Rare Harvests are too rare again :(

While I understand something *rare* should be.. well RARE.. the fact of the matter is and as Domino stated in a different posting - Alot of people have come to acknowledge that anything less then pristine is vender trash. I think the same goes for any sort of player made items (armor, shields, weapons etc). Just handmade items are really not what people want, they want the Mastercrafted items as THOSE are the ones people find as the *norm*. I find it very unfortunate that any new players to EQ2 (and I have seen alot lately, YAY!) looking for armor, wont be able to afford any of the *norm* armor because they are new and the rares are ridiculously priced because of the rarity of them. Sure alot will argue *well they can go out and harvest their rares*. True, not everyone has all the time in the world to harvest though, and would like to actually hunt and play the game instead of investing the time to harvest all the rares they would need for a suit of armor (7?) just to grow out of it in a week of play time. I know some will argue also that not everyone should be able to afford rares, and I understand the concept of this but not when it comes to Mastercrafted gear. I agree with this when it comes to Fabled gear and raiding gear. The good uber loot goes to those with more time to invest in the game. But being that Mastercrafted gear has become the *norm*, why must it be so hard to get? ESPECIALLY at the lower tiers.

On Runnyeye I have a character that is a Sage so she can make her own Fury spells. I have spent many many many hours trying to get enough rares to upgrade her spells from Apprentice IVs to Adept IIIs. So far, after the 'rollback", she has found only two rares and she has moved up to level 35 while harvesting/questing through the Enchanted Lands. That is WAY to low a drop rate for rares. If she cannot even make her own spells she certainly can't produce any for sale. She has harvested so much that if she could have moved her skills higher she could harvest in Kunark by now
BTW: My level 70 Carpenter is only able to make status items for our houses because we can buy plat on the Bazaar server and then spend it on overpriced rares to craft with. My best harvester was Ratatooee (level 70 Jeweler) before the "roll back", now he can only find rares in tier one and tier two areas and not even very many there. And he is using the Overclocked harvesting tools!

While she is healing up she might not be able to chew, and it actually might be more harmful for her to work her jaw muscles. Just in case, and out of the goodness of my heart, I will take her cookies.

Sidora@Crushbone wrote:

[p] That is my point exactly. Sphere appropriate(meaning solo/group/raid) should be obtainable from hunting(adventuring) in that sphere, and one should be able to become "average" simply by doing it. [/p][p]Making rares less rare just perpuates an already existing problem. MC gear should NOT be the "norm."[/p]

No it probably shouldn't but that is what it has become. Especially at lower tiers. I have alot of lowbie characters and I find it alot harder to equip them based on drops from hunting alone (named and random chests) so I end up just looking for crafted gear. And this is duoing with my BF so I have absolutely NO competition when it comes to rolling on gear. I cant even imagine how it would be like in groups.. people roll on just about anything and sometimes you get a nice guy/gal that will give up the gear you need, but most often then not they want to sell it or sacrifice it to their diety and you end up with nothing. Unless you go find crafted gear.. which again is insanely over priced for the lvls I am talking about. (teens, 20s, 30s, 40s) I dont want stuff dropping like candy, but it would be nice for lowbies to have alot better chances for getting mastercrafted gear. That or possible revamp some of the zones? Add some lowbie loot?

I know this isn't about TS, but just had to comment. Hate to tell ya, but Rama does just stands there all the time now. He doesn't even roam around. He just stand with 2 ears down lionesses under a tree. He isn't even heroic. The Whisp is always up too. We had to redo the first part for an additional guilide and it only added about 5 minutes to the quest. most of that running to Cannix, HQ's used to be a special quest, a step above book quests (which are horribly tedious.) They used to take weeks and weren't something you whipped out in a half-hour. I thought the previous iteration of the Lightbringer was pretty easy. Rama popped fairly frequently and he wandered around a bit. He was a challenge to kill, but not too bad. Now it's a big nothing. We haven't done the final "raid" yet but one of our group members has recently and he says a full group of 6 at level 20ish is plenty,

As of when? Hubby did that about a month ago and had to camp him.

Probably GU36. Wasn't that when they redid the commonlands and got rid of all the heroic mobs? Not sure.

With the CL revamp (GU 36) all the named for that HQ have become very fast respawns (it seems without PHs as well). All but the last two steps have been made easy. Yes .. Rama now sits under a tree .. he is an easy solo now and respawns quickly.

They did a complete revamp of the content in Antonica and CL a couple of updates ago (alot of the group stuff were removed so players can solo them). I know Return of the Light HQ can be completely solo-ed up to the General Drull instance. That part though hasn't changed recently and has always been 1 groupable if you change up strategies.

[p]I can go from 1 end of a zone to another harvesting 1 node type, and i get 1 rare at the end of it (granted it might not be the one i want) I feel this is nice, 6 was stupid after the patch, [/p][p]'never' was not worth bothering going out of the way to get 1, since it would be more constructive time wise to just buy off broker.[/p][p] [/p][p]I think the current system is spot on.[/p]

They moved the High Priest, too. He's on the balcony outside a tower now, not down in the field where you had to go from post to post before. We didn't have to wait for him either but that could have been luck. He was an easy kill.

[p]I'd say rares were back to 'high normal', myself. [/p][p]Yesterday, I took my Tailor (70/Adv49) out to the Enchanted Lands for the sole purpose of finding more feyiron. [/p][p]My character was in the zone for @ 6 hours but total time I actually was doing any harvesting @ 1-2 hours. [/p][p]In that time of cherry picking (*blush* but never came across anyone else harvesting) I got 3 full stacks of feyiron, 2 stacks of supple loam, 2 Feysteel and 1 Ductile Loam. [/p][p]--- [/p][p]Spent another hour or so at the Bonemire (?) Crashsite Port-in Area (mobs very red!) and with only harvesting those nodes that I could reach without getting myself killed .. I got a Rare Wood & Root. That's about a total of probably 6 nodes max I can clear out without getting argo from those mobs. [/p][p]---[/p][p]Saturday, I spent like 2 hours actively seeking Ironwood on my Main (70 Alch/62 Adv) .. I hit up a few roots, dens, bushes, fishing, rocks but mostly wood .. got 1 Rare Loam, 2 Rare Roots and 2 Rare Ironwoods .. where upon I stopped harvesting since I only wanted 2 Ironwoods ..[/p][p]----[/p][p]When Rares were 'off the hook' ... I was busy harvesting Bushes on my tailor for my provisioner .. I sat in front of the 2 bush nodes on Whisperwind Isle for hours .. without even harvesting the root node(s) .. I found over 16 Rare Roots!!! Those bushes pop like 1x every 15 mins. I now have like 30 Rare Nimbus roots rotting on my Tailor .... [/p][p]*shrug*[/p][p]The RNG at it's finest ... [/p][p] [/p][p]Edit: as far as Imbued "stuff" .. I could care less how often they drop or don't drop .. I still have STACKS of the bloody things. I'll worry about them when T8 hits and I need to collect new Imbued "stuff". [/p]

[p]I have just been harvesting T5 for fulginate and not other tiers but rares come a whole lot less then T4 I will say. Thats with 55% run speed and overclocked tools on Oakum who is lvl 70 in EF, LS, and Feerrot.[/p][p]That I can handle though. What frustrating is getting that rare ebon once every couple of hours but not getting 10 fulginate with it. It's actually been rare that I have been getting 10 fulginate with ebon but seems to happen every time on the other kinds of rares. [/p][p]Its a pain to get enough fulginate, especially when trying to level with no vitality. Be glad when I get my armorer out of the 40's. 3 levels till I see the last of it for that alt anyway. [/p]

It is known that rares become more rare as one progresses up the Tiers. Wait until T7....

[p]All I know is that the market value for rare harvests is still dropping and that mastercrafted/adept III prices are dropping right along with them. You can make a nice profit turning 1p rares into 1.4p adepts, but there is no way to make a profit when rares are selling for 35g, and people expect the finished product for 50g. [/p][p]Rares and the products you make with them only have value because there are not enough to go around. There will be a sweet spot where prices will get enough extra people out harvesting to fill demand. To rare and they don't bother and the demand goes unfilled. To common and the market is flooded with more products then are needed and prices plummet, which IMO is still where we are. [/p]

Ok you can have her cookies, I'll just make her some soup instead.

[p] You can make a nice profit charging 2-3x's fuel cost for combines no matter what the price of the rares (just make them suply the rare).[/p][p]As far as market forces they will always trend down even if there isn't a change in drop rate unless someone is speculating on the market and reselling rares. Considering how there is a perception that rares are "flooding" the market i suspect a lot of the speculators are not being very agressive so prices are naturally going to be allowed to fall.[/p]

It's more rare then they were post-GU! Post-GU my output was MUCH higher. I'm just making the point that they are more rare than before.

It's rare if you take into account that in those 3.5 hours the poster also harvested probably over a thousand non-rare raws. There are two ways to measure rarity: as a ratio over time and as a ratio over non-rares. I think 7 rares and 6 semi-rares in the course of harvesting over a thousand non-rares is a pretty decent ratio. YMMV.