Ascension Spell Quality Progression

These observations were triggered after I crafted and scribed my first Ascension ability to Journeyman. The next level to research said Adept so....

I looked for upgrades and I could only find Expert and Grandmaster Level Spell Upgrades.

The way the works is Journeyman (crafted or researched), Adept (dropped or researched), Expert (Crafted or researched), Master (dropped or researched), Grandmaster (crafted or researched), and Ancient (bought for 10Mil Plat).

The issue is I can find no Adept or Master Ascension Scrolls anywhere. Additionally, none have seem to have dropped worldwide through searching discos.

Are these dropping? Are the suppose to drop?

It seems pretty obvious that ascension ability upgrades were meant to be bought with real money. It is just the lastest cash grab by dbg.

Or, they are intentionally time-gating our advancement so we can't just buy our way to max tier off the broker. Using DBC to get around that time-gating would be a player choice, similar to buying a L100 boost bauble instead of investing your time to level a toon.

These abilities scale pretty substantially; I'll have to check the different between tiers against a normal spell but I feel like it's a wider gap for Ascension.

Item discovery has been understandably hamstrung by EQ2 characters not updating in Census for the last 2 weeks. I would not use that as evidence of anything at this point. Now that EQ2 Census is mostly fixed (a percentage of characters aren't updating -- perhaps as many as 10%), we can make a better analysis.

If upgrades are not even dropping in game and the only way to upgrade past a certain point is to pay real money or wait a substantial amount of time to research it is hardly an argument for time-gating. I mean I didn't do the math but I can guess that to max out all ascension abilities via only researching would take somewhere over 10 years. good luck trying to validate that as anything but a cash grab.

Prior to research, people never assumed they'd be fully mastered. People know assume they can be and seem to feel entitled to be.

I'm not entirely sure where you are trying to go with this. Before researching came out, getting abilities to adept III was easy. Fast forward to ascension abilities, getting an ascension ability to adept III is nearly impossible without spending real money or wasting several months to research it. Basically comparing the old system to the new system is a terrible comparison because they don't work the same way at all. Before you could just buy an adept III or get a master to drop and just scribe it, with ascension abilities you have to scribe every previous tier in order to use the next tier. The way the ascension system is and the way the drop rate is, makes it pretty obvious the whole ascension creation was put in for people to spend real money. If people fail to see this, well I'm sorry.

I know the differences between the old and the new system. However, the ascension apprentice level spells are, similarly, not the pale nearly useless versions of arts that the apprentice level arts of standard abilities are. They are powerful in their own right. In terms of power, when compared to standard abilities, they are, at the very least, equivalent to expert level arts.
In the past, people did not automatically assume they would get masters for any, let alone all of their arts. Now people do. The parallel I was attempting to draw was that people EXPECT (and feel entitled) to have all the best abilities and to have them quickly now, when, in the past, people didn't even assume they would get all of them EVER. We are now in an in-between. We can get SOME of them in time (long or short depends on luck) through in game means. Yes, those who feel they absolutely must have them all now can toss real money at them, where that was not an option in the past. I fail to see how taking advantage of some people's impatience and feeling they MUST have all the best RIGHT NOW, is a 'money grab'.

I find it hard to believe that every other was updated by the census, except for adept and master ascension abilities.

I find the evidence that they are not currently in game to be overwhelming through 2 major sources of information.

1. They aren't on the broker on any server.
2. Every other ability has updated on census except for those. (which by itself may be an anomaly, but what an anomaly it would be)


With that being said. Are you saying you think that they should be dropping if they aren't?

Otherwise this is obviously a pay to win scheme, and I hope you along with everyone else finds this to be unacceptable.

Adepts and Masters should be obtainable in game in some form. Even if adept is key quest and master is from weekly heroic quests it'd be a start.

Having to research is silly.

I agree , and current the scrolls are far to rare , even more so when you consider theres only 4 different types of ascension

KA broke census and it's still not working right. Most characters still show as ToT geared, so don't expect disco's to be showing up right either.

Census is mostly fixed as of today. There's a bug with characters that have certain wardrobe slots filled, but that's supposedly being fixed on Tuesday.

Finally! Bet there's quite a backlog.

So characters actually *were* being exported all this time, but the data was being rejected due to a formatting issue. You'll notice that progress on Quests and knowledge of Recipes on EQ2U has been updating this whole time. Note that I have not yet added Kunark Ascending quests or recipes to EQ2U yet. There's usually a 2-3 week delay on quests anyway.

It has? I just checked one of my Stormhold toons (80 Sage), and her highest recipe book is still Sage Essentials Volume 49. Bug still on to-be-fixed list?

Yes.

Thank you for pushing me to get this fixed on EQ2U. The exact cause hasn't been identified but we know where to look now. In the meantime I have deleted all cached data (some 35 million table rows ) from more than 14 days ago. Nobody should be staring at Recipe data from a year and a half ago now.

Again, thank you for all of your hard work, to you and to all who assisted you, whether players or DBG staff *grins*. You all deserve a hearty and hatefulled thank you! *giggles as I slip off into the shadows sipping my Neriak Nectar from long ago* "Ah, aged JUST right, finally!"

Well, as far as I can remember a regular player was alway able to reach at least everything in expert and got some masters. In raid instances masters droped rather often and raiders were always fully mastered after some time and without spending any real money.
The problem now is something completly different. You cannot jump from lowest rank to master. You have to read all the scrolls and they are nearly not available. Even if you get the journeyman, you cannot find the adept. The research for 40 spells of all classes would take a decade and is also no real option.

DB offered us a nice option. When you start the research you get an advertising to buy the master instantly, for only 4900 Daybreack cash! Multiply this with 40 spells and you reach an amount of real US$ equivalent to 12 years all access membership! Personally I dont believe the game will exist such a long time.

We speak about a maximum around 1600 US$ and I would bet on it, at least the raiders will need it in the future.

Sorry to say, but if Daybreack will not implement very soon a possibility to find enough scrolls or rare to produce them for all gamers, it has a reason. Than they changed the game finally in a pay to win system and that will be the end of all.

It is not only pay to win it is a very, very expensive version of pay to win. If this works, if really a lot of players would accept to buy the masters, you can be sure, we will see with the next addon again something similare. At least I am not willing to pay such a value.