Farming items is the biggest turn off

[arminius]

But.... it's.... playing the game?

What did you think the game was? There isn't some magic point at the end where after you grind and grind and plan and plan and design and fuss over details and strategize and develop tactics and twitch for dear life and grind some more, that then you're finally ready and the game begins. That was the game. You were doing it.

[SirValentine]

did you not just hear anything I said?

I heard something along the lines of, "I'm upset that running lower difficulties solo doesn't give me the same rewards as groups of people cooperatively running higher difficulties get." Did I get that right?

Higher difficulties give better rewards than lower difficulties. It's that way by explicit dev choice, and many of us like that doing higher difficulties has higher rewards.

Multiple people cooperating can share their rewards more efficiently than someone running solo. That's the way it is, and the way many of us prefer. Real life works that way, too.

You know what the options are. It's up to you to decide what, if anything, you are going to do about it. Besides complain on the forums, that is.

[ShifterThePirate]

The problem is then you have to play on a gimped char without working to ungimp it and the game is no fun, so this doesn't work very well. Basically this equates to not playing ddo (not figuratively being unable to do anything type of not playing but actually not playing) until the better loot comes out and then hoping you can farm that with some better luck.

You can do fine and still have fun in the game even without the 'best' loot.

[krimsonrane]

On normal you could easily do 100+ runs and not get the item you're looking for, on hard idk how unlikely you are to get it but I've occasionally gotten loot running hard... I'd guess it might still reasonably take 40+ runs to get the specific item you're looking for. Elite can still easily take more than 10 runs to get your item, on r10 you could actually expect to get the item within the 8 runs to ransacking the chest because of a high chance of getting loot in the first place and because if you're doing r10 you likely have a full group so 6 ppl pulling stuff, but I don't think I've ever seen r10 farms--highest is probs r6 and only a couple ppl do that either. I'd just farm elite/r1 for solo farming but would recommend not farming solo because you are very likely to ransack the chest without getting anything you want.

You should say that out loud a few times to hear how it sounds. "just farm the highest level content in the game solo on elite or reaper". Easy peasy.

[Tsutti]

That's an insulting assumption to make. "if you can't solo reaper you're a gimp"

No?? That's not even remotely what I said lol. You said "if you don't like farming gear then don't do it" and if you don't have gear because you don't farm gear because you don't like farming gear then you will be gimped no matter how strong your character otherwise is. You will have trouble soloing hard without any gear, and without that one piece of gear he's looking for he won't be totally unable to compete but his char will be weaker than he wants it to be and weaker than it could be with that one piece of gear and thus be performing suboptimally. Not gimped in that case, but your statement about not farming gear if you don't like doing it will eventually lead to a char not having any up-to-date gear and thus unable to do anything at all.

[SirValentine]

My comment here is off topic but I didn't know of any crucible exploit, I figured it was wiz king where you could run 3 man epic normal for 70k+ xp every 5 minute run that led to the opt ransack.

The opts at the very start of Crucible require zero combat, and are exactly the same every time. Apparently some people just used scripting programs to automatically run them over and over.

[Tsutti]

You should say that out loud a few times to hear how it sounds. "just farm the highest level content in the game solo on elite or reaper". Easy peasy.

True, not everyone can do that. In this case I'd just say put up an lfm for it and don't do any hard runs while you wait for a group that can run elite or reaper to join because the hard run has about half the chance of dropping loot.

Honestly I assumed that the OP could run solo elite/r1 (even if not without heals, can use a hire) just because they said they were only missing this one gear piece but they didn't specify what diff they were running so I shouldn't assume anything like that.

[krimsonrane]

forget it. today is my last day on these forums trying to add my 2 cents in hopes that some dev will listen. You can have it. There's more traps and monsters here than in the game. I need a new hobby anyway.

[Bunker]

You know how sick I get of this circular reasoning?
Right now there is exactly one lfm up on orien for capped toons. 1.
I'm in a guild of 1 person. One.
I don't log on to find friends. I log on to play ddo.
I'm not interested in joining pugs so i can beg people to pass me loot.
When i play, I often go AFk for a variety of reasons. That's not good for group play.

So here's the circular reasoning.
1-I am sick of farming dozens of times.
2- What diff are you doing?
3- The difficulty I'm capable of doing.
4- Well do reaper 99 and you'll get it easy.
5- did you not just hear anything I said?

First off, you need a coke and a smile. ........ and maybe even a hug.

Groups man. Groups. MMORPG is all about grouping.

There is a big difference between begging ppl in your group and simply asking. There are times that I might be grouped with 5 semi-pug strangers, and they will still pass loot more times than not if you ask. Key word is ask. And if someone loots what you are also after, don't be a hater. (not saying you are, but its looking that way)

Run Elite or higher difficulty. LFM up stating what you are searching for. But don't demand. Demands in lfms turn ppl right off from joining.

I find backpack space is also helpful in looting. So if you clear out that big chip on your shoulder about "friends" and grouping in a group designed game, I bet you can replace that chip with the loot you are looking for. Happy Hunting.

[arminius]

You should say that out loud a few times to hear how it sounds. "just farm the highest level content in the game solo on elite or reaper". Easy peasy.

It's a progression. The named items, apart from the raid items and the Minor Artifacts, are bound to account. So if you have multiple characters all running lower difficulties, they'll gradually start to build up enough loot that they get better enough to go to the next difficulty. This especially works if you have a stronger character, that acts like a pathfinder, running higher difficulties because they can. They get better stuff and share with the other characters and the strong helps to build up the weaker until they move to the next higher difficulty.

It's basically how any skill works in real life. You don't go into the gym and then leave PO'd that you can't bench 400 pounds on the first day. You struggle to get to 100 pounds, but if you keep trying then that gets easier, and you start to do exercises on supporting muscle groups and then they get stronger and then before you know it, you're at 200 pounds because the system works together in a way that's stronger than the individual muscle groups. Then you keep going until you reach your goal or develop other goals or whatever.

[Tsutti]

I heard something along the lines of, "I'm upset that running lower difficulties solo doesn't give me the same rewards as groups of people cooperatively running higher difficulties get." Did I get that right?

Higher difficulties give better rewards than lower difficulties. It's that way by explicit dev choice, and many of us like that doing higher difficulties has higher rewards.

Multiple people cooperating can share their rewards more efficiently than someone running solo. That's the way it is, and the way many of us prefer. Real life works that way, too.

You know what the options are. It's up to you to decide what, if anything, you are going to do about it. Besides complain on the forums, that is.

I think his main problem is that finding a group willing to farm high skulls is difficult because you typically either need to be in a guild with at least a few people equipped to run that difficulty and who are willing to help or you need to get lucky with an lfm. The trouble with an lfm for, say, r6+ farming is that most of the people who tend to join r6+ lfms are farming rxp and thus won't want to do the same quest more than once, so you might get one run with the farming lfm on r6 but then a lot of ppl in your group might just leave to run other reaper stuff. I suppose you could run an lfm like that, run one time on every quest you need gear from with these ppl to get high loot chances, then they leave and you put up the lfm again for elite/r1 to continue farming (if you didn't get your items already).

[SpartanKiller13]

On normal you could easily do 100+ runs and not get the item you're looking for, on hard idk how unlikely you are to get it but I've occasionally gotten loot running hard... I'd guess it might still reasonably take 40+ runs to get the specific item you're looking for. Elite can still easily take more than 10 runs to get your item, on r10 you could actually expect to get the item within the 8 runs to ransacking the chest because of a high chance of getting loot in the first place and because if you're doing r10 you likely have a full group so 6 ppl pulling stuff, but I don't think I've ever seen r10 farms--highest is probs r6 and only a couple ppl do that either. I'd just farm elite/r1 for solo farming but would recommend not farming solo because you are very likely to ransack the chest without getting anything you want.

• 5-named drop with 10% drop rate = 2% per pull. 1-(0.98^100) = 86.7% chance you'd get the item you're after on a 5-named drop quest on 100 Normal pulls.
• 5-named drop with 16% drop rate = 3.2% per pull. 1-(0.968^40) = 72.8% chance you'd get the item you're after on a 5-named drop quest with 40 Hard pulls.
• 5-named drop with 33% drop rate = 6.6% per pull. 1-(0.934^10) = 49.5% chance you'd get the item you're after on a 5-named drop quest with 10 Elite pulls.
• 5-named drop with 43% drop rate = 8.6% per pull. 1-(0.914^10) = 51.3% chance you'd get the item you're after on a 5-named drop quest with 8 R10 pulls.

TL;DR: 10 Elite runs is as good as 8 R10 runs. 100 Normal and 40 Hard are both better odds than those.

• 5-named drop with 33% drop rate = 6.6% per pull. 1-(0.934^48) = 96.2% chance you'd get the item you're after on a 5-named drop quest with 48 Elite pulls.

Full party Elite/low Reaper runs are by far the best option (6 x 8 to ransack a party without rerolls).

forget it. today is my last day on these forums trying to add my 2 cents in hopes that some dev will listen. You can have it. There's more traps and monsters here than in the game. I need a new hobby anyway.

Take care, I hope you find another game with higher drop rates that brings you joy

[Tsutti]

There is a big difference between begging ppl in your group and simply asking. There are times that I might be grouped with 5 semi-pug strangers, and they will still pass loot more times than not if you ask. Key word is ask. And if someone loots what you are also after, don't be a hater.

But don't demand. Demands in lfms turn ppl right off from joining.

Agreed, the only time people I typically see people loot things without asking if anyone wants them (in farming lfms anyway) is if they are specifically looking for that item, if they don't just loot it they may not be looking for it in which case asking almost always results in a pass.

And yeah demanding just sounds rude and makes you seem like you won't be fun to group with.

Groups man. Groups. MMORPG is all about grouping. Run Elite or higher difficulty. LFM up stating what you are searching for.

EE through r4 or so for looting runs can work well for lfms, going much higher really and you'll attract the crowd of people looking solely for rxp and not caring about what other ppl are looking for though so going higher on the skulls for farming runs probably won't work too well if you're going until chest ransack.

[arminius]

I guess what bugs me most about the thread is that this system IS the improvement. Compared to literally hundreds of runs for Sword of Shadows, Bloodstone, Litany, Torc, piecing together Greensteel items and just never, never, never getting just one more devil scale, for god's sake, you can't just give me o n e bloody scale?

[ValariusK]

If you can mostly solo something on EE, the best way to farm is this:
Put up an LFM for the quest saying you want item X. Set the level range way wider than would be normal. You can do this because you have power to spare for EE. If you've got power to spare for R1, post it R1. Also indicate that you're perfectly ok with people pulling in a 2nd account if they've got one to effectively give you another roll.
On Orien, my oldest son, my wife, and myself all help people who post like this pretty frequently to get the items they want or need. My wife in particular has great loot luck pulling things for other people who say they've been farming forever. But lots of people, not just my family are more than willing to help you. Its like devil assault semi-pikage, just with way better xp. When I'm low epics its a great change of pace to help someone get their part of the family or other set.

[Tsutti]

• 5-named drop with 10% drop rate = 2% per pull. 1-(0.98^100) = 86.7% chance you'd get the item you're after on a 5-named drop quest on 100 Normal pulls.
• 5-named drop with 16% drop rate = 3.2% per pull. 1-(0.968^40) = 72.8% chance you'd get the item you're after on a 5-named drop quest with 40 Hard pulls.
• 5-named drop with 33% drop rate = 6.6% per pull. 1-(0.934^10) = 49.5% chance you'd get the item you're after on a 5-named drop quest with 10 Elite pulls.
• 5-named drop with 43% drop rate = 8.6% per pull. 1-(0.914^10) = 51.3% chance you'd get the item you're after on a 5-named drop quest with 8 R10 pulls.

TL;DR: 10 Elite runs is as good as 8 R10 runs. 100 Normal and 40 Hard are both better odds than those.

• 5-named drop with 33% drop rate = 6.6% per pull. 1-(0.934^48) = 96.2% chance you'd get the item you're after on a 5-named drop quest with 48 Elite pulls.

Full party Elite/low Reaper runs are by far the best option (6 x 8 to ransack a party without rerolls).

Numbers don't lie there. I haven't run normal/hard cap level much, but it just feels like nothing drops when I do run so I exaggerated there lol.

True that the 100 normal or 40 hard are better than 10 elite but my main point was that elite/r1 is the best option for solo farming, if you can solo that. Apparently the numbers I arbitrarily picked to make my point were poorly chosen and it would have been better to just use the same number of runs for each difficulty and show calculations for your chance to pull on each.

As for the r10, that's 51% solo but you're not farming that solo. Perhaps I wasn't too clear with this but I meant that on r10 you would run in a 5-6 man group because, well, that's nearly always how you run r10 where it is comparatively common to run elite/r1 solo.

On normal you could easily do 100+ runs and not get the item you're looking for, on hard idk how unlikely you are to get it but I've occasionally gotten loot running hard... I'd guess it might still reasonably take 40+ runs to get the specific item you're looking for. Elite can still easily take more than 10 runs to get your item, on r10 you could actually expect to get the item within the 8 runs to ransacking the chest because of a high chance of getting loot in the first place and because if you're doing r10 you likely have a full group so 6 ppl pulling stuff, but I don't think I've ever seen r10 farms--highest is probs r6 and only a couple ppl do that either. I'd just farm elite/r1 for solo farming but would recommend not farming solo because you are very likely to ransack the chest without getting anything you want.

EDIT: The reason I think, without actually doing any math, that r10 would be massively stronger to pull your item than ee is that with 6 ppl you have a 33% chance per person to pull something each run--r10 has a 43% chance per person, which makes it a lot more likely per person and this difference should then be amplified by having more people.

[Tyrande]

• [...]
• 5-named drop with 33% drop rate = 6.6% per pull. 1-(0.934^10) = 49.5% chance you'd get the item you're after on a 5-named drop quest with 10 Elite pulls.
• 5-named drop with 43% drop rate = 8.6% per pull. 1-(0.914^10) = 51.3% chance you'd get the item you're after on a 5-named drop quest with 8 R10 pulls.

TL;DR: 10 Elite runs is as good as 8 R10 runs. 100 Normal and 40 Hard are both better odds than those.

• 5-named drop with 33% drop rate = 6.6% per pull. 1-(0.934^48) = 96.2% chance you'd get the item you're after on a 5-named drop quest with 48 Elite pulls.

Sounds like the sweet spot is Elite? But if your group do R1 instead of Elite, the odds increase by 20% since 10 Elite pulls the chance goes up to 72%.
With R1, Instead of 48 times with Elite for 96% chance, your character's group only have to do it for 24 times for very close to 100% chance to drop.

Of course, this assumes that the logic of 33% to drop any named on elite, and 34% on R1 is correct; and there are not any weird stuff going on.

[Tsutti]

piecing together Greensteel items and just never, never, never getting just one more devil scale, for god's sake, you can't just give me o n e bloody scale?

fr tho, if someone gave ppl who've farmed shroud/leg shroud a lot 30 large scales, some of em would be able to make 30 completed items bc they just have so many other ings lol

[Tsutti]

Sounds like the sweet spot is Elite? But if your group do R1 instead of Elite, the odds increase by 20% since 10 Elite pulls the chance goes up to 72%.
With R1, Instead of 48 times with Elite for 96% chance, your character's group only have to do it for 24 times for very close to 100% chance to drop.

pretty sure r1 won't pull up the drop rate by so much, he is showing numbers for elite and for r10 (highlighting to draw attention to that extra 0 at the end)

I agree running r1 if the group can is still better because a tiny bit of rxp is stilll rxp while you're helping someone farm, which is nice, and if you have someone in the group with a significant number of reaper points then r1 could be significantly faster than elite. Also a small extra loot chance that I'd guess is somewhat negligible.

[Stravix]

pretty sure r1 won't pull up the drop rate by so much, he is showing numbers for elite and for r10 (highlighting to draw attention to that extra 0 at the end)

I agree running r1 if the group can is still better because a tiny bit of rxp is stilll rxp while you're helping someone farm, which is nice, and if you have someone in the group with a significant number of reaper points then r1 could be significantly faster than elite. Also a small extra loot chance that I'd guess is somewhat negligible.

Generally, If i'm putting us an LFM for a loot farm, I run it on Elite, so people outside the reaper level range can join in. Similar to the other person who pasted something similar, I look for loot groups to try to help them out, even if I'm out of the normal level range for that quest.