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**illovich** · 03-09-2004, 06:09 PM

I don't have data like yours as I've only spent about 10-12 hours in Natimbi. I've looted on pale nihilite, one dark matter and one tea leaves so far. My guess would be I've killed about 40-70 mobs, mostly turepta and the crayfish guys.

I've mentioned previously that I think some of the drops are way too rare, especially when other zones of this risk level are taken into consideration. Others have expressed concerns about risk/reward , and how difficult getting some of these drops is, for such a mediocre reward.

Ex. 1: If we take your 34/1500 drop rate of dark matter as a correct drop rate (let's call it an even 2 drops per 100 kills), then if I understand correctly, for every 100 kills in Natimbi, a gnome tinkerer could create an average of four class 5 or class 6 batteries (four batteries total).

However, in the same amount of time in the Plane of Innovation, anybody could loot probably 10 each class 5 and 6 batteries, depending on the RNG. No tinkerer required, although they'd probably want the batteries more than anyone else.

Ex. 2: Again, let's assume the drop rate listed above of 29 tea leaves dropping in 1500 kills is a normal drop rate. (1 in 52 kills, roughly). That means that in order to produce 1 stack of Taelosian Black Ginseng Tea I need to kill 200 mobs in Natimbi. As a 60 druid without epic, my estimate is that would take me roughly 15-20 hours or so, assuming I could kill above 10 an hour and not die as much (the not dying thing is of course, a ridiculous assumption, as it's a very dangerous zone).

Alternatively, I can forage Tea Leaves in EK while I farm spider silk or giant gold and make Qeynos Afternoon Tea (a superior drink, imho) at almost no risk to myself. I know because I've done it.. after spending 20-40 hours in EK farming silk, I have 10 stacks of QAT on a mule and around 35 tea leaves left in the bank.

Now clearly there are different benefits to Natimbi, PoI and EK.. one hopes XP would be better than PoI (but is it?), and of course no XP is to be had at 60 in EK. But still... I have been wondering if the tradeskill drops shouldn't be raised in Natimbi, at least for the stuff that isn't so great (tea leaves, dark matter, etc.). Pale Nihilite seems like it might actually be valuable enough to warrant its rarity.

Note: Even though I assumed your numbers were good above, I actually have had a very different experience. Adding up how many drops you've had (195) and using that number to divide 1500 I came to the conclusion that you're getting a tradeskill drop one out of every seven kills, which seems way lower than my experience (one in fifteen to twenty-five).

**Brickhaus** · 03-09-2004, 09:47 PM

Well the one thing I did not want to do, was to turn this thread into a rant about the actual drop rate since you point out there are other threads on this subject. I don't think you are ranting btw, as your concerns are legitimate, but I can see it quickly slipping into rant territory.

My primary fear is that the refining is broken (as in you do not get better) and all the work I have put into learning the refining is for nothing. I have of course nothing to base this on, so I'm hoping my fellow tradeskillers will either dispell my fear or give more data for SoE that something might be wrong. Obviously, the differing return rate for the same recipe is different code for SoE and there is always a small, but real, chance that it is not working in game as intended.

Right now, by refining on my own, I've lost 22 Pale Nilihite and 16 Bars of Aligned Steel over just turning in to the person. If I were to magically hit the 3 returns per refine right now, I would still need to gather 22 more Raw Pale Nilihite and 16 Aligned Ores just to break even. And unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to get 3 per refine from here on out...

So how's your data for the 3 items you've gotten so far?

SIDE NOTE:
As far as my drop rate, the number is too high. So I've must have killed around 1800-1900 mobs. In the later stages of my play there so far, I was doing a cycle of 19 mobs (20 minute or so spawn rate). And for over 15 hours of play, averaging 2 drops per cycle so I'm thinking the drop rate should be around 1 out of every 10 kills.

Natimbi is the number one justification for soloing druids to get Dire Charm. I had been targetting DC from the beginning and when i got to 59, I shifted xp to AA and got it. Before GoD, DC was nice in WW and with limited use in Chardok. But not much more than that. After spending 62 to 64 in Natimbi, DC is really viable again.

At the end of my current runs through Natimbi, I was DCing a hynid and giving it 2 Blades of Walthan, Girdle of Magikot and Muzzle of Mardu (there may be some spelling errors there). Buffing the pet with Po9, Replishment, Shield of Bracken and Savage Spirit, Mr. Hynid would tear through a cycle of 4 turpelas, 4 reef crustaceans, 5 hynid, 4 stonemites, 1 mast and 1 noc. And still waiting a minute at the end for repops to start. The best thing about this was KEI was not needed (although my FT is now 5, and I am using Mask of Hunter and Po9 and using the Phylactery clicky). A little monotonous, sure, but definitely more exciting that otter/wyvern, orc miner or EK spider farming.

Brickhaus

**Amaruk** · 03-10-2004, 12:21 AM

Not sure how many I've refined since I was buying them off merchants and vendors(when below 100pp each) and refining them as I went. My progress is going to be slower now since the fools have listed all the Nihilite and Aligned ore at 4kpp and up EACH. In any case I have watched the number I get back generally go up as I do more and more. Using the stone (fletching) and Aligned ore I have around 3 stacks or so of the refined material and I get runs of up to 4 in a row where I get 2 back from the refine. This leads me to think that my numbers are slowly increasing but its going to take a while at 3 per to get back to where i would have been if i had just handed them in. I'm just going to hand in the Teir 2 stuff I get from now on, I don't think I'll ever see enough to get good at refining that stuff.

**draethor** · 03-10-2004, 03:51 AM

Brickhaus,

I have done around the same number of combines you have, and while I neglected to keep such exact numbers, I have the same result:

- Haven't ever made 3 yet
- Even after combining multiple stacks of the level 1 tradeskill drops, I produce about the same number (always 1 or 2, about 50% of the time each).

Furthermore I am concerned about the return rate on the level 2 (kod'taz) stuff. Although my sample size is very low (7 raw infused dark matters, around 3 of the other tradeskill items), I have only made 2 of one item TWICE. So I'm around 2/25 for making the level 2 stuff. I fail to see why anyone would experience this brutal rate instead of simply turning the items into a person in abysmal, at the rate of 1 tradeskill drop per hour soloing in kt, it would take me many years (perhaps decades) to accrue enough components to refine GoD stuff well, and to make up the difference of losing components by not simply trading it in in abysmal.

Sigh.

Draethor Ispowerful
Lanys

**Sylphan** · 03-10-2004, 12:18 PM

I relearned the refining recipes after the patch today. I wonder if the record of how many pieces we've refined was deleted as well as the recipes.

**Amaruk** · 03-10-2004, 02:58 PM

I asked specifically about that in the thread the developers were reading, Sylphan, and they stated it was on a whole seperate system so our refined numbers were safe.

I was glad to hear I had not lost the combines I had done. I suppose the fact that you can still refine the stuff without redoing the quest backs up the developers claim.

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Refining GoD Drops - In Game Data

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