or rather, I enter a bar soon after attempting to get a prismatic spellshard / foundation. I'm thinking maybe to give it up. My last hope is that I'll get all the fishing buffs I can and then try the fishing route. Seriously, I've just spent 3 hours testing a theory. The common wisdom for getting prismatic spellshards or foundations is that you have to get your harvest skills above 700. OK, so I was just shy of that and went to get my Swabber's boots in Moors of Ykesha. Before I did, though, I spent two hours gathering in ToV and searching. Got one Prismatic Spellshard. Yey! Then I returned before my 6 hour bountiful buff was done, and after getting my new boots (which pushed me up to 715 on most skills). Getting late but I set a timer for one hour. Absolutely no luck even after 1.5 hours. The last one appeared just after the one hour mark, so I didn't want to jinx it by stopping too soon. Didn't matter because no luck. Last week I got three transcendent spellshard/foundations without using the broker just around Maldura. Sure that's rare, but it's not make-you-cry miserable. According to my most conservative estimates, it would take me 3 months of NOTHING but harvesting in my playtime hours to outfit one alt with grandmasters (I already have the recipe, and often, the masters just standing by). Or even to outfit them with a few missing. My actual calculation was 4 months, but I subtracted some for luck. That means, no alting to keep up with research assistants, no alting to pick up ascension scrolls, no doing a series of advanced solos or joining a group to make "space" space for GA accual, no events, nothing. Doesn't sound like much fun to me. There is another theory: That rare harvest chance, and harvest skill doesn't matter at all. Only bountiful harvests. Ref: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq2/index.php?threads/max-gathering-skills.552290/ And a fascinating theory about anti-bot code here: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...ds-and-foundations.551795/page-5#post-6112014 I mention it because I had to log out and log in at least once when clicking a node had zero effect and I would just stand there. Another time it would fill the delayed-action bar, and nothing happens. I was wondering at that moment how I ended up on the "possible bot" list because in ToV you have to fly and turn and attack things and I don't know that it would be so easy for a botter. But it did give me an idea. Maybe you have to stop after you get one, and do it again tomorrow. I wonder if you get a hidden flag that prevents you getting another for a day (or after 3am passes by). Actually if that theory is true, it would at least be a mercy, you'd know you could stop and you're not on a "lucky streak." And the theory I just tested, that you need 700+ harvest skill is pretty much blown out of the water unless I just had a very bad day today. So that leaves the fishing theory, since you can buff fishing skill even higher than the others. I'm skeptical of the bountiful aspect as well because I know my server has a lot of crafters with the Shawl already, even a crafter only guild, and yet only 5 total prismatic foundations on the broker. And about 12 of the foundations. Each of these goes for a quarter million plat or more. (Why buy Krono?) They are about 10X the price of the top level spellshard/foundations. TBH I'm thinking of treating them as a pure sales item, and just using all my level 90-95 (?) masters (the ones in GM spells X). Will anyone admit to having found a foolproof way to spend only one month per alt harvesting and getting them outfitted with mostly GM's (I'll accept 60% outfitted)? I'm not asking so that the developers can nerf it, I'm asking because right now it's the best alternative to Krono selling, and it's easier to get the top level spellshard/foundation than it is the level just before... and that may not have been intended. Ideas and theories welcome.
Skills do not help getting spellshards or foundations. When they were first introduced there was a bunch of crowd-sourced data sharing. THE most important stat when hunting for them is double/bountiful harvest. So far as the data that we gathered and shared, that is the ONLY stat that really matters.
It would seem that with that level of rarity crowd-sourcing would be the only way to gather useful info. There's just no way, bar years of just harvesting, that one person could collect enough of the ultra rares to have statistically significant data. The luck of the draw would swamp any trends. Were you getting several unclickable nodes in a row or did you just restart when you got one? I've always assumed that they were just displayed in the wrong place or otherwise glitched and moved on to the next, though it was annoying when I was looking for a specific type of node and the non clickable one kept showing up in the tracker.
I found the easiest way to keep track of my progress with each harvesting run, is to run ACT. They offer a plug-in for harvesting that breaks it all down for you and gives you some real data to track. You can download ACT HERE and if you already have ACT, you can find the plug-in for harvesting at the above link as well.
To be honest, the earlier harvesting data that was gathered more or less confirmed that the Thambra harvesting worked like previous tier ultra-rare harvests, and we just assumed the older data collected would be fairly accurate. The thing is, we never got enough reliable data gathered to really get statistically accurate numbers. A few assumptions were made to use the data we were getting, like that harvesting wasn't totally reworked between AoM and Thaumbra. If you want to find the real numbers, someone will have to do a lot of harvesting and present very accurate numbers for all of their harvesting stats. ACT will be incredibly helpful. If you can get several people that will give their exact stats that will speed things up considerably. Especially if there are some people willing to forgo one of the harvesting stats to figure out what effect they have. And of course, nobody is willing to do that because its really inconvenient to miss out on any benefit while making thousands of harvests. Go fig.
I got several in a row. I assumed at first that I was lagging. I didn't guess that it might be anti-bot until about the 6th node gave me "nothing" until I moved to the next node and while I was in the air the harvest animation would trigger and complete (after I was too far away). Looked like momentary lag or some kind of timestamp-is-wrong issue. I didn't have a merc up. and I assume a botter would so they don't need to one shot the mobs "manually." Altho since it was one shot, I didn't need more than Tab-1 (or 2 or 3) for any mob. I suppose that might look suspect. How does one "crowdsource"? Is running the plugin for ACT enough? I did have ACT at one point and I don't remember how I had it set up. I tried more recently to set it up again and I didn't succeed, but I suppose I can try again. (chuckle) ... without botting of course. I assume that data is somehow available to the developers anyway, if they choose to look for it in some kind of server log not available tot he players. I think there used to be a thread a few years ago where people would post their personal harvesting log (from chat). I did log chat for a while, but the size of the files just ballooned so I don't anymore. Is there still a thread where you can post such info? I'd be happy to help, with ACT or not.
By definition, I don't think "one" can crowdsource But your data definitely helps, in accompaniment with others data.
Umm...dev actually knows what the numbers are, no need for them to figure it out. They can parce the server if they want to figure out how much of what is harvested and the number of harvests. If people said something suspicious was happening a dev might check it out, but otherwise why would they even check?
They would check because probably somebody forgot to change the percent drop when the tier went up. It's probably as simple as oops that's the previous tier, meant to up the drop rate to .00001% higher (or whatever) than the top tier. It's not the end of the world.
Actually the numbers for harvesting haven't gotten more difficult than they were back in T8 or when they were first introduced. At least from what we've been able to figure out. So all of the ultra-rare stuff is at the same percent from T8 to T11 if I remember correctly. Might be wrong on that. Regular harvesting is definitely the same from T8 to now.
Hmm, could be. Maybe there are just more spells one needs to upgrade in the level 90-96 category and that explains the lack of prismatic (spellshard/foundation)s on the broker. Well if anything will ever convince me to reinstall ACT, this would be it.
I think the two big problems is that the foundations/spellshards are very rare (about 1 in 5000 harvests) and there aren't a lot of harvesters. Couple that with end-game demand and you have our current situation.
Fewer people are harvesting at that tier because it doesn't give mats people use for current recipes.
Doesn't it use the same prismatic spellshard/foundation found in Thaumbra? The recipes for GM spells 90-95 and 96-100 are in the same book.
Yeah I've had some wonderful luck getting SK masters drops in the past two weeks from Exquisite chests in Advanced solo's, but unfortunately the one I want most, the defensive stance is level 91, so I need a prismatic one. It's really a matter of impulse control not to upgrade my spells using the masters. Especially at the 90-96 level where I'm not confident that I'll have the materials anytime soon.
Waitaminute, had a deeper thought on this today..... Is it possible to have BOTH a rare harvest and a bountiful harvest at the same time? Maybe I'm not noticing it without ACT but it seems like they don't occur together. Do they?
It happens. It would be difficult to tell looking at a log though. It was easier to tell when it happened back before they upped the amount you got from each harvest. Between Rare Harvest Chance and Bonus Harvest you could pull 1,2 or even 3 rares in a single harvest. Now its harder to tell because when they upped the amount you would get from harvesting from (1,3,5) to (1,3,7) they monkeyed with the amount of rares you could get. There are some results where you get 2 rares, but they show up in the log as 1 rare and 1 rare, or the really strange 1 rare 10 commons, and 1 rare and 10 commons. Then there are the results that just show 2 rares, and even 2 rares and 20 commons. I think its actually due to inconsistencies in entering the information on the Rare Harvest Chance table, but that is just a guess.
