Silicate Loam Woes

I don't know about everyone else's server but on Everfrost, Silicate Loams are hitting 3-5 PP each on the broker. I have been harvesting a lot the past week and I have only collected 2 Loams for my Adept III spells and I need about 24 more to get every T8 spell and combat art to A3.
Either harvesting bots are responsible for the lack of rares on the market or the drop rate is too low. Either way something needs to be done.
How about adding those useless Incarnadine Clusters to the recipe list for Fighters and or Scouts Adept III's?

Thunndar316 wrote:

Mind listing the price of Fire Emeralds and Tynnonium for compairson? If they are both running in the 3-5p range, it isn't an issue.
Otherwise, I'd like to remind people of my nearly one year old ink proposal.

Thunndar316 wrote:

Wow! They've dropped to only 3-5pp already?

I get so tired of all the posts in this forum that boil down to "Wahhh! The rare I need is too expensive on the broker and I don't want to spend the time to harvest, give it to me with an easy button now please!"
The rare drop rate is affected by your skill vs. the needed skill for the level, as modified by things like the tinkered harvesting tools or the Earring of the Solstice. The higher your skill is vs. the needed skill to harvest the node, the better your chances of getting to roll on the bonus table for the node instead of the default table, and thus you have a higher chance for rares.
If you want rares, you need to either go out and harvest a lot for them, or else go out and kill a lot so you can afford to buy them.
Harvesting them is insanely easy. At level 80, the yeti caves above Teren's Grasp, as well as the lake just outside Danak Shipyards, are both very good places to harvest rocks. The yeti caves have one mob that may be aggro at 80 (the named that sometimes pops in there). The lake has lots of aggro but you can avoid the mobs if you pay attention.
If you want lots of money to buy your loams, go harvest in T7 and look for shinies. Sell all the harvests and the shinies, make lots of money, and buy your loams. Or else hunt a lot and sell everything.

my skills are around 450 for all harvesting, and i get about 1 silicate loam a day if i'm lucky. Tynno and Fire emeralds i've been known to get 3 each a day, mantrap is fairly easy to get as well and hidebound i can count on one hand how many of those i've gotten since RoK went live. Do i want easy mode? nope, but i'd like the node mechanics checked to make sure that they are indeed giving the proper ratio's.

i'd like to put my 2cp in here.
i have yet to see tynnonium. nor fire emerald. but the prices of fire emerald are under a plat. tynnonium is 2-3p. silicate is 2.5 when i sell them, ive seen them 4 times in the past month. 2 mahogany, and three mantrap. mantrap i cant give away, and i DID give away the incarnadine.

some rares seem more rare than others. gems are cheaper than any other spell rare, and thats whack. they should all even out at about the same price.

i like the idea of making an ink out of rares... any spell rare you can make an ink out of, and have your spell made. sages, alch and jeweler being the spell making classes can make said inks... you see where i'm going with it.

tho ldl is a bit cheaper than other servers...
4.8 silicates, 1 fire emerald, 2.9 tynnonium cluster are prices for spell rares on crushbone atm.
incarnadine 11g. mantrap root 54g, 2.5p hidebound, 93g mahogany lumber.
prices are screwy, and they need to do something to make incarnadine useful.

ink idea ftw.

Thunndar316 wrote:

here sig, i bolded the part you missed.
He HAS been harvesting.
its not a whaaa whaaa post like you said. yay!

Thunndar316 wrote:

Highlighted the issue. Ratios of harvest don't reflect ratios of use. One node is supplying 4 raws, and the ratio is not correct. This is why every other ore node raw, including incarnadine, is dirt cheap due to the massive harvesting to acquire loams for all the classes that require them for adepts... all fighters, all scouts.
This has been an ongoing issue every time there has been a level cap change.. made worse this time by the number of adept spells available in t8, plus the continuing cost and rarity of master spells.
It has very little to do with how "hard" people work to get them, and a lot to do with ratios being totally out of whack with usage and demand.

Given a 50/50 yield of ore/loam from nodes, the demand and use of them is fubared. Only what, half the classes require ore for armour. Of them, that's only about 7 pieces per tier. Even adding in the metal for weapons it doesn't really change the big picture, something I can feel keenly as a weaponsmith. Whereas half the classes require loam for Adepts, and need a darn sight more than 7 per tier.
I hold with a suggestion I made ages back. That bushes should have a chance to produce a rare loam. Not only would it increase harvesting of bushes, but produce the additional loams the market requires. As a bonus, loam, a claggy earthy thing, being pulled up off the roots of the bush being harvested, it makes characterful sense too. Could always add it to the harvested roots rare table too for the same reasons.
It's amazing and disappointing to me we see this situation ever tier.

... and, in addition, for such a long time now.

The trick with harvesting is, that you have to look for OTHER rares!
Looking for Tynnonium and Fire Emerald? Well here you go ~ Silicate Loam over and over...
At least this is what happens all the time when I don't need rare loam...
I was just harvesting ore and gems the other day, looking for spell rares for my little warlock,
found ~1 Tynnonium and about 4 Silicate Loam.... oh sweet sweet irony, when I was looking for silicate I was so desperate that I bought them from the broker for ~3 - 4p

Felshades wrote:

Actually, it is.
Not picking up a rare in a week is not a new development. It happens. He's a victim of RNG and just like everyone else has, is having a dry spell. One week? My record is 3 weeks without picking up a rare that I needed. Only to find myself bathing in them the following week.
Impatience + Forum Plea = Whaaa post

Meirril wrote:

Fire Emeralds - 50 Gold on average
Incarnadine Clusters 15-30 Gold

Sigrdrifa@Lucan DLere wrote:

It's not a whine or "wah" post
Just stating the obvious lack of Loams.
If you looked past your ego for two seconds and actually read my post you would see I stated that I do harvest for my rares. I have had dry spells for a day here and there but never for a week.

Linuky@Valor wrote:

I go to the Drachnid caves in Kylong and harvest every node I can find.

Spyderbite@Venekor wrote:

And you are doing nothing more than your usual statement of your opinion=fact, which is possibly more annoying than any WHAAA post I ever read.
Picking up one rare in a week is not problematic when looking at a couple weapons slots or a few armor slots. It becomes so when you add in the usual RNG woes to a badly skewed usage ratio and much higher demand.
It kills the price of anything made of Incarnadine and artificially keeps loam prices far too high. Im buying Incarnadine for 8g now on Nek. Incarnadine armor is priced below 20g, I've been buying it to break. Loam remains at 3p 50g.
This is a huge problem that repeats itself every time the cap is raised. Pre ROK Xegonite got to 5g per on Nek, while spongys stayed high value. It doesn't balance out until people start leveling THROUGH a tier, end game always does this, and this time it is worse.

Lasai wrote:

I dunno about your server, but I am moving a constant stream of Di'Zok Emblazoned armor at 1pp to 2pp per piece. If I do buy incarnadine at 10-20g each, that's a SIGNIFICANT profit.
T8 silicate loam drops in a 1:1 ratio with T8 incarnadine clusters. The RNG can be streaky over small samples. But people who SAY they have harvested "a lot" are reporting their PERCEPTION. That's always skewed by the fact that they wanted loam but weren't getting it. And what, exactly, is "a lot"? Hard to say.

I like to take the skewed perceptions out of the picture when I am considering harvesting in Norrath (and yes, even mine will be skewed by the forces of expectation and disappointment). I use a little Harvesting plug-in to the free utility Advanced Combat Tracker that parses out harvested items. Here's a typical harvesting run:



This run was done in and around the yeti caves above Teren's Grasp, looping down the mountain paths to the Dreg's Landing area then back up to the yeti caves, but most of the harvesting nodes would be the rocks in the caves.
Once I was able to start harvesting T8, I think it took me about a week of doing little beside harvesting to get all the loams I needed for my Adept 3s for the tier. I usually invest the intensive harvest time with a toon at the start of ANY tier, then harvest casually as I travel, hunt etc. thereafter.

Using incarnadine as an adept3-rare, in addition to armor/weapon/furniture rare is not a good solution, I think. It would put way too much demand on it, and make incarnadine (for not to mention ebon cluster, xegonite, feysteel...) too expensive for their other uses.
I mean, have you seen the prices on xegonite clusters and spongy loam lately? The xegonite is at least twice as expensive as the loam now, sometimes more. Same thing with feysteel/ductile, ebon cluster/fused loam and more or less all the others.
Come T9, this will also happen with incarnadine.

Sigrdrifa@Lucan DLere wrote:

What was the point of your post? To point out something we all know? BTW snipping out of context is just rude.
To repeat. The ratio of Silicates vs Incarnadines is EXACTLY the problem at end game. For every high value/high demand Silicone harvested, statistically, an incarnadine is also harvested. The USAGE of Loams vs Metals per character is hardly 1-1, so, as time goes by more and more unused and low demand metals, and the products they are made from, saturate the market.
Non imbued Incardadine level 72 armor is selling on Nek at 14 gold ea. I bought incarnadine yesterday at 8g. At times, Smoldering materials are higher value than the armor OR raw incarnadine.
I sell a ton of imbued weapons at 1p. That fact doesn't make the ratio correct, nor does the fact that you sell Faction armor. Incarnadine gear sells for far less as finished goods than do the RAW materials for adepts, and only because the supply of loams fails to meet the demand at this unrealistic 1.1 ratio.
The cheapest commodities on the market are by products of Silicone mining, Ferrite, common loam, Incarnadine (vs other rares). This illustrates the ratio problem. Go back to T7, where there is not a high demand for adept 3s by leveling chars, and you will see the prices have adjusted themselves where Xegonite is now much higher value vs Spongy, and common Adamantine holds better value than ferrite.
End game tier ratios need tweaked, period. This scenario plays out the same every time the cap raises.. and to honest, I made a healthy killing buying Xegonite at 5g just prior to RoK and holding it till the lack of loam mining at t7 drove the prices back to over a plat per.

OK I went harvesting for another 2.5 - 3 hours this morning before work and here are the results.
3 - Fire Emeralds
1 - Tynnonium Cluster
0 - Silicate Loams
0 - Incarnadine Clusters
Right now here is the lowest price on the broker for rares
Incarnadine Cluster - 12 GP
Fire Emerald - 82 GP
Tynnonium Cluster - 1P 40 GP
Silicate Loams - 4 PLAT
Now I have backed up my claim with some facts. How long should I expect to harvest for my 24 Silicates again? 1 Week playtime? 2 weeks?

Awaits the SOE apologist