Silicate Loam Woes

Bratface wrote:

I was talking about gear which is what your post was about, I bolded the points since apparently they got missed.

psistorm wrote:

No they shouldn't. Who ever said they should? If an inordinate number of people happen to be outfitting their mage characters in T4 in a given week, should the game adjust by upping the drop rate of T4 mage spell rares? No, it absolutely should not. All rares have an equal chance to drop. Every player has an equal chance to outfit their character. The *player market* determines pricing. The *player market* provides equal chance to profit from inequalities in price between any given commodity.

the problem is that a lot of people think they NEED to be all adept 3 and in MC at lower levels. It's nice, but not needed. If you have patience you can be all decked out without costing a lot. If you are in a hurry and want it NOW it will cost more.
The arguement about silicate loams is the same arguement we heard in Teir 7 with spongy loams. Even with the percieved imbalance everyone ended up with adept 3's or masters. All my guys get adept 3's because thats what I WANT them to have and I have the patience to harvest the rares required. It does take a long time, but to me its worth it. My little Monk could have been 80 by now if I didn't take the time to get all his rare pelts for gear upgrades. He levels slower but he kicks butt because I took the time to get better stuff. My wizard on the other hand, he burned down mobs in KoS with gear from Timorous Deep. His first MC robe came at level 72 and the money made on the journey to teir 8 bought enough rares for all his teir 8 spells.
With 3 crafters at 80 and a couple more sub 50 I know the joys of harvesting and the pain of the RNG. If I don't get a rare within the first 30 minutes I stop harvesting and find something else to do. Sometimes it's a matter of "one more rare and I'm done" only to get one on the next node.. so I extend it to just one more. lol Saturday I went to TS to try for some palladium for my baby Illusionist. I was hoping to get one, maybe two. In 2 hours I had 9 of them. Lucky RNG day for me. It may be a while before I find another and I'm aware of that.
Even with the excessive price of T8 loams you can earn enough to buy them without going broke. You don't even have to harvest rares to make that plat. Teir 6 materials sell very high. It takes no time at all to get a stack of teir 6 roots and they sell almost as fast. Teir 5 rares are fairly high as well, harvest those to sell. Another option if you are lucky enough is to trade rares with guildies. I will gladly give my rare loams to the fighters in my guild.

Ohiv wrote:

Lets sum up the counter argument. In the top tier, one rare material services the spells of 12 classes while 2 other rare materials service the spells of 6 classes and jewelery for all 24. The material used for the 12 classe's spells costs at least twice as much as the other two materials.
When the tier shifts, the top tier still remains twice as expensive as the other two. Is it fair that the system encourages what can only be said is an unfair burden on half the classes which essentially favors two archatypes over the other two? I believe the answer for the vast majority of adventurers is no. The system needs to be examined and this inadequacy addressed. Things are not fine as it is.
I'm for re-introducing inks. If you want to throw back to using just the jewelery rares and remove loams from the game I'm fine with that. If you want to make loam the only spell rare I'm fine with that. If you want to make a rare fish that produces the only spell rare I'm fine with that. I'm looking for a fair system where every one of the 24 classes in game is treated in possibly not a completely ballanced method, but at least in an equitable system instead of having a 2 to 1 inballance for half of the classes.
This imballance didn't occure prior to loams being introduced. Half of the classes in game screamed when loam was introduced because mages and priests were all on the same rare. The fix was to shift scout and fighters to loam and split mages and priests. All that did was shift the problem. Honestly, we were better off back before loam. Lets stop shifting the problem and just deal with it.

Kigneer wrote:

Rubbish. It is an option.
The only MC armour my main had before T5 was a blackened iron chest piece. T5 was the first time I was able to afford a complete set of handcrafted on reaching a new tier. I was lucky for T6 - I found 2 cobalt on my first vist from 4 nodes. It made surviving a lot easier, but treasured and handcrafted are good enough for soloing and careful grouping. Things have changed a lot, but the old zones have not got harder.

Kigneer wrote:

I have to disagree with Kigneer here.
Back when EQ2 first started mobs were much harder then they are now for the first 5 tiers (all we had was the first 5). ^^^ were in solo areas and people died often. Rares were even harder to get then they are now and even if you had the rares, which was very doubtful, the odds of finding a tradeskiller at the level and class you needed was hard and sometimes close to impossible since tradeskilling was much more different then it is now.
Back then we wore treasured and if we got lucky we might be able to get some handcrafted armor. Adept 3's were almost as rare as masters and adept 1's were not common.
We began to play our characters the best way they could be played through trial and error. We learned to play them very well. One thing that helped to motivate a group to play well was the fact that the cost of death was very high. Each toon had 8 shards that made up the majority of your soul, for each death you lost a shard and had to go back to the place you died to retrieve it or wait 7 days for it to replinish back to you. Debt for death was very high, and if you died too many times you may have to earn enough xp for 10 levels just to go up one or even get back to where you started before you started dieing. This motivated almost every player to learn their class and learn it well.
Since then SOE has made the treasured items better, they have nerfed most of the mobs from the "solo" areas to be solo, and have made it easier to get rares. They have made it to where death has very little consiquences and hince little incentive to learn your class as well as one can. When in a group now how many people in the group know their class well? How many are paying attention in the fight? How many soloers try to take on mobs that are yellow or orange and expect them to be as easy as a blue, or for some they may even expect them to be as easy as a green solo mob?
many people in my guild now have taken multiple toons and played them thru t7 with treasured gear and adept 1's. They wait to spend their time and money on rares at t8. Others might get MC gear here and there and then skip one or 2 tiers to get it replaced.
Does MC gear help, yea it does. Do Adept 3's help, of course they do, and depending on your class they can help a lot. Do you need MC gear and Adept 3's? Nope. They are nice to have, they make the game to where there is more room for error. But if you live off of MC gear from the get go often a player may never truly learn to play their class to it's full potential because they have so much room for error now that they think they NEED it to survive when they see how "hard" it is without it.
My 2cp


edit: spelling

bks6721 wrote:

Yeah, my hubby is one of those people. I just don't see it. If you're killing stuff, getting XP and levels, and not dying while you do it, why exactly do you need the best of everything at 30? /shrug

Snowdonia@Runnyeye wrote:

I don't understand it either. But, when anyone points out how it's not needed, they're villified.

Put my vote in for rares not being rare enough. This definitely includes silicate loam. I like harvesting, but only do it on a casual basis now. I've got 17 silicate loams in the bank which I will use as I level up my bruiser (currently 72). My favorite spot for harvesting ore is Di'Zok caves. I kill non-grey mobs and harvest while regening power.
Yup, the RNG is streaky. About a month ago I harvested 5 silicate loams in about 3 hours over two days (kinda hard to say how much was actual harvesting, because I was killing mobs). The only other rare I got in that time was 1 fire emerald.
I used to sell rares, but now I hoard them. I got burned when the tradeskill epic came out and the price of T5 rares went through the roof. I needed rares for 9 epic tradeskillers. I regretted selling dozens of each kind. That was the last time I harvested specifically for rares.
And yeah... I don't have sympathy for people wanting an easy button.

bks6721 wrote:

The only place that Adept 3 or higher is mandatory is the PvP servers. Like you said, its nice to have them on the PvE servers, but its not necessary if one is just hacking at mobs.
Pay for the loams or harvest the loams. There's a choice available. If it were one or the other.. then I might see it as an issue. For example, if you were an adventurer and were not permitted to harvest then this might pose a problem. If its an inconvenience to harvest.. well.. the priorities need to be put in order.

Wow did this get off topic and degenerate into quite the mire it always does.
I think a couple of posts up it was pointed out that 12 classes rely on one type of rare (silicate loam) while the 12 remaining classes split between rare soft metal and rare gem.
That is the base of the issue. To make it equitable for all, simply do away with any particular type of rare entirely. Make it smoldering material or such that drops off any of the nodes. Then all have a truely equal chance at getting them. I seriously don't see how understanding that the rarity of loams can not be understood. My guess is that all those other 12 classes are the ones that are throwing up such a counter argument that all is well in the world because hey I can mine one silicate loam and make enough coin to buy 3 of my spell rares.
Next time you are on the broker do a search for tier 8 rares, bet you find multiples of fire emeralds and tynonium that far outpace how many silicates are on the broker. Now do a search of how many peeps are online. Bet the balance is far more into the priests and mages then it is tanks and scouts. At least the last 4 times i did this it was.
Yet supply and demand states that loams are worth 3x's as much as the far more common emeralds and tyno...
No one is asking for the easy button, they are asking for the rares to be split evenly between classes. Why is it that incardinate cant be used as the tank rare?
It needs to be looked into and fixed, not looked into and stated that all is well the balance is there and everything is wonderfull. Go harvest 20 fire emeralds sell them for 80gp per and by 6 silicate loams, rinse and repeat... Oh and good luck selling all those fire emeralds as there are plenty on the broker lol...
Yeah its all good.

Gnevil wrote:

140 posts into the billionth thread on this subject, and you're still throwing out the same drivel that's been spewed ad naseum. All rares have an equal chance of being harvested. So please explain to me how we don't *already* "all have a truely [sic] equal chance at getting them"...

sliderhouserules wrote:

Your ignoring the use issue. The entire crux of the argument is use and demand. Nobody is arguing that there is less silicate loam than fire emeralds or tynnonium clusters. Silicate loams are in twice as much demand as other spell materials due to twice as many classes depending on it.
Hell, take and move 4 of the fighter classes to the other 2 spell rares and you have a "fix". Move crusaders to gems. Move monks to the soft metal. Bingo, 8 classes depending on each spell rare. Next expansion the rare market should adjust to make all of these aproximately equal in cost. Sure alchemists will hate having to send clients back to get the "right" rare but after everybody figures the change out it won't be awful.
Actually, it would be awful for alchemists but its a semi-decent fix that only changes the spell recipes for 4 classes. Re-introducing an ink recipe would actually be less work for Domino. I think?

Meirril wrote:

You're also ignoring the use issue. As it has already been stated 300 times before, rare loam is only used for adept 3's and nothing else. Tynnonium and fire emerald already have plenty of other uses, so moving more over to those rares will probably end up taxing them too much. As soon as the level cap is raised again, nobody is going to care about silicate loam anymore and it will quickly become the cheapest T8 rare on the broker by far, due to the simple fact that it's only used for adept 3's and nothing else.
Personally, I wish they could just make these durn loams drop in chests from heroic mobs. That would at least bring more of them into the market and get the prices down, without affecting other TS-classes in a negative way.

sliderhouserules wrote:

QFE!

Whether more classes use it or not, is not the question like others have stated.
How many many people who need them are actually harvesting to get them?
I know on befallen I will go to Venrils Crown and kills skeletons and harvest for loam for one of my wifes alt. I am normally the only person harvesting and their is easily room for 2 or 3 people to harvest while they continously kill the skeletons.
Their are also places to harvest in kp, fens, and kj with nothing but easily killable solo mobs without a lot of people camping the nodes.
Now if there were 2 people fighting over every 3 available nodes, then I would say their was a definite shortage. Right now it is a matter of opionion and if that was the case they could up the number of nodes available. What it seems like is that people want to buy their rares cheap but dont want to go harvest for them.
If they harvest for them, all it takes is time and they can get vender trash or even rare trash masters to also help pay for them. Its a matter of choice. lol.
If they really wanted another rare to use, then use incarnadine. Their are lots of it around, lol.
For another post where they suggested shifting some of the fighters to gems and soft metals, yes it would be a pain, more so for the classes trying to get then for us alchy's probably.

Oakum wrote:

QFT

Amphibia wrote:

That is just an indication that people don't strive for the "best" spells until they don't expect to outgrow them soon. Also when t9 is introduced incaradine clusters will start to grow in price until they reach the same level as the rest of the t5+ hard metals. Why? Because there won't be a huge glut of harvesters looking for the loam but there will still be the same level of demand for armor.
Supply and demand. People want 1 rare from any metal node. It doesn't matter which one. They will harvest both kinds of mining nodes because they share a respawn table/area. Ergo, therefore you will get the same number of all 4 kinds of rares. How many get harvested is dependent greatly on demand. As it slips from the top tier supply decreases as the majority of harvesters go on to a higher tier. Supply also goes up a little due to higher skill meaning a larger percentage of rares per harvest. As the market for 1 tier rises to a certain threshold, more harvesters will move to that tier to take advantage of "easy" profits. Generally the price of t5-t7 rares runs around 1p on AB due to harvester looking for a quick plat responding to market demands.
So yeah, I actually have a fairly good idea of what is going on. That's why I framed the arguments in the top tier. I didn't bother saying t8 because this will change eventually, the problem will keep occuring until real changes are made.
If your interested in lowering the prices of jewelery rare materials in t2-t7, then try making ink. Not only would it even out the cost of adept 3 spells in t8, it would mean people looking to make adept 3 spells in lower tiers could use the cheapest material available. So loam would raise in price, and the other two materials would come down to a little above the loam price. Inks work for everybody involved. Inks are where we started off. When inks were removed everything went to hell and we have the whole stinking mess we have now. Bring back inks. Spread the recipes for inks to all the scholars. Heck, make it a general recipe that everybody gets. Horray ink.

Meirril wrote:

I like the idea of making ink again but only alchemist should make them. It would replace one of the four recipies lost per tier when MC cure potions were removed.

Oakum wrote:

Are you suggesting that inks be used as an alternative to the current rares or replace them in the recipes? I would not like to be dependent on an alchemist in order for my sage to make spells.

Thanks, Oakum, for the explanation. I was trying to reply to you and ended up editing my previous post. Just as well I guess.

Although I'm not opposed to the idea, I wouldn't want to see itimplemented at the expense of any other item on the Wish List. I don't think it is necessary and it will benefit only a portion of the players, alchemists and those who don't want to harvest. I actually like the current situation with harvesting. It makes it more interesting to hope for a silicate when you hear that lovely ding ding ding. I'm never really disappointed with getting a fire emerald or

tynnonium

though. I just keep on harvesting until I have enough of them to sell for the cost of the silicate I need. And that I can always do.

Everytime I see this subject being active I think it subject line actually says Silicate Ward instead of Woes. I guess Wars would be more appropriate.