Boot ingredient grind

[sirgog]

It's not as bad as the Gianthold relic grind, but it's pretty close.

IMO the drop rates should be 100% when the flagging quests are run on Elite. Casual, normal and hard, sure, keep them low. But if you can do a full flagging tour on elite - you've earned boots, IMO.

[Xaearth]

Agreed ran Wrath and Weapons last night and everyone pulled at least one component between the two quests. If you apply a serious effort you will have it in no time.

Ransacking Wrath 2 weeks in a row on 2 and a half (ok I didn't ransack on the third, so I'm calling it a half) characters earned me 1 of each of the two ingredients that drop there... and a hat.

[Eladiun]

Ransacking Wrath 2 weeks in a row on 2 and a half (ok I didn't ransack on the third, so I'm calling it a half) characters earned me 1 of each of the two ingredients that drop there... and a hat.

I actually saw the hat drop last night for the first time. It looks cool and is kind of neat. It would be more cool if air elementals weren't neutered.

[Quikster]

Thanks for all of the replies.

I have to say that they illustrate, however, what a random system like this makes: haves and have-nots. The 'haves' don't think that there's a grind at all because they pulled their ingredients and pulled them quickly. The 'have-nots', like me, possess terrible luck and still struggle to find what they need.

I took way too many stats classes over the course of my college years so I understand how it all works. I know that eventually things will come around but when you're talking a 3-5% chance to pull each of 4 ingredients, that's a lot of runs to smooth out the statistic wrinkles. Average that over 4 or 5 alts....you see what I mean.

I agree. I belong to the haves, but i can see how it would be frustrating. You are a person that has a real life with a demanding job. You sometimes log in and get into a raid and get called back to work. The job you have can be emotionally draining as well. So you log in and the guilds running a raid train. Once we start we usually go all night till we are down to 1 or 2 people. We rarely spend time running flagging quests all night. So you spend some down time, or give up some raid time to get your ingredients and have 0 luck pulling. Not you arent running the quests as many have alleged here, but are running and completing the quest, looting the end chest, and not getting any ingredients. Its frustrating. Why would you want to pay to be frustrated constantly?

It's not as bad as the Gianthold relic grind, but it's pretty close.

IMO the drop rates should be 100% when the flagging quests are run on Elite. Casual, normal and hard, sure, keep them low. But if you can do a full flagging tour on elite - you've earned boots, IMO.

Sure I can buy that. Another thing they can do is add more ingredients, and guarantee a drop similar to the way gh is. At least in collecting relics you are always moving forward with just about every quest completion.

[Kza]

On khybers Ah boot ingrs just flood over, any player that want can just buy it from there for less than 2 large scales.
So the grind is nonexistent on that server atleast :-)

(run 3-5 shrouds sell all and you have yer shoes)

[grodon9999]

. . .

Easier than Ascension Chamber flagging for sure.

The ToD boot flagging is a pain but it's not nearly as tedius as Abbot or grinding for relics in GH. I'd prefer they fix the two non-end-game grinds first.

[PCNONSENSE]

I dont understand these posts? Please fill me in.

How can you possibly have run these many Battlefield quests and not have enough plat to buy multiple sets of boots? It is impossible. The materials can be found on the AH for a reasonable price if you are looking.

Think about it? Even if you just vendor all the trash you pull, you should have plenty of plat.

[dkyle]

It's not as bad as the Gianthold relic grind, but it's pretty close.

One big difference is you can get many relics as a side effect of doing good XP quests, whereas boot grind is often done at cap. Even if you do it before cap, the xp/min in Amrath quests is pretty bad.

[Chette]

I have two capped toons and each have run each of the battlefield quests probably 3 or 4 times, plus weapons shipment about 30 times. I have pulled one demon's blood and one other ingredient. The other ingredient came from weapons shipment. I realize 3 or 4 times on each quest isn't a lot, and I think I got relatively lucky with my blood. But what makes this grind so awful is the randomness. Yes, the gianthold grind takes a lot of time, but you KNOW you will get relics at the end. You also get them from the rare chests, if not 100% of the time (and I think it might be 100%) at least most of the time. If you are a smart player you can find a good route through the explorer area to pick up rares and relics, and you will know which quests you can run quickly for the relics you need. With boots you might get them in one evening of grinding, or it might take you a month. That's the part I don't like. Cut out the randomness and make it about smart play, not luck.

[BangsLiekWhoa]

Getting the ingredients requires a little bit of work, but is not unreasonable especially after they added new drop locations.

1. Some things should require work.
2. You make a ton of money selling the loot you get from these quests while you are looking for your ingredients.
3. You actually get to do quests that are a challenge and quite fun.
4. If you want a "grind" for flagging a raid, go to the necropolis and flag for Abbot. You get to find 8 sigil pieces (random chance for drops) then run the pre-raid 4 times. (also, try to get DT runes)
5. Play with friends! If you make friends and run with them, they will likely loan you an ingredient until you can pay them back.

[AyumiAmakusa]

Ransacked the chest in Weapon's Shipment and got exactly zero boots ingredients. I did get a Mysterious Bauble, however, so I guess that evens out.

[Schmoe]

With all due respect, I don't think it's a grind at all. The ingredients are not bound, which means that they can be traded, bought, sold, given away, etc. In addition, for a 20th level character the ingredients aren't really that expensive. That means that there are a number of ways to acquire them other than actually having them drop for you in a chest.

If the ingredients were bound, it would be a grind (DT armor, looking at you)

If the total cost of the ingredients was outrageous (buying a t3 greensteel from scratch, for example), it would be a grind.

Since getting boots of anchoring is neither of these, it's not a grind IMO. I suggest that you run enough Amrath quests to get flagged for ToD, and to get any favor you might want, and maybe run a few more for fun. After that buy what you're missing, or hit up your guildies, and be done with it. No grinding required.

[mws2970]

I was pretty lucky on my paladin getting boot ingredients to drop. I got 2 from Weapons Shipment. I also got one by trading a ToD belt someone wanted for the blood. Yeah, it was a better deal for me, I know. I had to buy the keepsake from the AH, so for this toon, it wasn't too bad. But......

For my wizzy, I have had pretty bad luck. I have run all of the Shavarath quests multiple times and only had 1 keepsake drop. I'd love to see the drops upped a bit just to eliminate some of the grind. I do admit that I have seen, but not pulled, ingredients on Elite Wrath of the Flame runs, so there is some hope!

[sacredtheory]

I dont understand these posts? Please fill me in.

How can you possibly have run these many Battlefield quests and not have enough plat to buy multiple sets of boots? It is impossible. The materials can be found on the AH for a reasonable price if you are looking.

Think about it? Even if you just vendor all the trash you pull, you should have plenty of plat.

I've been looking, for weeks, and with the exception of the artifact, the other ingredients average 400-500k plat. So about 1.5 million plat for one set of boots....that's not reasonable.

[Folonius]

However, two of my characters don't have boots of anchoring so I thought I had better knuckle down and go get those ingredients. Dozens of runs through Shavarath quests later, I've acquired a total of one mysterious artifact.

I'm not going to disagree with you that the ingredients are hard to grind, so don't grind for them. Run shroud and vale quests, sell ingredients, and then buy the boot ingredients.

Get a large devil scale, a few twigs, and some funk and take them to the marketplace and use the trade channel. You should sell it rather quickly. A devil scale will sell instantly for 200k plat, and for 300k plat, you'll have a modest wait. The twigs and funk will sell almost instantly for 50k plat, and who doesn't love running coal chamber.

[Thrudh]

You do know it takes less than an hr to grid a set of boots right?

LOL...

You probably send mail to African orphans telling them that it's easy to get food, so stop complaining!

[soupertc]

I dont understand these posts? Please fill me in.

How can you possibly have run these many Battlefield quests and not have enough plat to buy multiple sets of boots? It is impossible. The materials can be found on the AH for a reasonable price if you are looking.

Think about it? Even if you just vendor all the trash you pull, you should have plenty of plat.

I think he explained pretty well what he thought. Not sure if your on Sarlona but only cheap ingred is Mysterious Artifact....the other 3 can be fairly expensive still.

One big difference is you can get many relics as a side effect of doing good XP quests, whereas boot grind is often done at cap. Even if you do it before cap, the xp/min in Amrath quests is pretty bad.

+1

With all due respect, I don't think it's a grind at all. The ingredients are not bound, which means that they can be traded, bought, sold, given away, etc. In addition, for a 20th level character the ingredients aren't really that expensive. That means that there are a number of ways to acquire them other than actually having them drop for you in a chest.

If the ingredients were bound, it would be a grind (DT armor, looking at you)

If the total cost of the ingredients was outrageous (buying a t3 greensteel from scratch, for example), it would be a grind.

Since getting boots of anchoring is neither of these, it's not a grind IMO. I suggest that you run enough Amrath quests to get flagged for ToD, and to get any favor you might want, and maybe run a few more for fun. After that buy what you're missing, or hit up your guildies, and be done with it. No grinding required.

preception is reality. DT armor wasn't a grind for me either(well except on one toon). But I know it was/is for some people so I'm happy about the "Fix" that is coming soon. Just cause you or me pull ingred fairly easily doesn't mean all will. And trust me I'm sure multiple people have offered him Ingred(hell I did)....he's a prideful B@stard though.

[Thelmallen]

You do know it takes less than an hr to grid a set of boots right?
And that you can do it solo right?

I have pulled enough mats for 4 pairs of boots since U5 despite the fact all my toons were booted before that... Boot parts are dropping like mad. The only people who can't get boots are those that haven't done the quests recently or those that are very poor. I mean seriously the price of boot mats has gone from about 500K to about 30K each since the U5 drop everywhere change.

Are you serious, Fluffy? Did you even read my OP? Did you read the dozen-plus responses where people who have the bad luck like me have chimed in?

No, it DOES NOT TAKE AN HOUR to grind for boot ingredients, it just doesn't. Not for everyone. Maybe for you but you are not everyone. I've ran Wrath 30+ times in the past two weeks and pulled nothing, not one single ingredient. Ten or so runs through Shipment yielded the same results. And this is just recently--does not include all of the runs through Shipment I did and solo'd before I took a 4 month break due to the grind. I think I ransacked that Shipment chest twice each on my battle bard and ranger back then. I got an artifact from a guild run through Invasion but that's it. Nothing from Genesis, nothing from Bastion and I've run that many many times with helpful guildies.

So you see, it's not an hour grind. It's been months. As I said before, randomness results in haves and have-nots. You're a 'have', good for you.

[Thelmallen]

I dont understand these posts? Please fill me in.

How can you possibly have run these many Battlefield quests and not have enough plat to buy multiple sets of boots? It is impossible. The materials can be found on the AH for a reasonable price if you are looking.

Think about it? Even if you just vendor all the trash you pull, you should have plenty of plat.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I realize you can buy the ingreds from the AH. However, just running a couple of slayers and Shrouds is not going to buy you a set, man. Blood, iron, keepsake in Sarlona are around 300k pp each. Artifacts are a dime a dozen. Lucky me, the one ingredient presently in my bag is an artifact. So each set of boots is 900k+ pp. That's a big chunk of change. If you have four to six characters that need boots, you're talking over 3.5 million pp, 35 million gp. I don't care who you are, that's a lot of in-game dough.

Now, I could buy the ingredients for a set, maybe set and a half. I've been playing this game for a long time, I have some money saved up although I'm not a plat-farmer type nor am I frugal. If I need something, I'll buy it. However, this situation combines two factors: 1) I've disagreed with the 'double-flagging' system since they 'fixed' it in a mod after ToD was released; 2) It's not a little bit of money we're talking about here, 900k pp is a lot. So on the whole, I'm not interested in bankrupting all of my characters to pay for ingredient that they retroactively 'required' to run the high-end raid in the game.

Please understand that I'm not complaining about not being able to acquire ingredients. I could get them if I wanted to. I could buy 'em, guildies would trade them to me, buddies like Souper would just give them to me if I asked. The point of the OP was to suggest some alternatives to the boot ingredient grind for those who either can't afford the ingredients or aren't lucky enough to have a bunch of generous guildies and friends who would help them out.

[Schmoe]

preception is reality. DT armor wasn't a grind for me either(well except on one toon). But I know it was/is for some people so I'm happy about the "Fix" that is coming soon. Just cause you or me pull ingred fairly easily doesn't mean all will. And trust me I'm sure multiple people have offered him Ingred(hell I did)....he's a prideful B@stard though.

My point in bringing up DT armor wasn't about the randomness of runes, or how long it takes to get the correct rune combination. My point is that the only way to get a DT rune is to run the quest and have it drop in a chest. You either run the quests, over and over and over until you get the right combination of runes, or you don't get DT armor. That is a grind.

With the boots, there are a lot of other options. Heck, you could get the boots without ever setting foot inside of an Amrath quest. That was my point. Yes, one option for getting the boots is to grind for them, but that's not the only option. So my opinion is that if you don't like the grind, you should choose one of the other options. Heck, you could run WW over and over and over until you get to 5th level, which woud be a grind, but you don't have to, so nobody considers getting to 5th level a grind.

A grind is a method, not a goal. If there are multiple methods to achieving a goal, then you can't say that getting to the goal requires a grind. In this case, the boots are a goal, and running Amrath quests over and over is the grind method.