last 5 hours grinding with a group and not one drop. Somethings gotta give.
Over a month at the very least until the expansion is out, and you only need maybe 12-18 to get max faction and you can farm them at lower levels as long as you turn them in as the appropriate level, unless things have changes since they were on test. 5 hours is not that long really, spend 3+ days without getting one and we can talk. Also, again unless things have changed from how it was on Test, the only thing you get at the moment is faction nothing else. Plus currently those are the only thing that NPC does currently. Likely in time you will be able to do tasks and missions which will result in better faction returns.
If and when they drop, are they in bunches of six? At the current rate how do you expect a group of six players to get enough drops in time? Our weekend group plays about 8 hours between both days and based on the drop rates we will finish well after RoF is released. Not everyone can play for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Well if recent history holds, it may not be something that you can fully realize in the next expansion. 105 Alaran anyone?
Hopefully tasks are going to be added that can be done to get the faction. The drop rates on these are simply woeful. As stated above, not everyone can play 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. Some folks also group, so need up to 6 x the drops as well. These seem to have been implemented under the assumption everyone solos, and plays quite a lot.
From what I've experienced, they can drop anywhere from 1 at a time, to 4 at a time, but the droprate is extremely low. We killed roughly 3000 mobs yesterday swarming and got 21 of the high level shards. From what I've seen, they do not drop in instances, but this could just be bad luck on the people I know that are going that route. 21 in 3000 doesn't sound incredibly horrible, but when you get 4 at a time, getting them to actually drop is extremely frustrating, especially when you loot the corpse and only see one.
I received 8 shards last night over a 4 hour period of exploring and killing random VoA mobs, killed just under 90 mobs. There was 2 drops of 4x "Small Fear Shards" from yellow con mobs Perhaps just a lucky streak there, but wanted to add my experience.
I have had two drops of Small Fear Shard in VoA Tier 3 zone. One was 4 shards, the other was 2 shards. Guess I am getting lucky.
Last night I was powerleveling an alt and killing about 5-10 light blue mobs at once for about 6 hours. I got two petite shards in that time from the same mob.
I was trying to get shards yesterday and killing about 150-200 lightblues per pull for 6 pulls or so I got zero shards.
This. Just like with the evolving tear, when the hardcore are complaining, that tells the casual grouper to not even bother trying.
It's just like easy collection "solo" quests which are neither easy or solo. You need to do them in a group, not all mobs drop the items, so now you have to spend hours completing said quest. It would be different if it wasn't just a small step towards getting a bigger step to get to the biggest step and therefore reward.
The thing about this is, when I did them, they drop in groups from 1-4 (I have seen no more than 4 per kill but someone else may have), they are also tradeable. Since not everyone will be doing this you can attempt to buy them off people or slap them up in the Bazaar. Plus, since there is no foreseeable reward at this time aside from the faction itself, you can take your time. It's possible the faction itself is the reward, a jump start on RoF progression, although I'd find it odd if there weren't a few other rewards, such as illusions etc, and some elaborate tasks in addition to the loot and hand-in faction grind. So perhaps later on they will move the pre-release to it's next phase and the faction will be needed to request tasks for the actual rewards, hopefully shared tasks given the drop rate. But I agree, I made the same complaint when I was doing mine. And no, as far as I can tell, no changes were made between when I did mine and when this went Live besides the fact that they gave Magus a black beard and a new purple robe.
They should have a GROUP task that you request and then hand in the shard so the group gets the faction boost. You'd think in a MMO group game like EQ, you'd reward grouping rather than solo play.
Remember SOE Live (Fan Faire) is in 2 days, so I'm sure they'll do more that day or the next like they normally do along with announcements and info. Right now most SOE employees are focused on that and not on the forums or any non vital issues (in their view) until after this weekend
I wouldn't say I'm complaining at all, because the drop rate is definitely not bad enough to be impossible, just difficult. I wouldn't call myself the average player though as I play much more often than a casual player would. These events are here for everyone, and while I don't find this to be bad enough to consider not doing, I feel like the average player would get extremely frustrated in trying to complete this, which is a problem. Between 3 people farming together and splitting the drops, we're up to 37 81-95 shards, and more 71-85 shards than I would like to have seen. Although getting this number of drops has probably consumed close to 60 man hours at this point. This is definitely something that I would consider too extreme for most players by a long shot.
is the faction from these level based? just curious because my 68 Beastlord has a bunch of the lvl 61-75 shards,guess i was lucky with drop rates.If i only knew how to turn them in i'd be set lol,but i'm not familiar wit VoA at all,since i returned to game after a 9 year hiatus......i know Argath and to tell the guys steels/blades LOL
