Drop rates for aug items

[TestTrader]

Follow on...

Let's follow the history of my 2 discordant scorniae after 150+ hours of grinding....

Today the 2 discordant scorniae were attempted to be turned into black gold inlays. The attempt was performed by a smith with 249 skill, trophy and smithing mastery 3. Not that it matter but the smith's wisdom was 380 at the time. I know all this for fact because the smith is my character. The first attempt succeed, the second attempt failed....

Will any of the discordant scorniae live to make it too an augment?? stay tuned!

[papyscott]

The best place I have seen for slugwurm drops is in Dranik Scar by the NC zone line. Killing the GoD model mobs there have a reasonable chance for dropping slugwurms. I'm not positive, but it may only drop from the higher level ones (light-blue to 69). I would put the drop rate here at about 1 in 200. I have seen 5 in the time I have been killing there.

I am pretty sure the drop is level dependent. I have been doing a lot of slaughtering of GoD mobs in dranik scar for loyalist faction. Higher level mobs by NC zone have decent chance of dropping slugwurms. Lower level mobs by Bloodfields zone I believe have zero chance.

Papy

[Drukin]

I'm sure I'm in the minority, and I'm sure I will generate lots of hate for this...



Please, PLEASE leave it AS-IS. Yes, these things - slugworms, discordant scoriae, etc. are all ultra rare (I myself have never seen either of those drop, though I've been trying to get them to create augs for myself). The reason I would like to see them left as-is is because I would like these things to still have value in 1-3 years.

It seems that content is consumed so fast in the game these days, everyone wanting faster / easier / better (just a general comment, not in relation to the slugworm, discordant scoriae drops). To me, if I have to wait 2 years to make 3 or 4 augs, that's fine. I'll just keep plugging away at it, happy to be playing a great game for as long as I have.

Like I said though, I fear I'm in the drastic minority on this issue...

[Baldary]

Let's follow the history of my 2 discordant scorniae after 150+ hours of grinding....

Today the 2 discordant scorniae were attempted to be turned into black gold inlays. The attempt was performed by a smith with 249 skill, trophy and smithing mastery 3. Not that it matter but the smith's wisdom was 380 at the time. I know all this for fact because the smith is my character. The first attempt succeed, the second attempt failed....

Will any of the discordant scorniae live to make it too an augment?? stay tuned!

Last night I attempted 6 combines of Scoriae for Black Gold Inlays. This was done at 250 skill, trophy, Smithing Mastery 3 and Salvage 3. The first two combines were successful. Then I failed FOUR in a row. The only thing I salvaged was one empty vial.

The good news was that my Shaman friend (who has 200 skill, trophy, Alchemy Mastery 3 and Salvage 3) did succeed on two out of two tries for etching. He failed the first inlay, but did salvage it. Then he was successful with the second attempt as well as the inlay on the second augment.

It just sickens me that I failed those four inlay combines. I was prepared for a couple of failures, but not four in a row.

Baldary

[Moraganth]

However, the high prices indicate two things, not just one.

They do indeed indicate that the items are rare.
They also indicate that the items are considered valuable.

Actually, it indicates three things... the third being that the demand is exceptionally high. While they are rare, and valuable, they're also items which are needed (or can be used by) all of the higher level people. Even at current drop rates, in time, availability of components will be greater because the significant amount of them being consumed by the people/guilds aquiring them as drops will reduce. They're new.. hence everyone wants them right this second.

In 150 hours of fighting in OOW zones, my group, that consists of the same members every night, has received the following:

(3) Slugworms
(5) Trean Flies
(2) Discordant Scorniae
(3) Dust of Discord

We kill roughly 60-80 npcs per hour, so that is roughly 9000-12000 oow npcs.

Further, this means that, from my data:

Slugworms are a 1 in 3000-4000 drop
Trean Flies are a 1 in 1800-2400 drop
Discordant Scorniae are a 1 in 4500-6000 drop
Dust of Discord are a 1 in 3000-4000 drop

What you're also saying is you're getting 1 aug component drop in 700-900 mobs. When it's broken down to specific ones, yeh the numbers are much bigger... but i'm going to guess that these components are on zonewide drop tables, not individual mob/mob-type drop tables.

[Baldary]

Actually, it indicates three things... the third being that the demand is exceptionally high. While they are rare, and valuable, they're also items which are needed (or can be used by) all of the higher level people. Even at current drop rates, in time, availability of components will be greater because the significant amount of them being consumed by the people/guilds aquiring them as drops will reduce. They're new.. hence everyone wants them right this second.

Really, it is more like a formula:

Rare Item + High Demand = Valuable


Sure, eveyone wants these thing now, but very, very few are getting them. Take a look at the info that TestTrader provided. While this is only his experience and drop rates may vary, it is indicative of the situation.

He has had two Scoriae drop in 150 hours of fighting in Omens. One was lost in the combine for the Inlay. For the sake of argument, let's say that they were able to get a completed, high end augment with the last inlay. I am going to guess that a person's average fighting time, per session, is 4 hours. That means that his group has spent 37.5 days fighting to secure one augment.

Now, to get all member's of the group an augment, you would have to multiply the days spent fighting by 6. This works out to 225 days of playing each and every day. So it will take 8 months to get each person in the group one augment.

By the time each person in the group has one augment, there will probably be another two expansions and the augments will become trivial and nobody will care.

[Jeddia]

My figures would reflect most of the data above. I've almost exclusively hunted from 66-70 in the Dranik Scar and RCoD expiditions. I've seen numerous flowstones, 2 gemstones (Titanite and Celestine), 3 scoraie, zero slugworms (do these even drop in expiditions??), and 2 Dust of Discord.

I've been saying for weeks that either the drop rate of some of these needs to be re-evaluated *or* the combine difficulty needs to be re-evaluated.

I've noticed that Trean Flies are way more common than Slugworms - and the gemstone augs are way less common than the flowstone augs. So the bazaar show and excess of Flies and Flowstones, and a severe shortage of Slugworms and Gemstones.

I've had a rogue with max poison skill and full mastery do my combines, and she has failed 5 out of 6. When she did succeed , she also succeeded in adding the inlay. Basically, between buying and re-buying ingredients and the amount of time it took me to farm what I *could* find while farming, I lost 3 Celestines - 2 of which were Radiant Cut - about 250kpp and about 100 hours of time. Considering the 250kpp I spent, if I hadn't spent it, I would've needed roughly another 100 hours of playtime to farm the stuff...just a guess. That's a *lot* of time spent and/or money lost on such a difficult combine.

I've watched people fail their combines and simply /q out and not return for weeks lol. The level of frustration surrounding these things is very noticeable. I'm very decadent with my platinum, as I'm a necro and it's easy for me to generate income. But melee's and some of the less-soloable classes are surely going out of their minds with this.

And not to mention, as a by-product of this...those who are lucky are getting ridiculously rich on this stuff. I know people on Quellious who are likely making a million plat in a given night selling stuff that is destined to poof in a failed combine - particularly Radiant cut gemstones, scoraie/inlays, and slugworms. I've sold 3 BG inlays in the past 2 weeks from scoraie that i found for sale. All 3 have moved for 180k+ in under 2 hours. While I don't mind the piles of coin in my purse...I can see where this is creating grief.

Anyway, enough of my babbling.

P.S. Yay for me, I hit 1750 Club on Friday w00t.

[Aryse Andenter]

There's another aspect of the rarity that worries me, especially since I play on a server with a low population. The novelty of the new zones, and the demand for other items in them, is going to slow. Once all of the 'hard core' players have the spells they need, for example, many of them will return to their favourite old zones instead of continuing to xp and farm in OoW. So if the supply of these items is rare now, there is a distinct possibility for us that it is going to get worse, not better, as the rush of people out to check out the new areas drops.

[Aeryl]

By the time each person in the group has one augment, there will probably be another two expansions and the augments will become trivial and nobody will care.

Not only that, but you can only stick the stones with good effects in one slot. Unfortunately for me or any other tank or anyone else who likes AC, they're all in armor slots used by the LDoN AC augs. If they're going to stay this rare, make them lore and let us use them in different armor slots like any other dropped aug.

[Eatbugs]

*shrug*

Prices on these components (I have yet to see anything but a couple of boneflow stones drop) are so ludicrous on my server I won't be trying to make any augments. I'm not committing 300k to a series of combines that has such a low chance of success. Presumably as other people come to the same decision (and thus stop paying the present bazaar prices) the prices will drop.

[Kaaba]

I've spent a lot of time in Dranik's Hollows instances (enough to get around 15 aas on my druid bot), and some time in other OOW zones and I have tons of the stat augs, they seem downright common, I've looted at least 2-3 of each type. I've never looted one of the -ite augs so I'm under the assumption that either they don't drop where I am fighting or are just super rare. In that time I've looted 1 slugworm, 4 dusts of discord and 4 trean flies. Zero discordant scoriae.

[TestTrader]

I just wanted to follow up by letting folks know I never tried making my augment. I got in the WoW final stress a week ago and honestly it's been far too much fun for me to even care about logging into EQ. If I did try this combine and failed it would probably be the last straw of my waning interest in subjecting myself to this painful psychological experience we call a game.

Best of luck and I hope the situation improves.

[muana]

drops for augment components

I think for the most part certain parts are pretty easy to get (trean flies and dust of discord) they seem to be a lot more common drops as I have seen a decent amount in the bazaar and seen several drop. I have seen them mostly drop in Dranik Hollow Expeditions. I have never seen a slugworm drop or a gemstone augment. I have seen one Scoriae drop in a sewers expedition.

From what friends have gotten though...I know certain things are about right. I do think they should switch the slugworm and trean fly drop rate though do to the fact that there are a ton more flowstone augments that drop. In order of people to use the flowstones, they need to have slugworms so the drop rates should be comparable.

If these two were switched I believe you would see almost no augments that aren't tried, since people will want to try to use their augments, I do not think it should be the intention of SoE to make it so there are 50,000 flowstone augmetns in the bazaar and 1 slugworm, I believe they should be used. Also the same goes with trean flies 10,000 of them to 2 gemstone augments doesn't make since.

Dust of Discord and Discorant Scoriae drop rates are fine though, because they need to be rare to make the augments more useful.

This is what I believe is the honest truth to this and I welcome your advice on it Absor, I believe my logic is correct if you were to check how many of each item has actually dropped.

Muana - Feolina

Tunare Server

[Elfdruidess]

I thought the logic behind the drop rate ratio is:

1) Flowstones are common because SOE don't mind you wearing them "raw", i.e just wearing a stat aug with no effect on it is fine. The high trivial for Radiant plus limiting JCM3 to enchanter are already safeguards against +12 stat augs being too common.

2) Slugworms are rare to safeguard against effect augs entering the game too fast. Even Cleave1 or ManaPrev3 should not be that common in SOE's eye.

3) Gems are rare due to its powerful stats.

4) Trean Flies are common because once you can actually obtain a Gem, you should be automatically given a "freebie" aug combine.

5) Dust of Discord and Discordant Scoriae are the final safeguards against powerful augs entering the game too quickly. So the drop rate of these is guarded very carefully.

So two rules. One, SOE view the limited rate at which tradable augs is entering the game as their first priority. Two, never forget that Flowstones are supposed to be wearable "raw" and hence their much more common drop rate.

[Kemie Dreamshadow]

Thank you, Elfdruidess, for your astute perspective. I'm sure most of us who are into tradeskills have been fretting over the scarcity especially of slugworms, mainly because we want to try the combines. I, for one, feel better having read what you wrote. You are perfectly correct - the flowstone augments can be worn "as is" and to do so doesn't hurt any of us. I hadn't been considering the issue that way at all.

Kemie Dreamshadow, Lanys T'Vyl