Upcoming Cultural Changes - Next Full Patch (Estimated End of September)

[Andarriel]

Excellent marrow

Got a excellent marrow today off a 75 snake in katta. Wasnt superb and havent seen one drop yet. Holding onto most stuff til i know what there for and if i need them =)

Andarriel

[Ngreth Thergn]

And yes, I have seen one mob drop 3 different levels of one type (3 different ores for example) on the same kill, so there is evidently a considerable overlap in mob range at every level of drops.

You likely realized that already, but I wanted to make sure that was clear to anyone reading this.

that would be the bodytype bug.... you got the
"humanoid" table and the "made of rock" table.

[Ngreth Thergn]

Isn't anyone else concerned about this issue?

well.

I think it is still difficult to tell with the bug happening that should be fixed with the real patch.

it should not be on EVERY mob in the game as it is right now, that fact itself messes up the numbers.

I cannot properly evaluate the true rate when every NPC in the game is dropping the stuff.

But in the end, yes, I do want to make gain skill easier in tailoring. Tailoring is currently so difficult that people quit the game over it, or at least quit tradeskills, and I don't want that. It is still going to require some form of farming from skill 54+ and the drops do get rarer the closer one gets to 300, as well as the fact that skillups get rarer the closer one gets to 300.

I am not happy that it went in early, before the code bug fix, but I also don't believe it will be the end of things. It will be a nice boost to get things started for people and maybe help drive down the bazaar prices because people will not be as interested in paying as inflated prices.

[Zopharr]

Based on /buyer and /bazaar over the weekend, it would seem that the Superb Marrow has not been patched in yet, or that no one on The Rathe is killing the righ mobs...

Thought that I had gotten a superb marrow off a fire goblin in TBS Sunday, but checked and only an excellent.

Only one marrow (compared to about 7 hides, mixed excellent/superb- mostly superb).

Garshok

[Zopharr]

Now that the skill-up path items are dropping, my initial assessment is that 'plentiful' is an understatement. Ngreth has frequently cited shissar scales as the prime example of what is wrong with DoN skill-up paths. If these new skill-up paths appear to be as plentiful (or more) as shissar scales, will the drop rates be adjusted? How soon after going live will some sort of assessment be made?

These new drops have huge multipliers, which Ngreth has been citing as positives. It's too early to be certain yet but my quick assessment is that they go way too far. Think of it this way: shissar scales can be used for items that trivial from 182 - 300+. In an average day, how many shissar scales drop that find their way to a tradeskiller on an average server? 200? 300? Now, for the same trivials Rubicate, Indium, Rhenum, Tungsten and Cobalt ores can be used for the same trivial range. Bonded loam can be used as well. Given that drops are global and the HUGE level range that all those ores can drop, how many ores will find their way to a tradeskiller each day on an average server? Far, far more than 300. So, while an individual ore might drop less than a shissar scale, the multiple ores, dropping everywhere over a huge level range makes the skill-up path ores so 'plentiful' as to be huge nuisance to the average player. It's too soon to be sure about it, but my initial concern is that there will be HUNDREDS of Expert Tailors and Expert Smiths on each server within months of this going live. Is that what 'an improved skill-up path' is all about?

While shissar scales can be used for items 182-300+, I don’t think that is a valid range for comparison for smithing, at least. Velium bits get you to 222, and velium is as easy or easier to farm than shissar scales. Shadowscream will get you to 267, and that is also easy to farm - I was getting enough for 40-50 combines per hour of farming. So really we are talking Rhenium (270+?), Tungsten and Cobalt for skilling up 268-300, at least as far as smithing goes.

As for the drop rate, it isn’t nearly at the same level as shissar scales. Over about six hours of XPing 74-77 mobs this weekend I got two soluble loam (I probably would have gotten more MDS in a DoN expedition) and 8 cobalt ore off goblins. I would have gotten about 80-90 shissar scales in Ssraeshza in the same amount of time. Granted, I would also need Crushed Diamond Dust to make sacred symbols, but I am pretty confident that I would be able to do Shraeshza for an hour and get over a dozen CDDs elsewhere in the remaining five hours. So if all I wanted to do was farm to tradeskill, I could do better than Cobalt/Tungsten ore. The big change is that you can actually get this stuff hunting experience mobs.

I agree that there will likely be more coming into the world, but based on the above it is not at such an astounding rate as to allow someone to farm all their own ore and zoom to 300 in a week’s time. So it is still going to take someone who is willing to either a) dedicate plat in bazaar to buy the drops, or b) dedicate themselves to tradeskilling over a long period of time. While it will make it easier (read: cheaper) to get to 300, it still won’t be a casual undertaking. But hopefully there will be enough materials in bazaar that we won’t have folks charging 900pp for something that is basically worthless except for skilling up.

What I see is that we are reducing the cost of entry for tradeskills in terms of plat. We are not reducing it too significantly in terms of time, though (in terms of time spent clicking in front of the forge). When 250 was the limit years ago and you could do fine plate to 242, we didn’t have hordes of folks working their way up to 242 smithing. Likewise I don’t think we’re going have hordes of folks decide on a whim to tradeskill to 300 under the new system. Even if the drops are available, player time is still limited. An increase, sure, but not overwhelming.

Garshok

[Zopharr]

The issue of the drop rate highlights an extremely important question for the tradeskilling community: how easy should tradeskilling be? Particularly for tailoring and smithing
--snip--
The new stuff is so prevalent it's almost a taunt to every player to get started as a tradeskiller. What should the balance of tradeskillers in the game be? Should everyone be one? Tailoring has certainly been the most difficult skill to Master. How much easier should it be?
--snip--
Isn't anyone else concerned about this issue?

No, I’m not concerned about it.

Back when 250 was the limit, everyone could realistically reach 250 in a tradeskill if they wanted to, and generally without flushing massive mounds of plat down the tubes. OK, you’d have to make significant inroads on the Wyvern and Othmir population to do so for tailoring, but IIRC they at least gave experience.

In my opinion, this simply makes it so someone can realistically make 300 in two tradeskills without flushing ridiculous amounts of plat.

Heck, I was a dedicated tradeskiller before PoP, working to get 1450 on my main. After everything went to 300, and with half the recipes requiring drops from flagged zones, I gave up (being deployed for two years didn’t help either). With these changes I might decide to go back to maxing other skills besides smithing. Finding joy in tradeskilling again - is that a bad thing?

Garshok

[ithilhuan]

...While I'm sure the latter is true, surely this revamp is also about making it vastly easier to skill up...

...As a tradeskiller, this is comparable to changing AAXP from level 51 equivalent to 21. On one level you could argue that everyone benefits from such a global change but on another level doesn't someone need to wonder what the long-term effects of such dramatic change will have on the game?....

Will these changes ultimately make skilling up in tradeskills somewhat easier? Yes. But not in the sense that I believe you are conveying. Many folks that have only ventured into the world of tradeskilling to see what the fuss is all about, have quickly become discouraged with the huge investment in time and pp required to progress past 120. With the player being forced to choose between investing huge amounts of time to farm 20 drops only to yield 1 or no skillups, invest huge amounts of pp in bazaar to get the 20 drops or worse yet, finding the one camp that contains the npc's dropping the one drop they need "perma-camped" by someone else, many would-be ts'ers opt out of this aspect of the game.
Most of us do not have unlimited time to devote to a game. And unless ts-ing is the sole reason we play, a chunk of that available would be desired to be spent xp'ing with friends instead of solo farming in some remote corner of the game. That is the biggest improvement I see with the change, the gamewide availability of items. No longer spending monotonous hours of killing the same mobs at the same camp over and over. Having the option of changing up camps/zones with similar npc levels to farm the items you want. For the casual player desiring to ts, the greater availability of items, should yield lower prices in the bazaar.
The difficulty in gaining the skillups will still be there. The ts'er is still going to develope carpel-tunnel from countless clicks w/o skill-ups. Farming is still going to be required. PP is still going to be spent
As for long term effects? I think the effect in the long term will be positive for the ts'er. There will always be those that want ts'd items without the desire to skill up to achieve, especially with all the pita 5 subcombines for each of the 10 subcombines for the final combine that Ngreth burdened us with. Therefore there will be a market for ts'd items.

[Eleena Transient]

Got a excellent marrow today off a 75 snake in katta. Wasnt superb and havent seen one drop yet. Holding onto most stuff til i know what there for and if i need them =)

Andarriel

Looking at the list, it seems the Marrows are off by one.

Tattered - Desiccated Marrow
Sullied - Dusty Marrow
Crude - Dry Marrow
Rough - Damp Marrow
Flawed - Moist Marrow
Pritine - Saturated Marrow
Fine - Hemic Marrow
Excellent - Natural Marrow
Superb -Excellent Marrow

With superb marrow not in yet

[Eggborn]

Do I need to use up my planar stuff? I have a ton of waterweave combines to make that I haven't gotten around to. I wanted to use them to help skill up by trophy.

[Scuzz Zilla]

Do I need to use up my planar stuff? I have a ton of waterweave combines to make that I haven't gotten around to. I wanted to use them to help skill up by trophy.

quick answer: no

Long answer: nooooooooooo

[Jhavon]

The Dragon Necropolis Task is imposible to complete with a full group of lvl 55 characters under certain conditions.

#1 - Failed Bard 1.5 fight. I'm currently staring at 3 lvl 70 Zombies and about 8 Mercs/Acolytes

#2 - Whelp Kidnapper. He's apparently lvl 65 and flurries according to posts on Ala's.


Is there anything we can do to implement despawn timers on the Epic MOBs and/or prevent the Kidnapper from spawning in the Shade room?


Addendum -- For those looking for Warriors, there's 2 spawn points in this room, in opposite corners. The NE corner is almost always a Warrior (occasionally a Darkling) and the SW corner seems to be rarely a Warrior. Also note that lower-case warriors do not update the task.

[Alaene_CT]

Looking at the list, it seems the Marrows are off by one.

Tattered - Desiccated Marrow
Sullied - Dusty Marrow
Crude - Dry Marrow
Rough - Damp Marrow
Flawed - Moist Marrow
Pritine - Saturated Marrow
Fine - Hemic Marrow
Excellent - Natural Marrow
Superb -Excellent Marrow

With superb marrow not in yet

Anyone have any insight into how this will be resolved? Specifically, I'm wondering if the excellent marrow I've managed to aquire (including a few speculative bazaar purchases) will be transmuted into Superb.

[Bobaten]

The answer is -there is no superb marrow. If you read the books on test, you find that excellent marrow goes with superb animal pelts.

[Sorkin]

So are the superbs the current elaborate/former grandmaster armor? Or are level 75 or level 80 stuff? From the list there are more than the current 4 levels of armor.

[Alaene_CT]

Thanks Bobaten, I was wondering if that was a possibility but had ruled it out due to the otherwise linear progression Eleena identified.

My next question is the same as Sorkin's, but not expecting any answers any time soon. Excitedly holding my breath