POI drop rate

[dellis]

I have recently begun to skillup my tinkering again after a long break. What happened to the drop rates in POI? I used to be able to farm stacks of steel ball bearings in a few hours time but now I can only get 2 or 3 in 2 hours. What happened to the drop rate? This is the only zone to get these items in and hardly anyone XPs in this zone anymore making it hard to find tinkering items for sale in the bazaar. Was the drop rate intentionally lowered? Was it not already hard enough to get tinkering skill up without nerfing the drop rate in POI? Please, Please fix this or put some drops in a zone that is used a bit more often.

[Gorse]

I would say just some luck with RNG (and all of the luck being bad).

I have not noticed any changes in drop rates.


Gorse

[Druegar]

Stacks of Steel Ball Bearings? Wow, I've spent a lot of time farming in PoI and I have never looted a single stack of any high-level tinkering item in a single session, regardless of length. Maybe, maybe I'd get a full stack of Saltpeter, but that's it. If I got a single Clockwork Carapace, I'd be ecstatic.

[Mattius]

AE groups 4TW.

[tuis]

Earthshakers away!

I zoned in after an ES pull and wandered around thinking...wtf did everything go..oh must.....have......been...........an......earth... ..shaker oh shoot respawn FD FD FD

(attempt to simulate massive lag as half the zone repopped at the same time)

[Artemisia]

I have farmed here, well more then anything hunted, on and of and never seen a drop in rates of items.
I find farming for porous blocks much much more annoying, primarily because I won't do it if noobies ( meant with respect to lvl not years in eq) are around. So I farm late at night or very early in the day and always keeping an eye on who. No need for a nearly lvl 70 to steal their hunting ground, but taking me forever to skill-up :-(

Some days you are more lucky then others. Last time in MGP no rune dropped in 3 hrs there tonight, same time, same spot we had 3 drop.

[uncleshmoozo]

Hmmm ... I don't know if there has been a change in the drop rates of steel ball bearings, but what I have noticed is that my bazaar buyer mule has not been getting anywhere near as many of them in the last couple months or so as I was in the past. This despite the fact that I have raised my purchase price from 5 pp to 50 pp each which is significantly higher than the price any other buyer in the bazaar is paying on my server. I'm still getting plenty of pinions and coiled springs, however, despite the fact that I'm still paying just 5 plat each for those.

[Mortas]

Knuckle joint & carapaces seem to have gone away too.

Or at least dropped from "marginal" to "unseen"

[Elyssanda]

3 hours there yesterday: 70 bard. 70 pally, 68 shammy, 70 monk, 65 mage, 46+ ranger, (yes we were PL'ing her there and trying to get tinker drops)

got:
2 carapaces
7 coiled spring
1 knuckle joint
6 ball bearings
1 innovative clockwork bolts
2 innovative clockwork gears
over 100 Saltpeter
over 100 golden ember powder
Random amounts of pinions, gears, sprockets, oxidized plates etc..
and more NO drop stuff than I want to think about

[Gazzuk]

I noticed a large decrease in droprate of innovative clockwork gears and coiled springs, although they have nothing to do with the bearings being talked about in the topic, I think droprates in general were decreased for PoI. As far as saltpeter go, if you don't mind losing 328 expedition faction, the clockworks in corathus drop them like candy.

[Gorse]

As far as saltpeter go, if you don't mind losing 328 expedition faction, the clockworks in corathus drop them like candy.

As do the Creep Reepers.


Gorse

[Devilcharm]

PoI's drop rates were indeed greatly nerfed with a unseen message somewhere that Verant will nerf this. Before OoW came out, I was stock piling stuff for a future tinkerer. On a good day I would get 2-4 stacks ea of steel ball bearings, coiled springs, and pinions, innovative clockwork bolts, and a few carapieces just XP'ing at the ZI. On a normal day one and a half stacks each. On a bummer day, one stack. In fact the drops were so common I would sometimes give the prospective tinkerer some stuff just to clear out inventory/bank room as the skill cap was only 200 at the time.

Well, times have changed. But it has been so long since I hunted in PoI that I did not know the zone was nerfed for tinkering drops. I used all my PoI drops to get the little tinkerer to 202 (from 107) before I ran outta stuff. I went to PoI to refarm stuff, and to my surprise, after being there for nearly 7 hours. I yielded 4 coiled springs. 1 steel ball bearing. 0 innovative clockwork bolts and carapieces. But the golden ember powder and saltpeter drops just as often as it did before. Figuring I just had bad luck, I returned the next day. This time yeilded a whopping 6 coiled springs and 1 carapiece with 2 innovative bolts.

Then thinking it only had to be really bad luck or the ZI area is nerfed, the next day I go through the LFG and see 2 people wanting to XP thier evolving items, and strangely enough are not interested in loot. I call them both in. We did 4 loops through PoI (factory not included) and yielded only 3 coiled springs. 2 ball bearings, 1 carapiece, 6 innovative bolts.

Talking to some fellow tinkerer's on Tunare they said the same thing. PoI being basically the only zone that yields any appropriate skill up path in tinkering, simply does not drop the stuff the way it used to when cap was at 200.

I turned my focus then to The Deep, an old world Luclin zone. There I can kill two birds with one stone, get smithing and tinkering up. Skill up rates off yttrium ore is kinda slow. Little faster then shissar scales for tailoring. But needs quite a bit of yttrium ore if we do both routes like I am doing. I would say Sony just dont want many tinkerers out there. PoI is nerfed in a huge manner, The Deep offers a slow route, while CC is finally saved for the top end high end tinkers where the drops are enormous, but require high tradeskills in all fields.

If Tinkering is your thing and tinkering only. The Deep is the only way to go. Course you need to get your smithing to the mid 100's. But that route will skill you up vastly fast then PoI can in it's best days.

[KristyMoonglow]

I have noticed the same thing, seem after they raised the saltpeter drops the other drops in POI went down drasticly.

Anyways for skill up, I can't think of anything better then yttrium (The Deep) to get ya to 290 based on farming. After 290 you need 3 yttrium for 1 master's combine so the farm time is a toss with other things like Seals, AAAAs, and so on. (AAAAs for the 5 trivial 351 subs and the $$).