Upcoming Cultural Changes ETA

[Moonunit]

new cultural quests

I've been looking around and found no information on the new cultural quests. Am I just looking in the wrong places? My iksar is ~ 1/2 way through the old masters lvl aug book quest, but I really hate sebilis and was wondering if I should ditch that one and do the new, or bite the bullet and finish it. Any info to help me decide would be appreciated.
Thanks
Moon

[bigtooth]

Same guy that gave the old cultural augment quest, now gives the new one. Go to him and you can keep the old quest and get the new one at the same time. Then decide which one seems easier. I did not think either one was very hard.

[Moonunit]

Thanks! Didn't realize you could have both at once.
Moon

[BeltiraBelkira]

just wondering if anything to this effect is scheduled for the patch in early september

[Xenephex]

Well, these changes seem to have kind-of sort-of been implemented on test. The old cultural recipes no longer show up in either my favorites or on search at my cultural forge (the sub-combines still do, but not the finals). Also people are reporting seeing several new drops that are marked tradeskillable.

No recipes though. I searched all over Kaladim (my home city), PoK and Crescent reach and checked both for new vendors (none that I can find) and checked every smithing vendor and anyone else who seemed like they might conceivably have the new recipes and found nothing so far.

[Xenephex]

Here's what we've found so far in terms of new drops. Various types of the following:

Ore, Animal pelts, silk, loam, marrow. e.g. Cobalt Ore, Tungsten Ore, Fulginate Ore, Indium Ore, Rhenium Ore. Crude Silk, Pristine Silk, Superb Silk, Excellent Silk etc. The Animal pelts are called just that - e.g. Flawed Animal Pelt, Superb Animal pelt, etc.

Lots more than 4 types of each, at least of the silk and ore (not sure on the animal pelts).

At the moment it appears that virtually every mob on test server drops these items, often two or more of them. I think I killed two mobs all morning that didn't drop at least one of the new items.

The stuff is tradeable but cannot be sold to vendors, so no vendor farming for these drops.

Still no recipes.

[Ngreth Thergn]

I will try and remember to repop PoK, Abysmal, and Crescent when I get in. I thought the test patch was going to be today, not yesterday, which is why things are trickling in piecemeal because I probably did not have all of the data in before they took the snapshot for the patch.

It will depend on the zone btw... low level zones this stuff will drop like candy from a pinyata... higher level zones it becomes more rare.

[Zopharr]

The stuff is tradeable but cannot be sold to vendors, so no vendor farming for these drops.

Gaaah! Please don't tell us that vendor diving will be a thing of the past!

There truly are fewer things more pleasant than finding a batch of Sunshard Ore (or Crushed Diamond Dust, Drop of Pure Rain, or whatever) on a vendor.

[Tiroon]

So no choice but go through bazaar?

Thats sad and evil at the same time.

[Marissas]

I sincerely hope that is not the case. The availabilty of tradeskill items is going to drop severely if items will no longer be "vendable". I really hope that theory was well thought out and some other bonus hasnt been disclosed yet.

[Catweazel]

Gaaah! Please don't tell us that vendor diving will be a thing of the past!

Yes - I would have preferred that they just eliminate that annoying Vendor Diving thread on EQTraders first....

[Ngreth Thergn]

Maddoc wants to try making this stuff bazaar only.

If it fails horribly I will add minimal values. It will never be much though, so it is entirely possible that it will still be deleted and not sold to NPC's

[Zopharr]

Maddoc wants to try making this stuff bazaar only.

If it fails horribly I will add minimal values. It will never be much though, so it is entirely possible that it will still be deleted and not sold to NPC's

Making it bazaar only guarantees that there will be less making it to tradeskillers than would be the case otherwise. Even though I’m willing to pay up to 300pp for midnight stones, I find half of the ones I get on merchants – folks just don’t know and vendor the stuff. Same with most other PoP smithing supplies. The fact that this stuff has tradeskill uses has gone down the memory hole for a lot of the player-base, despite the fact that there is still a market.

This could particularly impact the drops for lower-level skill-ups. It’s not like we have a thriving population of new players entering EQ. I can see a lot of the stuff from hunting grounds in the mid 20-s through 40s or 50s going to the destroy button. The people most impacted will be the newer players, the ones without a sugar daddy (read: higher level toon) able to subsidize their smithing habit.

We already have sunshard as a skill-up path – does Maddoc (or do other developers) feel that making sunshard dust/pebbles/ore ‘vendable’ rather than bazaar-only has had a negative impact?

Unless the skill-up stuff is going to be an order of magnitude more abundant than sunshard, I have a hard time understanding why making it bazaar-only might be desirable. maybe if I understood the logic behind it I'd be less skeptical.

Garshok

[Catweazel]

At least it is not going to drop inside a booster pack....

[Xenephex]

We already have sunshard as a skill-up path – does Maddoc (or do other developers) feel that making sunshard dust/pebbles/ore ‘vendable’ rather than bazaar-only has had a negative impact?

Unless the skill-up stuff is going to be an order of magnitude more abundant than sunshard, I have a hard time understanding why making it bazaar-only might be desirable. maybe if I understood the logic behind it I'd be less skeptical.

Garshok

I don't know how it will be when it hits live, but at the moment on test, it is some orders of magnitude more abundant than sunshard. Keep in mind that there is the 'final combine' piece, which for smithing is some type of loam, and then there is the 'skill up' piece, which is some type of ore. The loam is considerably more rare (though still much more abundant than metallic drake scales). The ore is plentiful, even at reasonably high levels. At my current skill (255), I have at least 3 different ores that I can use for skill-ups and it all drops regularly.

At lower levels, the drop rates are extremely high. Mid-level mobs may drop 3 or 4 pieces EACH (which can be a mixture of silk, leather, ore and the associated components), in addition to their regular drops. Even high level mobs can drop 2 components, and it would be rare to find 3 mobs in a row that didn't drop something tradeskill related. I did a TBS mission last night and looted everything, and I would say at least half the drops were the new TS items.