Rare Harvests are too rare again :(

I have never posted on the forums before and really felt the need to post in this thread. Domino, if you are still reading this thread. I recently started playing EQ2 again. (I'd played a bit once before but nothing more serious than level 35.) Update 37 came out shortly after I began playing. With the changes to harvesting and tradeskills, I thought I would pursue it more. I was delighted and thrilled at the new rate of rare drops. While they were not ultra rare, they were not common either. It was a delightful balance and I finally enjoyed the tradeskill system. I could make great armor with decent effort. It wasn't a grind like wow, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had plans to get a tradeskill of every type to level 70. However, then the hotfix was applied, and IMO rares went to almost nothing. I harvested for 3-4 nights and got maybe 1 to 2 rares a night. It is no fun, at all. This new change is seriously causing me to rethink my subscription to EQ2. Tradeskilling is something that I enjoy a lot. If this is how long it will take to farm rares, then no thank you. I will move on to something else. This post isn't ment as a threat or DO THIS or I'll quit. It's just simply FYI. The current rate of rares is horrible and not fun for me. If it stays this way, it's a very real chance i will jump ship. Anyway, thanks for your time. Ghrey

[p]Domino, be strong, take a deep breath and relax. Ignore this one and move onto the next thread. You are no good to us if your head continues to "explode".[/p][p]I really think that you have to stick to your plan and don't even look at the drop rate again until at least September/October. The market is still full of speculators both selling back and buying up rares.[/p][p]It's great that everyone is passionate about this topic (I am too) but surely we have to let the dust settle first. [/p]

[p]The dust has settled for me and the rate of rares is terrible. It may be that I just have an unusual number of characters with bad RNG seeds, but whatever the reason the current rate of rares is too low for me and it seems too low for at least a few others. I know Domino isn't going to make any more changes until after September (please note that I DID NOT ask for one before the scheduled time) but info is info and hopefully she will patch her head and read this entire thread. There is a lot of good information in it including some very different perceptual viewpoints as to what people consider a reasonable drop rate. One poster listed a drop rate that I have yet to ever see and thought it was low. Others like me have characters who hardly ever get rares. There is a problem with this system that seems to be beyond a simple loot table adjustment. This should be examined since if the RNG is indeed set at character birth and there are bad and good ones there is a real disparity in experience that needs fixing. [/p]

Nope, that's been around since the last rare revamp before this one. You can get either one rare or one rare plus 10 raws.

Te'ana wrote:

One week is not settled. I tell ya, I'm about to vote for rollback to launch rates. Then there'd be something to complain about.

[p]The current rate of rares is an increase on what everyone else is used to. Considering the rates i know i and guildies were getting as in 20 -30 rares a session harvesting, they were not just common but easier to find than feyiron. I hate to think what it would be like trying to level "every type of tradeskill to 70" in an economy when mastercrafted sold for fuel plus a few silvers and nothing else was worth making. [/p][p]If you look at the broker prices things are cheeper than they were but not the crazy prices that first happened so it would seem rares are more common than they were but less common than they were imediatly post lu 37 hmmm sound like things are working as intended.[/p][p]As per RNG there are whole industries towns even cities based on people that think they know what a random process is doing. If you know what random numbers are coming up dont waste time on eq get to vegas fast I harvested the same area in ferrot with the same character for 2 hours 4 nights running and got wildly different numbers and types of rares i feel for the people that get lousy luck but it is just that not a reflection on the balance of the system [/p]

Umm, if the poster has harvested enough to develop an opinion then yes, it =is= settled. The rate is the rate is the rate. Once you've harvested several hundred nodes, you have a very good idea of what you're going to find and how often. Now if you mean has the =market= settled, then no, it hasn't. But the poster you're quoting wasn't talking about the market....

[p]I'll start by saying the "base" rare drop rate is not the point of this post [/p][p]I have a concern over the weighting of the skill level effect on the rare drop rate. Now I have a maxed out harvester, so this is not a sour grapes statement. I believe that if the chance of getting a rare is based on your skill level, especially if there is a bonus table, it favours the farmer over the levelling up toiler. I don't know that this is a good reason to have a bonus system. Some might argue that they have worked hard to get their harvest level up and they deserve a bonus for doing so - if that must be, please make it only a small thing.[/p][p]The second matter is in the imbue material drop rate. With the tier two ones already well up over 1g each it is restricting the professions with low recipe numbers that can imbue to get a few more. I was fortunate and had a few stacks stockpiled to help my weaponsmith along. At least the writ xp will counter the loss. (once again, with my high level alts finance is not a problem for me, but for a new player it may well be)[/p]

Te'ana wrote:

[p]I find the current % drop rate for rares fully acceptable. Since there has been so much discussion around this I have been monitoring the % chance to get a rare since the hotfix. My toons do not use any harvest tools.[/p][p]I would say the % chance to get a rare is sufficiently high for anyone to get a few rares per lvl, with only a reasonable amount of harvesting. It is sufficient for an ad3 and a few pieces of armor for those who feel a need for a simpler game [/p][p]I have not checked the following, but I would not be surprised if it turns out that % chance to get a rare is higher or equal to the % chance to get a chest from a mob in general. (This means that if you kill 1000 random mobs and harvest 1000 random nodes you would probably end up with same amount of chests and rares).[/p][p] [/p]

[p]A couple of points...[/p][p]

[/p][p]How many of these rares on sale were harvested by level 70's in low/mid-tier zones?[/p][p]This is what many of us have been saying that gets missed by people who can't differentiate the issues. Yes, the rate is high for level 70's harvesting low tier zones, but those of us harvesting in appropriate tier zones based on our skill are seeing nothing like the amount of rares that these level 70's are getting. We would like a slightly higher drop rate to actually be able to make things for our toons, not to dump on market in an attempt to get rich.[/p][p]

[/p][p]All things are relative. It i killed 1000 solo mobs i would get more treasured items than i got rares from 1000 nodes. If i killed 1000 heroic/named mobs i would get more legendary that i got rares from 1000 nodes. You can't relate the two as it depends in what mobs you kill and where you kill them (dungeons being tougher than outdoors).[/p][p] [/p][p]I will restate my ideas that to me would resolve the current arguments.[/p][p]Remove the bonus from being a high tier in a low tier zone, there is simply no need or justification for it. If any bonus should be applied it should go based on the min/max skill of the zone you're harvesting in. Once harvesting becomes trivial, ie you can't improve your skill further, you shouldn't get any extra benefit for having a skill higher than that amount.[/p][p]This results in a big reduction in rares as the majority are put onto the market by these level 70's.[/p][p]A secondary change would be to up the rare rate *slightly* across the board for everyone, not back to how they were immediately after gu37, but a slight improvement over what they are now.[/p][p]This stops those of us harvesting in appropriate tier zones from getting screwed by the actions of others.[/p]

[p] OOC.[/p][p]Absolutely none of them.[/p][p]I am speaking about Tier7 rares - specifically Moonstones and Acrylia (and to some limited extent Tier6 rares - Pearls and Vanadium).[/p][p]The broker prices (for these items) are extremely low right now, due to hundreds of them having been farmed and hundreds more (probably thousands) being stockpiled during the excessive rare spawn rate prior to the patch that corrected it again. Myself, I had 150 moonstones and 150 pearls stockpiled, which I purchased for a pittance at the pek of the glut, and I still have over 100 of each. With so many other serious level 70 crafters having similar stockpiles, it will take a while for the market to settle even if the rare spawn rate has been successfully reduced. Right nows, rares are nothing like "rare".[/p][p]And I personally still feel it is too high even after the reduction. "Rare" should mean rare, not something you pop out for an hour and are pretty much guaranteed to get one (or more!) of.[/p][p] [/p]

[p]Amen to that. I'm trying to make sales crates for all my family's 47 toons and it is a first-class pain trying to find rares to make them. Everyone is out day and night trying to find the rares needed and it hasn't been going well so far. Most of the crates we have were made with rares harvested before the recent rare nerf.[/p][p]IMHO rares should spawn at a rate of about one for ever hundred items you harvest. I'm not talking nodes, I'm talking items harvested.[/p][p]The reason for this is that there are few items outside of provisioner and carpenter that have any value without needing a rare as a component. We need only x number of other non-rare, raw materials to make the item. If the rares aren't in proportion to the non-rares then crafters end up making a bunch of junk stuff to sell back to the vendor at a loss. [/p][p]The loss comes from the time spent harvesting raw materials instead of killing mobs for monetary or other loot. There is also the time spent actually making the useless item which is only good for vendoring.[/p][p]So, without adequate rares, crafting is a huge resource and time sink to players. That leads to players putting crafting on a back burner, for times when they really don't feel up to adventuring, or they ignore it altogether. [/p][p]Those players who ignore crafting altogether will probably play the game for less time than those who do craft. That leads to a premature loss of revenue to Sony as players wear out adventuring and migrate to other games. [/p][p]I can only wonder why Sony doesn't invest more time and resources into making crafting a desirable feature of the game. Until the day comes that Sony does taking crafting seriously, just increasing rares, once again, would go a long way in making crafting less of a time and resource sink. [/p]

[p]I would say that 1000 heroic/named mobs is far from 1000 random mobs. (I did use the word random for a reason).[/p][p]Regarding solo mobs - I did a test once (since having a transmuter i wanted to check the return of farming treasured items) and started to kill solos mobs. The % chance of getting treasured then was clearly lower than the % chance of a rare drop now. But since a zone holds som heroic/named the % rate chests will go up. The % rate rare is probably higher, however. [/p]

Felishanna@Antonia Bayle wrote:

[p] Your argument falls down on the semantics. The term rare means different things to different people.[/p][p]The actual game mechanics put mastercrafted items between treasured and legendary therefore should be rarer than treasured items and less rare than legendary. Now, in a tier appropriate to my level i can get far more legendary and even a few fabled off named mobs than i currently can get 'rares' from harvesting.[/p][p]Just last night i was doing up the 2nd ro deity quest in steamfont and decided to hit a few named in the local area. I got a couple of pieces of legendary armour and a fabled master illusionist spell in around 45 minutes. Harvesting i couldn't possibly hope to get the same amount of rare harvests even tho they're supposed to be more common than the items i looted.[/p]

[p]Treasure chests drop from normal (non named or heroic) npcs in much greater quantity. [/p][p]As a transmuter and experienced soloer, I can say the comparison is more like the following. If you harvest 1k nodes and kill 1k named NPCs, the master spells would about equal the number of rares harvested. Although, you would still get about half as many rares, twice as many legendaries, and ten times as many adepts/armor/weapons.[/p]

If all !47! of your characters have the item(s) how exactly are they rare? If everyone in the game has an item wouldn't it then be considered common? It certainly sounds like a lot of people simply want the common/rare idea completely removed from the game. To simply get rid of handcrafted, app 2-4, etc. and have ONLY mastercrafted and adept 3 level items. Everyone seems to expect that is what they will have each tier anyway so why not just remove common harvests and common recipes all together? The game has already seen an incredible amount of mudflation as it is so why not complete the process. Just to give another old-timer story about rares and drop rates at release... My swashbuckler did not have a single Adept 3 or rare item until he reached the level cap and started raiding. At that point we regularly spent DKP points on rares to have made into armor and/or spells. Yes, that meant RAIDS were required if you expected to even be in full (whats now called) mastercrafted gear. Eventually they added rares to more heroic mobs and people were able to farm mobs in order to get "mastercrafted" gear. Then they added the changes to harvesting to make it so pretty much EVERYONE expected to be in full mastercrafted with a full array of adept 3's at all times.

Having a bit of a dig,ive noticed quite a few comments about high level chars or even level 70.Being able to get around nodes faster with their speedy horses,and faster harvesting tools than lower level chars.I figure this is one of the perks of leveling your character,what do you exspect.High level characters to run around naked on foot to harvest,so they cant out do a lower level char.All characters start at level 1 so everyone has been there struggling to harvest but it gets better as you grow I used to harvest in rivervale on a level 8 char it was my highest adventurer i had,sure it was alot harder than the higher levels in the zone with me thats to be exspected.But it was fun!

[p]Seems as if more people are for the increased drop rates than against it. It was long overdue. As far as t6-t7 prices not sure how your serv is like, but I dont see this influx in fact I cant afford to buy rough pearls and vanadiums right now w/o going completely broke on just the rares. And this is to equip 1 char. I went out and spent a few hours harvesting with a char w/o tools and still earning skil ups in t6(thats a non maxed harvest skill btw) and found not a single rare.[/p][p] to Caethre [/p][p]Says he/she went out and buy up all the rares when they were in mass and has like 150/150 of the t6 t7 rares. Hmm im sure youd like to see the rare go back down so you can start making money. A speculator who will profit if they promote that the rare drop should go down. Yeah lets lower rares so folks like you can benefit. really do you think talking about how you PURCHASED your 150 rares at low prices would help your point of view any? Now if you had farmed the in 1 hr then maybe you could make a point.[/p][p]They are called rares because the game needed to call them something. You already have uncommons in nodes so they needed another name.[/p][p]What is rare anyway? I dont get it. This isnt rare enough to you I guess, but to me they areplenty rare as I dont have nearly what I need for personal use and I am out there trying to get em.[/p]

I spent about 8 hours harvesting with my best harvester yesterday. I mostly harvested in Bonemire and some in other zones. The only adventuring I did was Bootstrutter's guide in the Enchanted Lands. In all that time of relatively pure harvesting I only got 3 rares, a nymbus root, a Xegonite, an Ebony, and two tier 7 imbuing materials. That just doesn't seem like a good ratio of rares to harvests. I used overclocked harvesting tools, which helped with the time factor in getting around mobs in Bonemire. My little rat is only level 31 so I obviously didn't spend much time killing mobs in Bonemire I died about 20 times, but I did get basic supplies for my top tier crafters and a ton of collectibles, just not much in the way of rares. I don't see how anyone could possibly view this drop rate as a reasonable rate of return for my harvesting investment.