The Yttrium Report

[greebmushroome]

so, i had some time this afternoon and thought i'd farm up some yttrium for a smithing run of master's armor. lvl 70 high elf cleric. i got buffed up and headed off to the deep. i invised through the various mobs to a dead-end full of various thought horrors on the near side of the chasm. there were about 12 mobs between the back of the dead-end and the main tunnel. i ran to the back, dropped invis, put up my proccing self-buff and proceeded to lay about with the reverse damage shields. i cleared this branch about three times through, usually about 3 mobs at a time, so a total of about 36 mobs. i'd found yttrium on these mobs before, but not today. net result: 0 small bricks of yttrium.

i decided to move across the chasm and made my way across the bridge and down to a tunnel full of thought horrors. did the same thing in terms of killing, clearing this hallway twice (probably 16 mobs total). net result: 1 small brick of yttrium.

by that point, something had dispelled my kei and mana was running low, so i gated out, a very disappointed smith.


thinking to salvage what was left of the afternoon, i got re-buffed and headed out to the grey to kill some sun revenants. i like this camp a little better, since the mobs are dark blue to me and i get a little xp from the kills. i kill these single or, rarely, two at a time. i mostly avoided adds except for the one that ran, added another revenant, and then added a stone-thing, two golems and a worm. all the adds were defeated, but the initial mob was lost. this has been a moderately productive camp in the past. yielding about a brick of yttrium per clearing of the 6 mobs around the pond. while not a great rate, it was better than i'd done yet that day. turns out my luck didn't improve in 4 and a half clearings of the pond (so, 27 sun revenants). net result: 0 small bricks of yttrium.

i decided to call it quits because i was doing nothing but wasting time. this wasn't a fun, and i wasn't making any advancement.

a note of irony: during the 3 horus or so this was going on, i saw 5 lucid shards drop, 3 in the deep and 2 in the grey. it is truly a great day when lucid shards are more common than tradeskilling ingredients used for skilling-type combines!

================================================== ===

so, i'm pretty disappointed about smithing now and tradeskilling in general. as a high elf, i've pretty much written off tailoring. i thought i'd be better off for smithing because yttrium was relatively common. i don't know what to think now. someone, please cheer me up about my prospects as a high-elf smith!! i've wasted a whole day's play-time and come up with naught, and i have no idea how to do any better any other day or reason to believe i'll ever be able to do any better.

-greeb, looking for the "disappointed" smilie
ayonae ro

[Lnnolanwil]

agree

I can only agree. DoN tradeskilling is not much of a skill up path.
Between the lack of bank space for all the patterns/molds and symbol patterns and the low drop rates of components - DoN is not - imho - a useful path for skilling up tailoring or smithing much past 222.

And even then - to go from 193-212 in woodelf tailoring, I had to hand my cultural book in 5 times for sleeve patterns - throwing away 10 stacks of wrists patterns, 5 stacks of glove patterns, 5 stacks of leg patterns, 5 stacks of ...... well, you get the general idea. Now I have to repeat that several more times for leg and chest patterns to get to 222.

Now - I could live with that - HQ cat pelts are easy enough to come by. But not so shissar scales, or crushed diamond dust or yttrium ore.

I can only surmise that Sony's plan is now to stop us tradeskilling for bulk skillups - to no longer pull together 10 -20 stacks of combines for a run - but to do one combine here and another there as components come to hand.

Which is a crock.

[Rissenn]

But not so shissar scales, or crushed diamond dust or yttrium ore.

Crushed Diamond Dust: Among the rarest item. I vendor-dive each day and have picked up a total of 5 of these during two months.
Tip: If you are hunting in Cobalt Scar, you can kill the two chests in the sunken ships. Both have a chance at dropping it.

Shissar Scales: Very common drop inside Ssra temple. Just move one level up.

Yttrium Ore: I get about a stack per hour when camping Xethiux (sp?) for Shrink wand. Together with a few Lucid Shards..

[YurienStonebow]

i think the DoN ingredients are good for journeymen and expert lvl. the Master and GM are harder and should be. most races have a good easy set for the first two tiers and i can't relaly complain aobut what they need. as much as everyone will flame me.....SOE did a good job in picking the first two tiers with a few exception....condensed flame/ice/shadow for example. can't remember which it is

[Cyrint Aircaller]

As a Darkelf my DoN master level take nightmare arachnid silks for tailoring and midnight stones for smithing.
While the midnight stones in insane rare (totally useless to farm) then the nightmare silk isnt that bad.
For smithing i am doing Tae ew chain armor, it trivialize at 295 and only take tae ew blood vials.
For tailoring i will do the DoN master path.
As a note i am a lvl 70 magician with fairly good gear making CT and plane of nightmare relativly easy to farm.

(good drop rate is for me around 20 blood vials for a few hours of farming and you need 2 blood vials for each combine, i could farm the blood faster but i am also trying to get the flawless tae ew hide)

[Drexxell]

i decided to call it quits because i was doing nothing but wasting time. this wasn't a fun, and i wasn't making any advancement.

I solemnly, solemly wish that EQ developers would pay particular attention to the words above more than anything else.

I can't begin to tell you how many times I've felt the same way about so much of the 'farming' that tradeskilling requires.

More often than not, EQ just "isn't fun" when you're a tradeskiller.

It's hard to believe that there isn't either (a) sadism or (b) disinterest or (c) lack of understanding by a company that designs a game that is often called "not fun".

Then again, option (d): "These players are too hooked to quit, and we really don't need to make it any more fun because they won't leave...heck, let's even turn up the 'pain meter' a bit by introducing 'exciting new recipes' while at the same time lowering drop rates and treat this as a twisted psychological experiment and see how many people we can convince to stay"

[YurienStonebow]

I solemnly, solemly wish that EQ developers would pay particular attention to the words above more than anything else.

I can't begin to tell you how many times I've felt the same way about so much of the 'farming' that tradeskilling requires.

More often than not, EQ just "isn't fun" when you're a tradeskiller.

It's hard to believe that there isn't either (a) sadism or (b) disinterest or (c) lack of understanding by a company that designs a game that is often called "not fun".

Then again, option (d): "These players are too hooked to quit, and we really don't need to make it any more fun because they won't leave...heck, let's even turn up the 'pain meter' a bit by introducing 'exciting new recipes' while at the same time lowering drop rates and treat this as a twisted psychological experiment and see how many people we can convince to stay"

wow i didn't know they brought the Maruis de Sade back from the dead.....who knew he was a developer

[Qualan]

Yttrium Ore: I get about a stack per hour when camping Xethiux (sp?) for Shrink wand. Together with a few Lucid Shards..

I wish i got that many

Been doing that camp for a few weeks now, often with 3 lvl 70 characters and my average is around 1 stack every 2 hours

[Qaladar Bragollach]

I camped shrink wand guy today for 4 hours and net total of 6 bricks... I did get the wand though so I'm not complaining.

[Namic]

i did sun reverents quad kited them all at once.. average drop is 1 or every 3 ae's and there repop = ages but i had same luck in the deep as you.. load of work fighitng and adds and all my efforts = nothing

-Namic

[Turlo Lomon]

I managed to get almost a full stack of bricks in Sanctus Seru when leading a group there. Total time was about 2 hours.

[greebmushroome]

I managed to get almost a full stack of bricks in Sanctus Seru when leading a group there. Total time was about 2 hours.

don't tease us like this! what were you killing and where, please? what level and makeup the group, please? which mobs dropped the yttrium? details, please!

it's posts like these that make me run off and waste an afternoon trying to farm stuff with no gain in the end :/.

-greeb mushroome

[Phantron]

Mobs on the top of each floor in the 4 major houses can drop them (they also drop parts for 3rd earring of veracity). They're around level 60-62 or something around there if I recall but the rangers/warrior house will dual wield. Pathing in Sanctus Seru used to be really bad but other than the pathing those mobs are pretty easy. Hits for like around 170 but the Paladin mobs can take a while to kill with their nonstop Healing Waves.

[Qualan]

Droprate is about the same as in the deep but mobs are harder to kill so for farming purposes it still sux

[Angelsyn]

Sadly, it looks like Yttrium (and other Master's level stuff, not to mention the GM level stuff) is going to go up in price, because the average player is going to see that "increased chance to skill-up" tag-line and bend us over a barrel for it.