Please adjust drop rate of blue malice shards in Rum Cellar

You are NOT off the hook yet, friend Caith!

As I watch my P & Q s , you best circle back and make sure your subordinates have their proper RNG coding in place for the loot tables for RC. Since we had our "back & forth" about blue malice shards, a miraculous improvement in RNG drop rate has fallen upon us. I suspect there was a "hoddy fugg" moment with the RC RNG table for Caith's staff as they discovered, to their chagrin, that the RNG loot table did NOT mirror the AoM sister table. As is common with most plebes, they did not share this particular revelation with their boss...Caith - they just stealth fixed it.

The Blue Malice Shard Challenge hasn't been retracted, good sir, not until I see a fairly STABLE RNG return on the blue malice shards within the RC AS instance as it compares (in ratio) to the AoM yellow malice shards RNG.

That being said...well done on RC as a whole...sorry to be such a PITA over this particular issue.

Your most unrelenting critic...and your most unwavering supporter.

-Wintir

Caith, mah friend...

After who knows how many runs through RC AS solo, the ratio is about 10:1 (maybe 11-12): namer kills per blue malice shard drops (x2) vs. a ratio of 5:1 (x2) for AoM yellow malice shards.

Perhaps to even out things, drop the level 95, welfare white adornments from the RC namer loot table. NO..seriously!

Ciao, dude!

Uhm.. why should blue shards drop in rum cellar as often as yellow drops in the vanilla AoM zones? They're not the same...

This goes down to what was advertised and that's why I and I dare say, many other bought it.

What part of it is the same chance in RC vs Vanilla AoM is so hard?

You are on the bad end of a RNG. Others will be on the good end.

The fact you can even get blue shards is honestly more than should be possible anyway. You can get heroic gear by never doing a heroic zone ever...

That's something to take up with the devs (if you want) and not with your fellow players. They needed a few carrots to sell the "One door in Phantom Sea Adventure Pack". And blue shards is part of the package. I do not begrudge my fellow players the lower tier heroic armor regardless if they run heroics or not, and neither should you.

Thank you, Wurm. I couldn't have said it better myself.

And for the record, RC solo instances are, by default, the "vanilla" option. In fact they are the one and ONLY option.

It was clearly quoted in the promo posts leading up to RC release, that blue malice shard drops would allow casual and small guild players an opportunity, with an investment of time, to upgrade to T1 heroic armor. This is because, they are getting chewed to pieces wearing their yellow shard gear in the heroics. The mobs are lethal and heavily scripted.

A 12:1 drop rate will not allow DGC to fulfill this selling point of the RC product. Unless of course they think their target player base is unemployed, living with mom & dad, no wife, kids, etc. and can run the advanced solo instance 10-20 a day.

12:1 Drop rate is your results.

Caith already told you its the same drop rate as previous AS.

Stop mixing up cold hard statistics, with your very small sample of results.

Don't just think it is his results to be honest. My small guild is seeing the same thing. And as are my friends who run the instances (I only do the weeklies in there now since I finished all the solo / AS shiny quests). And I was also seeing a very low drop rate and I hit the two zones non-stop on release, I even took off from work for it.

Where you do see the abundance of blue shards is in the RC heroic zones... which is silly since you need pretty that level of gear to do them.

Yes Errrorr RNG is RNG, but isn't it about time we all got sick of it? People quit because of EQ2 RNG and that's as bad of a system as it gets. But hey don't tell that to the lucky people with the golden dice, because even if you been rolling craps since 2004 they are going to tell you "It's only a bad streak, don't worry it will get better..."

I know, I read it and refuted it. Quit recycling old commentary.

I am in the overall majority when I say the ratio is 12:1. I just finished polling general chat on this server and the consensus is the same one as mine. I rotated over to several other servers and rinse repeat...again, the overall opinion was the drop rate is far too stingy.

P.S. The green adornments (which are very welcome) do drop every so often, so that's wonderful. The new merc is definitely a better DPSer than anything else I had There's more than a few good things in the RC product, don't get me wrong. The devs and artists did a bang up job in the overall sense.

I run AOM AS zones and rum cellar fairly often. Part of the issue of yellow shards dropping more than blue is there are
just more bosses in the AOM zones. That being said, I've never got a blue shard either, and also am disappointed in the drop rate. I've got tons of repeat pirate armor though, and it appears the AOM AS armor is better.

Would love to see one blue shard sometime, although it takes like what, 20 to get one armor piece (Arrrggggh!!) (Pirate voice).

At this rate, I'll guess I'll have to wait until the next "Talk like a pirate day" to ever get a blue shard......

Silk.

I feel your pain, Silkmyst There's a fair amount of "chaff" diluting the RNG loot table(s).

I remain hopeful that the DGC staffers will be granted the time to revise the loot table for the RC AS instance. Let's cross our fingers

P.S. I and many others are determining the effective drop ratio based on "namer:blue malice shard". This produces what we believe to be a fair and equitable benchmark

With hat in hand, I humbly ask the local demi-god devs to revisit the drop rate. God as my witness, it's not working as intended/inferred (or as advertised via promo videos and posts).

I have no idea what the drop rate really is. I do know that I've done the solo and advanced solo many times and have to date received 38 blue malice shards. 20 I turned in for a new armor piece, so now I have 18 and probably will save up to 40 for a new BP. Heck, what else is there to do until the next DLC this fall?

I have a very healthy collection of bottles from the solo zone that are starting to take up too many slots in my house. So yup, I think the blue malice shards are rare. But yes they do drop. The only use I might have for the yellow shards is to get yellow malice armor to attach 4 gems to and convert to a blue malice gem. It baffles a dwarf's mind sometimes figuring out how many whatsits you need to get a whutsit. But at least it will keep me busy.

Always the player considered "non-optimal"...

Balcerak

Yep, that's what most of us currently do.