Loam Drop Rates

[Aldier]

There are MANY gnomes as well in the steam factory. I had a minotaur drop a porous loam and an exquisite spinneret fluid (different times) in Fort Mech so unless they are flagged differently in different zones with SoF, minotaurs would be "humanoid" in the steam factory. Brownies would seem humanoid as well. Have only hunted once in the Steam Factory and did not have the best success.

[Ngreth Thergn]

I dont want to seem argumentative. I think you do an exceptional job for the most part Ngreth however in response I would ask why let them drop at all in any lower level zone ?

because for now, there is only a .03% chance that a level 80 drops outside of T3 zones. While this is not 0, it is small.

While in a T3 zone it is much closer to 0.88% chance. So it is very much better to hunt in a T3 zone for the level 80 stuff, than outside of a T3 zone.

I may yet change this though. We are constantly evaluating the drops.

[Xenephex]

I've killed things in SoF zones that drop things with 'Golem' in the name and yet don't appear to drop ore or loam. A request:

Would it be possible to add some one common drop to all the things you flagged as 'Golems' so that we could at least have a good chance of figuring out what those mobs are? i.e. if a mob drops, for example, 'Golem bones', we would know that it is flagged as a Golem for purposes of dropping ore.

[dendail]

porous loam

so once again sony desingers cater to the high guild why can't you make it avaiable to lesser gear people that can go to fortress having to pay krostraders 300k pp bill just to get cultral item is regretable at this rate should have left them like it was, metalic drake scales at least with them you had a decent chance of getting them and they only cost 15k at the most when i did the subline quest we had to bring in a raid force just to kill the mobs there should make them avaiable to all players not just a select few

[Aldier]

so once again sony desingers cater to the high guild why can't you make it avaiable to lesser gear people that can go to fortress having to pay krostraders 300k pp bill just to get cultral item is regretable at this rate should have left them like it was, metalic drake scales at least with them you had a decent chance of getting them and they only cost 15k at the most when i did the subline quest we had to bring in a raid force just to kill the mobs there should make them avaiable to all players not just a select few

The risk versus reward has to be balanced and maintained.

The stats and benefits from this armor is on par with Tier 3 GROUP armor (more if you have a raid augment for slot 12). Therefore, they feel it should be as risky to obtain as Tier 3 group armor which means dropping in Tier 3 zones. /gasp. Similarly, the Oil Can Charm is Tier 3 level loot that only needs Tier 2 zone killing, and they have talked about increasing the difficulty of the quest to equal the quality of the reward.

Why don't we make a loam, a spinneret fluid, and a marrow drop every time from every mob in every zone. What do you think the stats or value of the armor would be then?

I have on multiple occassions taken a single group to hunt for the reavers in Fort Mech. It does NOT require a raid to kill these mobs. This expansion is a 1 year expansion. If everyone had all the group content trivialized in 2 months then what would we be doing for the next 10 months until the next expansion comes out? There was a huge increase in stats and difficulty in this expansion and it will take some time to gear up to where a normal group in group armor can take on Tier 3 and 4 content. This is not suprising considering the amount of time this is supposed to last.

[drhoads]

I guess I have to admit that though its frustrating I would rather see the new armor fairly rare then every non raider running around in it. Making it to easy would take alot of the interst out of it not to mention make alot of other gear worthless . ie 375 HP mana BP drops big deal I have the easy to get Cultural BP 500 hp mana. As people get better gear they will be better able to kill in the T3 + zones and the supply will increase and the prices will come down.

[Aldier]

That is what I hope to. Also, when the "new fad" fades, prices will come down. It is the beginning of a new expansion, there are people who have way to much platinum that are finding things to spend it on and the plat sellers/spammers are back out en masse.

[hyphnos]

loam drop rate? what loam...

I've been camping golems off and on with some guildies for a few weeks.

We have a camp consisting solely of smithing table models. (majority lvl 75) In a typical 6 to 8 hr camp (yes we really really want our cultural) we would see maybe a loam every 1 to 2 hrs (parses show basically 1 kill per minute) so that's 1 loam ever 200 to 300 kills.

We spent 8 hrs (600 to 700 kills) there yesterday and got 1 loam. Also got about 55 bricks of level appropriate ore one lower level ore and the single loam was soluble. The mobs principally drop titanium so their main loam should be alkalai. Over that number of kills I am not prepared to believe that the RNG is solely responsible. I think it more likely that somehow the "rare" loam drop was somehow turned into a change at a higher lvl ore. What was unusual in this camp is that we got around 10 tantalum bars which is far more than ever fell before. It's just a guess but maybe that is where the loam went or maybe we're only meant to have metal now.

I understand within limits the T3 only drop thing for lvl 80 armor. I don't agree with it as it took massive amounts of kills to generate a few lvl 80 drops and a decent amount of 75 lvl drops before. Now a massive amount of killing yields you little but ore and no finishing products even for lvl 75 symbols (and impending armor) Guess we'll have a GM smith of every race in the guild now and nothing to make since the ore stockpile at least will be good for working skills.

Ngreth, I know you said you'd watch if it went too far and as best I can tell you're on your toes. So anyway, just would appreciate if you'd look at the level appropriate drop rates on loam in general. Already the bazaar price on elegant and sublimes on my server is 400kish each and this is before the impact of the nerf hits (ie stockpiles dwindle etc). Compared to 800k for a cultural BP and aug, the new ready to wear armors are selling below 200k. The droppable armors are nice, but there is a certain pleasure in making your own and me and my friends are not unwilling to put in the time to farm our ingredients and do our quests. I've got a couple million banked and could just go buy a new set of the infusible in bazaar and get purity augs if I wanted or go camp it or whatever. Either way, it's kinda less fun that stuff you make yourself.

Guess we will go try Steam Factory again but we didnt have a lot of luck there before for the plate/chain classes. And if what the people camping Crystallos are saying is true, then there really is a problem. If you can't get the drops there even, then the recipes might was well just be disabled. When the loam is gone or 1 million per its effectively the same thing.

Sigh, i hope to have good news this was the most exciting thing to come along in a long time for active grouping tradeskillers (me and my friends) and now we all just feel like we're being told that grouping SoF named for armor is what we're "supposed" to do and grouping mobs to tradeskill our own is somehow wrong.

Either way, I wonder if something didn't go horribly wrong on loam with the changes for the 80 drops.

Waiting and watching to see what happens now.

[Aldier]

Just a note: 1 loam per 1-2 hours and 1 mob per minute would be 60-120 mobs per loam. And over 8 hours would be 480 mobs total. I agree even at those numbers though that it seems rare. I am not sure what nerf you are refering to, the patch notes implied that loam would be dropping MORE frequently. Also the proposed changes to cultural + LB type augs would improve the armor itself not nerf it. The proposed nerf was to the LB augs.

[Twistagain]

I am not sure what nerf you are refering to, the patch notes implied that loam would be dropping MORE frequently.

Just wanted to add that they should be dropping more fequently from HUMANOID mobs only, as far as I understand it. Golems shouldn't have been changed.

[hyphnos]

i was being conservative

Just a note: 1 loam per 1-2 hours and 1 mob per minute would be 60-120 mobs per loam. And over 8 hours would be 480 mobs total. I agree even at those numbers though that it seems rare. I am not sure what nerf you are refering to, the patch notes implied that loam would be dropping MORE frequently. Also the proposed changes to cultural + LB type augs would improve the armor itself not nerf it. The proposed nerf was to the LB augs.

1. Kills averaged 25 to 30 secs each, actually was allowing for some downtime but pull distances are short and its easy to bring 2 or 3 at once. The real number of kills was probably in between my number and yours.

2. I'm not concerned with the changes to the armor and last bloods. (I mentioned pricing on elegant and sublime as opposed to dropped armors which may have clouded the issue. However, I did say I was camping lvl 75ish mobs and thus expecting lvl 75ish drops, not lvl 80.

3. I expressed my view that limiting those to Tier 3 where i had bad luck before wasn't to my liking but that's just my opinion, I do not in any way feel entitled to insist on anything but I am entitled to express my view/disappointment that the rarity is so high.

4. My point was that in contradiction to the day prior to patch loam rates did not in fact go up, they were down significantly. If in fact they were only increased on humanoids, this may mean Steam Factory may be more balanced in drops. Will check it out and see.

4. I thought it was interesting that if in fact lvl 80 drops were supposed to be very rare outside Tier 3 that the amount of Tantalum that fell went up by about a factor of 2 to 3, not down to a 0.03% chance as Ngreth mentioned.

At any rate, it is my opinion, deliberate or not, patch notes notwithstanding that loam drop rates fell precipitously. Calling it a nerf was my bad, I actually changed the wording at one point and missed it in the other place. Whatever it is, I was merely trying to point out that I had a large amount of data from the same camp and the loam rate in no way increased after the patch. It seems to have gone down if anything.

[Mesmall]

A quick question to double check what I think I understand: Gyrospire Zeka is consider a T3 zone while Gyrospire Beza is not?

One more question. How high is your stats to be consider over kill (doesn't matter anymore beyond that point) or the "higher the better" still apply? Thanks

[XyloGnome]

Aldier, I don't think people are arguing with you. I don't think they're arguing with Ngreth either.

I farmed the high end of PoValor for a while...
- Golems dropped mainly silk
- Bugs dropped mainly ore
- Spiders dropped nothing

This is in complete opposition to Ngreth's hints that...
- Golems drop only ore/loam
- Spiders drop only silk/spinnerets
- Bugs (monsters?) drop nothing
- Humanoids drop everything, but in low quantities

It seems more and more like it's not Ngreth who's not making things hard or easy for us, it's the mob devs who aren't properly categorizing mobs after level 50. The 1-50 mobs seem to hold to Ngreth's rules. Everything after appears to be only "humanoid" or "monster," and not golem/spider/animal/giant/humanoid/etc.

[Bedazzlerr]

Well I hat to tell you I ahve a level 80 waarrior and yes he is prety gimp jsut hit 17946 hp raid buffed and 2600 ac. I have been trying liek crazy to get loam to make armor. I am no where near ablel to tank in the fortress and surive. My guild is a family style guild and even if we raided I doubt we coudp go there so i my eyes and alot others this is for the high end guys to get rich off as it is unatainable for su unless you pay 200k+ for it. Give us a break for a change. It takes me a very long time to get 200k so mhy armor will not be goign up probably until this is about 2 expansions out so i can go there liek many others.

[Aldier]

Hyphnos, I think that the 0.03% number was only for the loams not the ore. I agree with you that the drop rate seems low considering the number of mobs that your group slaughtered.

Xylognome, I am not trying to argue with anyone, merely pointed out that if a group is killing 1 mob per minute, it is not 200-300 mobs in an hour or 2. I have not had a chance to get a group back into the Steam Factory to see what the loam drop rates are like, but hope to this afternoon/evening. It has also been known for a while, and posted about here and on EQLive forums that from Luclin/PoP through OoW, the "mobs" were not well classified as summoned/constructs or animals. The developers since then have put more effort into making sure to classify the mobs correctly, and still many are missed, mainly because they are also trying to come up with unique, situational spells that only work against certain types of creatures. Ngreth has mentioned it is on his list to try and identify and sort out the mob "race" lists, but its not a top priority. The suggestion has been made, if you find mobs that are NOT listed properly, /bug them in game.

Bedazzlerr, the best advice I can give you is to work with the zones you can handle to improve your character. Look to try and farm some of the Dragonscale Hills and Loping Plains for armor or try to join a group as a dps slot. The big issue with tanks is AC and it is much more of a factor in SoF than in some previous expansions. Most tanks get to where they are not by big raid loots or making tons of cultural armor (though these things help). The big boost is AC augments. Check around and you can find AC augment lists and get as many of them as you can and that will help improve your survivability in the newer zones.