Shadow nodes and worthless common shadow stuff

Discussion in 'Tradeskills' started by Whilhelmina, Dec 21, 2019.

  1. Niami DenMother Well-Known Member


    Aye, it isn't a matter of "giving up" for some of us, it is that we asked (repeatedly and to no avail) during beta for details on the ability. When the recipes got changed AFTER we had tested them on beta (suddenly BOOM, the advanced books had adept recipes instead of experts and the books for the experts appeared on Oliver) we asked for confirmation and details (again to no avail). We couldn't test the process, we were not given detail on how it was "supposed" to work, and since the staff did not have stats on beta, we could not test how shadowed harvesting was working, much less how to verify that how it IS working is the intended way.

    The TS line got a lot of eyeballs and a lot of responses in beta. There are still a few rocky spots, but there's been enough response that we know issues are still being worked on and looked at.

    The recipe books and itemization on crafted stuff are issues we're seeing that were reported weeks ago on beta. Add in the process for the shadowed rares not being fully understood and "probably" not working quite as intended, and folks are antsy at the silence. As a player *I* am antsy about it (especially given how many, many people have vented at and to me about it every time I log onto Discord or into the game), even as I recognize that there will likely be silence on it until next year.
    Observing, Alenna, Kheldar and 10 others like this.
  2. Tabri Well-Known Member

    This also makes it hard for people that come back to game(was gone 4 yrs) that are trying to catch up to help with raids. I am now using app spells and I cant even find any books for ascensions(havent seen one drop in the new expac Im assuming we have to go to old content to grind for those, or pay a million plat if they are on broker?) Im a max sage and cant even upgrade my regular spells nor my ascensions its annoying so far to say the least, guess I wont be helping in any raids.

    I only tried the shadow thing once I had no idea what I was doing and didnt see anything anyway, I havent had time yet to even try that out yet.
    Argosunited likes this.
  3. Bardonio Active Member

    Where is the effort put in with the expansion being only 5 days old? Also, I never told anyone to not log in. You shouldn’t twist my words to feed your agenda here. All I’m saying is that after 5 days, you’re literally unhappy with the current status of the game without really doing anything except 2 signature quest lines and some harvesting. There are changes that aren’t popular right now. But after 5 days you want to be able to do everything all at once. I can guarantee some people haven’t really read their spell changes and realized by now that some of their other spells are more powerful than their newer apprentices. I’m over here trying to remember an npc in game with the initials E.K.T. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you are one of the people who don’t read and want to blast through everything. Again, that seems egotistical imo. So let me just say Merry a Christmas and Happy Holidays is that’s your thing.
  4. Argosunited Well-Known Member

    You really have no idea what I'm talking about so I'd rather you didn't quote me again. Thank you.
    Kheldar and Dude like this.
  5. Argosunited Well-Known Member

    My shadow prospecting skill is increasing on a toon that hasn't finished the sig line now. I guess it's fixed. :rolleyes:
    Dude likes this.
  6. Torquem Active Member

    Although every two hours, I shadow harvest with two toons, my prospect skill has not improved. How did you manage to increase this skill please ? (except with crafted mount gear)
    Dude likes this.
  7. Argosunited Well-Known Member

    I wish I could tell you but all I can think is they've just fixed it? I don't even have the staff on the toon that seems to be leveling Shadow Prospecting.
    I've nearly finished the signature line but I don't have the staff yet.
    I wasn't even harvesting when I was getting messages, it was leveling.
    [IMG]
    Dude likes this.
  8. Zynt Feldon's sock puppet


    I promise I'm not trying to be snarky here, but you do not understand the issue.
    Observing, Kheldar, Mermut and 2 others like this.
  9. Zynt Feldon's sock puppet


    Why are you not completely in charge of crafting and tradeskills yet? I'm being serious. I've been using the resources you supply for YEARS and in both versions of EQ. I swear I remember EQ Traders being around back when I was informally running Caster's Realm after Baelish had "moved" on to other projectsand having Thanksgiving Dinner with the real Skater Gnome.
    Alenna, Kheldar, Rhodris and 2 others like this.
  10. Gwalchmai Member

    I (my alchemist Aloysius) finished the TS line in BoL and have the staff. During the quest line, messages told me that my Shadow Prospecting skill was increasing. After shadow harvesting several times, I looked, and my skills tab does not show anything for Shadow Prospecting. I use the default UI for the character window, and conferred with other players about where to find the skill. In addition, I cannot scribe the Voidwalker's Mounting Prospects recipe book, and cannot make the mount tack to improve my Shadowed Prospecting skill. I AM able to see and harvest shadowed nodes and have harvested 165 uncommon and 2 rare shadowed materials so far. I'll work on my sage next and see how he does.
  11. Mermut Well-Known Member

    By the time you finish the TS line you will have 25/600 shadow prospecting. They are scripted increases, it seems. Once you get to 25, it never goes up.
    Breanna, Argosunited and Quillyne like this.
  12. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    Niami, I hear ya. I know good and well how hard you personally work at testing. A lot of what you do SHOULD be being done by paid QA personnel. Or they should just pay YOU.

    It just seems like there are heaps of itemization problems this time, more so than I've seen in prior expansions.

    I mean, I expect a few cut-and-paste errors here and there, it happens. But this time not only is the jump from solo to heroic content steep, you can't bridge it with mastercrafted gear that's been infused fully, it seems like.

    The absolute best gear I have seen thus far has come from Achievement rewards, like the Triumphs for the clicky quests in each zone, and the dropped quests. I have three more overland PQs to do to get that cloak! Stuff dropping in solos is worse than rewards from the solo quest line. We've heard that Mastercrafted gear is ALSO worse than solo questline rewards, so exactly HOW are we supposed to get into heroics?

    My guild has tried a couple of heroics and has not done well with them yet. Is there a list somewhere yet of which is the easiest heroic, ranked in order to the hardest? And, dang, is the heroic gear any better?
    Alenna, Breanna and Argosunited like this.
  13. Argosunited Well-Known Member

    ah ok. I hadn't noticed it on my other that's done the sig line.
  14. EmJay Well-Known Member

    Earlier in this thread I posted about a recipe book with mount gear that will increase the prospecting skill by 8 per piece of gear which there are four. I had all the components except the fuel to make it called uncommon lunar material. I had since found out how to acquire that fuel. If you salvage mastercrafted gear, you will receive 1 uncommon lunar material. It was successful on a mastercrafted bow. The actual recipe takes 50 uncommon lunar materials. So 100 rares to make the mastercrafted items to salvage per piece of mount gear, which is kind of steep at this stage of the game, I think. In a month or two though, it will be more easy to attain because of having a lot more rares to craft with.

    If wearing this prospecting mount gear improves the chance of receiving the rare rare shadowed harvests, I'll jump through the hoops to get what I need to make them.
    Breanna, Cyrrena and doit like this.
  15. Whilhelmina Well-Known Member

    I was going to answer to you, it's the gear I used on my last test with stats on previous page (Shadow nodes and worthless common shadow stuff )

    I made 2 pieces of sambata mount gear, and for that I turned 180 jumping creepers into MC pants (the only recipe my tailor has) which I then salvaged for 90 uncommon lunar materials (it's 100% chance of getting an uncommon lunar material on a MC salvage).
    As I posted, having 2 pieces (so +7 and +7, which brings shadow prospecting from 25 up to 39) only yielded me common shadow mats and not rare ones.
    I highly discourage players to invest in this mount gear.
    Breanna, Tkia, Cyrrena and 3 others like this.
  16. EmJay Well-Known Member

    Thank you for that information, Whilhelmina! :) I guess we will need to wait to see how these things turn out after the devs are back from their holidays.
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  17. doit Member



    Have you done any more runs with the increased shadow prospecting stat gear?
    Maybe first run was bad luck and further runs were better?
    Breanna likes this.
  18. Whilhelmina Well-Known Member

    I only did a single one at the time as I was supposed to go away for the holidays. Turns out they were cut short and I'll try another one. I'll post further stats with all regular chars and my buffed one in an hour or so.
    But even with bad RNG, I assumed, as did others, that if harvesting stats weren't increasing on harvesting, with +1 and +7 mount gears on the side, that said mount gears were supposed to give a huge boost, which clearly isn't the case.
    Breanna and doit like this.
  19. Whilhelmina Well-Known Member

    Ok, further stats, I'll try to post some once a day.

    So it turned out that I had forgotten a couple mats on a char (8 ore, 1 pelt, 2 roots, 1 algae), but well, I'll add them to this new list.

    previous stats were:
    • unbuffed: 191 common vs 2 rares
    • buffed: 32 common vs 0 rares

    Today:
    • unbuffed: 100 common vs 0 rares (6 algae, 10 pelts, 24 gems, 23 ore, 8 mushrooms, 3 meat, 12 roots, 14 logs)
    • buffed: 12 common vs 0 rares (1 algae, 1 gems, 3 ore, 1 mushrooms, 3 meat, 3 roots)
    Breanna likes this.
  20. Avithax Well-Known Member

    I have to throw my 2 cents in on this thread because I agree with many that this is a horrible rollout. Shadow Harvesting is broken and the recipes are impossible to get, more so than any other expansion I can remember.

    I think the major underlying problem isn't a poorly designed system but instead the desire to generate revenue from as many people as possible. At 11,000+DBC per spell it just makes good business sense to make the spells impossible to get because there are a few players who wouldn't bat an eye at the cost to be maxxed out (I'm not one of them) and also there will be a few raiders who will HAVE to pay to upgrade certain spells to be effective at all.

    We can and will be upset about this but playing Devil's Advocate, DB is a business and you really can't knock them for trying to make $$. The decision to create this revenue stream didn't come from the Devs, it most likely came from WAY above their head out of offices who only view Norrath as a quarterly number.
    Alenna and Kheldar like this.