Colossal Reactant drops

Onorem wrote:

In a discussion of rewards for doing something, it is quite relevent. There are essentially four different rewards for doing the daily missions:
1. Normal harvest
2. Rare harvest
3. Potion
4. Reactant
I consider #1 the boobie prize. I just don't care about normal harvests. I toss those in the guild depot, or in the trash, depending on my mood.
The rare harvest isn't bad, but if I'm looking for rares then running the missions is a waste of my time. I get many times more by actually harvesting. Sure, it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but it really isn't anything I'm going to get overly excited about.
The potions? The only one I've found any use for is the one that increases your chance at harvesting a rare. I think I've used a grand total of two since this started. Again, better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but not that exciting.
Reactants? Now those I can use.
In my opinion, and your mileage may vary, there are only two worthwhile things to come out of the TAs: recipes, and the reactants required to make something from the recipes. Everything else is just fluff.
BTW, stocking up on the items does not reduce the amount of time needed to do the quests. You still have to spend time making the items. Whether or not you do it before you need it is irrelevant.

Xianthia wrote:

Yeah, not all of mine have gotten a reactant, either. If it is this rare for someone running so many tradeskillers, I shudder to think how bad it must be for someone with just one or two tradeskillers.
I'm just hoping that if we make enough noise about it that they'll consider taking a look and making sure it isn't broken. I don't mind that it's uncommon, so long as it _does_ occassionally drop.

Adir wrote:

I agree completely with your final statement. I don't care at all about the first 3 potential rewards. I do disagree that your time is better spent harvesting some random zone for the whole couple of minutes it takes to run the daily quest.
You can't get 3 or 4 at all by harvesting. Nobody cares about 1. I still will take the bet that you don't average a rare in the time it takes to finish one combine.
I've got 4 90s. I still haven't seen one. I wish I had but I'm fine with that. I have guildies who've seen several. It is just RNG at work.
--edit to respond to edit--
Adir wrote:

Zoning and running takes more time than the actual crafting. Standing in one place and stocking yourself with turn-ins does reduce the amount of time long term.

Adir wrote:

Somewhat Disagree.
How much time it saves you is debatable. I find I can whip out 20 of 'x' in one sitting, faster than I could make 20 individual 'x's one each day. You gotta hail the otter, go to the thing, start the crafting session, find the right recipe, craft the thing, return to the otter. Not nearly as efficient as blasting 20 our in a row without taking a breath. Maybe if the crafting station was right next to the otter, and you had each item hotbar'd, they could be made in equivalent time. But I still bet pre-crafting would come out ahead.
Also, if you do all your pre-crafting while watching a movie, it's practically free

I like some of the potions quite a bit. The xp one for when new level arrives will come in handy, the progress one is superb for crafters that mass produce items (ww comes to mind, almost all progress ones gets used by her exclusively lol, although I could think of couple of items from other crafters that could benefit from using these).
Each of the pots I guess have some use depending on the crafter. Now that said, don't misunderstand me.. I'd prefer the colossal over the potions any day but if not a colossal, then the potions will do nicely.

Onorem wrote:

I can go days without seeing a rare as a reward from running the missions. If I'm after rares, I'll go harvest them. I can get several in 30 minutes time, which is roughly how long it takes me to run my seven tradeskillers through the missions.
I still disagree about pre-making the turn-ins. Sure, it's more convenient, but it's really no time savings. Whether you spend 10 minutes now, cranking them out, or 10 minutes over several days cranking them out, one-by-one, is irrelevent. You still spend 10 minutes. And I can watch t.v. either way. For me, the time spent running from my TA to station and back is insignificant.

I understand how to compute probability of success. If the true drop rate is as low as 1%, I can go 30 days x 9 crafters (270 chances) and still have something like greater than 6% chance of not getting a colossal. That's not absurbly low. It's close to being the same as rolling a pair of dice one time and not getting either a 2 or a 12.
I started this thread because I had seen zero drops in about a month, and wondered if I'd missed a note saying that they had stopped dropping for tradeskillers, OR, that corresponding to the change in the decorative recipes to not use colossals, a bug had snuck into the code that stopped them from dropping for those recipes, which is all I have left.
As long as someone has gotten a drop doing the Essence recipe research, I'll conclude I'm down in the 6%, and keep trying.

One thing I noticed and didn't see posted. The reactant drops is based on your quest lvl (TS lvl). Not the lvl of the recipie you are crafting. So you can research the lower lvl recipies with a lvl 90 tser and still get colossals.

shots01 wrote:

RNG stands for random number generator, or atleast as random as a computer can get.

Caster_III wrote:

I'm telling you people that 1% is pie in the sky over optamistic for the drop rate of a Colossal. I'm sure it is probably closer to 0.01% than 1%.
From what people have said you can continue to do the daily missions even without a recipe selected. Same drops occure. Drops seems to be dependent on your crafters level. Researching lower teirs doesn't have any effect on what rewards you get. Thinking that a change in the recipes components from reactants to roots seems supersticious. There is no way a player could collect enough information to make an informed opinion. Refuting this is like refuting pink unicorns: all you can say is you haven't see it.
Still, from what I understand is that even after you run out of recipes you can still do the daily quest and possibly get a reactant. If that chance alone is worth it I'd continue to do the quests. Heck, so far my unplayed crafting alts are collecting AA points from doing it, which is worth more than the rare harvests or potions.

This drop rate is still hosed up.

8 Crafters all at 90 have only missed 10 days of dailies ( they were all in a row ) total of 3 reactants.

Not 3 per crafter. Thats 3 out of all of em. The drop rate or chance to get a Colo is well below 1% or the RGN just hates my account. Either way this needs fixed.

Deveryn@Crushbone wrote:

'the' person to craft it was never valid.

the rate of recipe learning vs the rate of comission needed was insanely high. meaning lots of recipes, no colossals to use. and that was at the start when time was a stronger limiting factor.

I didnt get a single colossal reactant ever, this is since about 6 months working on 4 lv90 crafters apprentices.
kinda sucks, all recipes basically useless.

Nynaeve wrote:

I have 4 crafters, Lvl 92, that at first I was doing the daily quest on all 4 every day. That got rather tiresome, but I did that for quite some time. Now, I might do the quests 2 or 3 times a week (with all 4 crafters), and while that's not every day, that's still a lot of daily quests I've done since inception. I have yet to get a Colossal reactant. Did get some lvl 90 rare harvests, yea. Which, really, are of little use to me since all my toons are lvl 92, and anything I need now is over lvl 90.
RNG, I know, it's fickle. I know they don't want the market glutted with a lot of gear made from colossal reactants. but this is verging on absurd. Devs should think about tweaking the drop rate. Because this is just one more of those things that make the game frustrating rather than fun.

I'm just going to point out that 2 of the potion rewards are probably more useful than colossal reactants. With the availability of Skyshrine crafting parts (prime and regular) becomming more common the potion of innovation becomes more valuable. Also if your leveling up a new crafter any of the insta-death combines (epsecially shawl combines), this potion makes the quest trivial.
The progress potions are a godsend for any crafting class looking to mass produce anything. Sometimes I make backpacks to donate to my guild. Each potion lets me grind out over 40 backpacks in 10 minuites. Not only does the potion make me produce more each tick, it also keeps me focused on crafting for the potion's duration. Instead of being lulled to sleep by crafting, I'm on edge: that is worth more than the actual benifit I'm getting from the potion.
Colossals? Nice gear to twink a brand new 90 till they can get to 92. The chest is hard to replace, but the rest isn't.