Colossal Crystals Payout Low

[Credinus]

Has anyone else had a problem with low jade scorpion payouts on colossal crystals? I've been soloing CR16 challenges (at-level) to work on getting some of the level 16 gear, and most of the time I'll complete the primary objective and maybe 1 optional; in other quests, I tend to get anywhere from 120-180 ingredients using this method.

However, in colossal crystals, which I've only managed to complete twice out of dozens of attempts (the difficulty on this challenge really seems to be WAY higher than all the other challenges but that's a story for a different thread; it also doesn't help that hireling AI is apparently extremely poor in this quest, with my hireling often just sitting there doing nothing while being wailed on by Drow), I've gotten a very low payout. The first completion, which included no options, got me 90-something ingredients. The second completion, which included the optional to clear out the colosseum, got me 84 ingredients.

Compared to the amount of ingredients I'm getting in other challenges, this seems extremely low. Taking that into consideration, I've been better off just doing Moving Targets and converting the manuscripts to scorpions at 2:1, since I can complete that challenge in about 12 minutes and usually net around 200 manuscripts from it.

Has anyone else noticed low payout rates with this challenge? Maybe it's a problem with just the CR16 one? Is there a trick to getting more?