OK; I am hearing this in literally every group I get in, so I am putting it forward here. There are just too few obols for the amount of essences / spirits that people are getting. I ran a group last night, and I swear, we got 3 Spirits and Essence and 3 Obols in the run. But conversion to gear requires 40 obols... /doh! I now have over 16 Spirits and 5 Essences stacked and racked and waiting for obols.... not to mention 50 for the port item. I would therefore suggest, either allow the Steward to trade Spirits for 5 - 10 obols or add 3 - 5 obols to the boss chests. Alternatively; allow the gear to be 2 Spirits, or 1 Spirit + 1 Essence and 10 Obol buys you a spirit.
Or they could reduce the spirit and essence drops to be more in line iwth the Obol which they have already increased the drop rate of by a tremendous amount.
You don't get it . Until they can make every group get an average drop rate the rate should not change. You know the normal 4 zone circuit? When the group i join doesn't get any obols i leave for no reason other then wanting obols, join another and they drop like candy. It's weird. My absolute highest obol drop rate ever? group with complete newbs and you have found the candyshop.
I have 11 Spirits and 60 Obol and 1 Essence... got 4 nice items for my Illusionist. You are running into RNG disparity, take a break from running zones. The RNG seed does have peaks and troughs. What I think you are asking for is a Quest for Obol/Spirit/Essence... oh wait isn't that ST Contested? I know that its a few hours but the trash drops Obol, the quest gives plat and Obol and some named drop spirits and the like too. It isn't hard to get them 7 Spirit and 70 Obol = fully Armored up Alt. That is not that much to ask. Ry'Gorr gear was 125-175 Shards a pop. Daily Double: 2 Shards Dominence: 7-12 Shards Named-Drop: 1 Shard 3-zone circut: 10-14 Shards Average zones ran for 1 piece of gear from the Faction Merchanct (Steward back in DoV): 10-14. I get at least 1 Spirit and 10 Obol in 14 zone runs, so really it is quite on par with what it always has been just using a different system. I know people who would KILL to have that many spirit and Essences remaining. There are some with 100+ Obol but no Spirits/Essence... it's a fact of the game; keep farming.
Once I got 10 and got a key to my raid char, he gets them in raids constantly. They hardly dro at all anywhere else. This is why raiders get such an 'easy' throw. Everything is weighted for them, and they get the most dev time.
I went in a ST contested witha group once. We got the first mob, 1-2 hit all dead, everyone left. I can take half of the advanced solo dreadcutter on at a time, but 1 ^^^ in ST contested 1 or 2 shots me. Insane.
The mobs in zones that are created for 6 players hit much harder that zones designed for zolo players? NO FREAKING WAY! That IS insane. Maybe you had a cruddy healer.
Once you stop being an ***, I hope you realise that ST contested is 90 mins of hard slog for maybe 7 obols. The dropped quests are rare as... GL winning one when 6 players all need. Yes there are the POI quests, which are laid out nicely to allow smooth runs, but it is still too low. I have tried on several occasions, full clear = 7 obols or 7 obols and 1 spirit I really do not see a problem with spirit --> obol or vice versa conversion... hell; they added all the distillation / dilution recipes to adorning to release the same **** block....
The problem in ST contested is the linked mobs / closely placed mobs, they all alphastrike with their best ability, so you often get his with like 90K of ticks after 2 secs... or another is mobs hitting for 225% of max power in under a second so the healer is dead in the water.. it is not a fun zone.....
That is not even a reasonable comparison. As for ST contested some caution has to exercised in pulling and having a well balanced group is hlpful, not a MUST but helpful.
14 Obols, and only 1 spirit drop. Spirit drops from what I understand only drop from Eldon Jungle or Obol Plains end bosses, for heroic and raid zones only. Obols are the hard thing to get.
This is why they should've have left spirts and what not as NBG lol.. i have 22 spirts myself.. 4 alts in drinal gear..and still have around 60 obals left.. all thanks to the... it drops for everyone theme now lol.. for those of you not getting obals.. run more zones i guess.. I've had more luck in ST contested than in raids TBH..
My run a couple days ago: 4 dungeons, 8 obol, zero anything else. My run tonight: 3 dungeons, 3 obol, 2 spirits. One guildie's total from today: ??? dungeons, 24 obol, 6 spirits, 2 essences. ...so I still think obol are dropping at about 3x the rate of spirits and essences, so the obol drop rate in group zones should be tripled. At least. (You can spend obol without the other stuff, but can't spend the other stuff without obol...) After farming a ton of obol in the overland/solo areas the past few days, I'm back to being at a 47-obol deficit. This is NOT FUN. If it's an intentional timesink, it's easily the stupidest idea in the expansion. You're driving your players to boredom and quitting for other games.
Not being an ***, simply pointing out that they added a quest for such a thing; perhaps it was you who took offense at my sarcastic way of phrasing. I never said it was well done or worthwhile; however I have no issue with the current system perhaps I am lucky. There has always been this problem with random drop rates, some players are blessed with drops others are screwed. The issue is ST contested has too low a rate compared to the slog of difficulty that it is. I don't know many who did Kael for the White Shards though they were there and dropped more often. Increase the quest-dropers in ST contested then. Obol already are dropping decently fast in any group I seem to run I get 2-3. Grinding bosses in overland zones is not supposed to be the fastest way to get them. Edit: To those complaining it's too much of a timesink... would you rather have all your gear now and be complaining that you have nothing to do? This is going to sound like an asinine remark but really... MMO's are timesinks by definition at least by many conceptions. They are meant to be an ever evolving game-world in which you group with others (massively multiplayer) to accomplish tasks you could not do alone. If you complete things to fast your interest may waver and then you (the consumer) may find a new game.
Not sure about other servers, but on Freeport, ST Contested is overflowing with bot groups most the time...
Are you ignoring the whole problem just to make your "remark," since you seem to have set up a nice straw man? (You rail against the overall drop rate in a thread about relative drop rate?) People who are trying to do "massively multiplayer" tasks are getting this new mixed currency at a rate that REQUIRES them to go do solo stuff instead... in many cases (like mine), three to five TIMES as much time spent in solo areas. Just to use the (partial) rewards they get in "group" content. I'm quite sure THAT'S going to cause consumers to find a new game faster than, y'know, actually giving them complete group-level rewards for running group content. I mean, your original comment here says you have 12 spirits+essences, and 60 obol. You need 60 more obol without a spirit drop to balance that out! (Assuming you don't want any of the obol-only items, then you need more... ) I see very few people who say they get way more obol relative to spirits in the group dungeons... usually small-sample-size ones who only have 1 or 2 spirits total. Anyone with a reasonable sample (like yours) is way behind on Obol.
Then consumers need to find a new game.. this game has become push button easy already.. first stat consoladation, since people couldn't figure out how to balance their own stuff..then crits..then crit mit.. then loss of crit mit from game..then marks/void shards/adorns/runes that gave you okay gear (legendary stuff).. then SS came along and you could get fabled gear from simply running UD and getting dozy head.. not to mention every 90 mins lol..then of course the mythicals.. and now obols that gets pretty solid fabled gear and you want to be able to put it on right away and not have to do anything for it lol...basically you're saying you want to be able to run 3-4 dungeons a day and have one toon done in a week..then what lol..oh yea not to mention.. you get a toon to 90 you can make it 280 right away lol.. next expac for 2000 SC you can buy a lvl 95/300 toon (exaggeration, don't get excited).. you just need to get 20 aas lol.. how many people will complain about having to get 20 aas lol.. point is.. there truely is nothing wrong with the drop rate.. I only have 3 alts and those all have drinal gear..I know people with 9 plus alts that have most the gear.. its just not that hard lol
