Collectable drop rate

[EllisDee37]

>>>

BTW:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...em-Efficiently
<<<

I am well aware of this thread and I consult it whenever I am farming.

I wouldn't recommend that thread, as I find many of the farms suggested there to be sub-optimal. For example, Lords of Dust isn't a very good farm for anything; it's more like all its collectables helps justify adding it to a circuit of epic dailies. It's nowhere near the worst of the suggestions in that thread, which for my money has to be Church and the Cult for Tier 3 Lore. Ouch!

After getting fed up with poor suggestions in that thread I did my own research and testing on efficient farms for all types of collectables, and integrated my results into my own crafting planner. And then, since not everyone wants to download and run programs from anonymous people on the internet, I posted all my farming data to this forum thread.

I really don't think this is a hard problem to solve. Just designate a specific monster whose treasure bags drop T4 Cultural collectables.

I've argued many times that devs should do exactly that, and then some. My ideal crafting revamp would be the following:

• Remove purifieds from all Unbound crafting recipes, which otherwise stay the same. This includes removing them from the recipes that apply high level ML shards to base items. This change keeps unbound crafting expensive, but not ridiculously so. Plus it lets customers pay the crafter for all the costs of an unbound item.
• Backpacks now only drop cultural collectables (Rubble is unchanged)
• Add treasure bag cultural drops for the following tiers:
  
  • Tier 4: Vine Horrors, Red Musk Zombies, Shadows
  • Tier 5: Yuan-ti, Dretch, Driders
  • Tier 6: Helmed Horror, Pseudodragon
• Add collectable boxes to store. These boxes open a barter interface letting you choose any one collectable:
  
  • Common Collectable Box: 35 TP, get a stack of 30
  • Uncommon Collectable Box: 50 TP, get a stack of 10
  • Rare Collectable Box: 65 TP, get a stack of 5
• Reduce ML and collectable tier for many static shards:
  
  • Blindness Immunity lowered to level 1 / costs Tier 1 collectables
  • Deathblock raised to level 100 / Tier 3 (Why is it level 1 costing amber vials?!)
  • Eternal Faith lowered to level 100 / Tier 3
  • Everbright lowered to level 1 / Tier 1
  • Ghost Touch lowered to level 1 / Tier 1
  • Invulnerability lowered to level 1 / Tier 1
  • Keen lowered to level 50 / Tier 2
  • Persuasion lowered to level 50 / Tier 2
  • Sacred lowered to level 1 / Tier 1
  • Silver Flame lowered to level 50 / Tier 2
  • Songblade lowered to level 1 / Tier 1

If someone who actually spends time farming for these things has a better suggestion for where to farm them, I would appreciate hearing about it.

I am such a person and I gave you a better suggestion for where to farm them, including a detailed, printable map and video showing exactly where to go.

[changelingamuck]

If its not fun for you then dont do it. Just play the game in a fun way and eventually you will have the ings needed. The rinse-repeat strategy fortunately is not the only way to get those ings - unless you want them NOW aka instant gratification.

This, unfortunately, isn't true. If I don't like playing in the heroic level range, I can't simply play the game in a fun way for me and still be able to use the most fundamental crafting system in the game. In order to craft epic level items, I need collectibles that only drop in the heroic level range.

Likewise, if I don't like playing in the epic level range, I can't simply play the game in a fun way for me and still be able to use the system either. In order to craft heroic level items, I need collectibles that only drop in the epic level range.

This is one of the reasons that I believe it should be possible to trade collectibles for different collectibles of the same type/rarity. I don't believe that a basic, all-level, fundamental crafting system in a game should be funneling people into specific quest level content in order to use it. There's a structural problem there.

[Captain_Wizbang]

this forum thread.
I am such a person and I gave you a better suggestion for where to farm them, including a detailed, printable map and video showing exactly where to go.

TY for the info, and that last line of your post is quote worthy, +1 ellis, *and ty for the planner work.*

[mikarddo]

This, unfortunately, isn't true. If I don't like playing in the heroic level range, I can't simply play the game in a fun way for me and still be able to use the most fundamental crafting system in the game. In order to craft epic level items, I need collectibles that only drop in the heroic level range.

Likewise, if I don't like playing in the epic level range, I can't simply play the game in a fun way for me and still be able to use the system either. In order to craft heroic level items, I need collectibles that only drop in the heroic level range.

This is one of the reasons that I believe it should be possible to trade collectibles for different collectibles of the same type/rarity. I don't believe that a basic, all-level, fundamental crafting system in a game should be funneling people into specific quest level content in order to use it. There's a structural problem there.

A fair point indeed. Could you give a specific example though of a piece of gear you want to craft and how that particular piece would take a massive amount of time to farm outside the frame (heroic or epic) that you like to play in? That would probably make it easier to understand and debate than a vague "it takes too long".

Obviously, if you want to craft a full set of items at 7 different ML every single TR because you do new builds every time it will take a long time - but thats hardly a reasonable expectation - so lets stick to a single particular item and how that takes too long

[changelingamuck]

A fair point indeed. Could you give a specific example though of a piece of gear you want to craft and how that particular piece would take a massive amount of time to farm outside the frame (heroic or epic) that you like to play in? That would probably make it easier to understand and debate than a vague "it takes too long".

Obviously, if you want to craft a full set of items at 7 different ML every single TR because you do new builds every time it will take a long time - but thats hardly a reasonable expectation - so lets stick to a single particular item and how that takes too long

Well, what any person thinks is too much of this mindless farming is subjective, of course. So, I don't think it would 'prove' anything to give a specific example.

I would argue this: the fact that we've been commonly seeing threads started complaining about collectible farming since Cannith crafting was revamped suggests that there's a decently large group of people who are not happy being funneled into this mindless farming activity in order to use the crafting system.

[Darius1680]

I dont see that anywhere though. Please be specific. Which rare ings are you farming thats taking you 20+ hours (massive amount) for a single (bta) item?

Where did I say it took 20+ hours to farm a single ingredient? Where did I say anything about bta items? Please don't make arbitrary out of text assumptions.

[Jasparion]

So how many Polished Ores do you need for crafting an item? Ive never farmed for any collectibles and checked last night and I have 54. Also looked on the AS and someone was selling 5 for 500 AS (I assume as a joke?).

Many years ago there was a list of collectibles which were useless, useful and very useful. Does such an updated list exist? I often get to 2,000 of something and then just throw them away because they are clogging my bags.

[ValariusK]

The real issue isn't the drop rates. There are plenty of all of the collectibles sloshing around in people's bags throughout every server to satisfy all of the reasonable demand for same.
The problem is there's no viable medium of exchange. It's so bad on most servers that it's rarely even worth your time to look on the AH. People aren't willing to trade them for platinum and the Shard AH is thinly used as well. Bartering collectibles against each other is often more time consuming than farming them would be. That's the conundrum we're stuck in.

[Whitering]

If its not fun for you then dont do it. Just play the game in a fun way and eventually you will have the ings needed. The rinse-repeat strategy fortunately is not the only way to get those ings - unless you want them NOW aka instant gratification.

Personally, I play a mix. I farm some and when it gets too boring I make do with what I have. I havent sold a single ing nor do I expect to.

A lot of frustration could be solved by having the end chest of a quest also act like a backpack or whatever, it should drop 1 random collectible or something. That might not help the specific farmers directly, but I am thinking back to the old system with the Essences and the number of people who did not craft and instead sold them cheap on the exchanges kept the whole system in balance, maybe that could help now.

[mikarddo]

Where did I say it took 20+ hours to farm a single ingredient? Where did I say anything about bta items? Please don't make arbitrary out of text assumptions.

You did write "a massive amount of time". If thats not 20+ hours then our definition of massive differs. You also wrote that it would be more time than getting a rare named item (not just named item, but a rare one). Finally, I didnt write one ing, I wrote enough ings to make one item which you seem to have misinterpreted as one ing.

Tha bta part you are correct on though - but then I figured we had long since given up on unbound crafting. If you are talking about unbound crafting the matter is different indeed. But then most rare named items are not unbound and you are talking about something several orders better due to being unbound which would suggest taking longer.

[mikarddo]

Well, what any person thinks is too much of this mindless farming is subjective, of course. So, I don't think it would 'prove' anything to give a specific example.

I would argue this: the fact that we've been commonly seeing threads started complaining about collectible farming since Cannith crafting was revamped suggests that there's a decently large group of people who are not happy being funneled into this mindless farming activity in order to use the crafting system.

Or - you could argue that many want instant gratification being able to craft not just single items but full sets with minor effort. Either interpretation has merit.

[Darius1680]

Does anyone know if the Ravenloft quest have been added to the crafting planner?

[Qhualor]

So how many Polished Ores do you need for crafting an item? Ive never farmed for any collectibles and checked last night and I have 54. Also looked on the AS and someone was selling 5 for 500 AS (I assume as a joke?).

Many years ago there was a list of collectibles which were useless, useful and very useful. Does such an updated list exist? I often get to 2,000 of something and then just throw them away because they are clogging my bags.

15 Polished Ores to craft 1 item with a Dexterity enchantment. I don't know about the Acid Lore and CHA damaging effect that requires Polished Ore too because I don't craft those. I don't follow the P2WAH, but I would say 500 AS for 5 Polished Ore is probably not a joke considering it requires some real dedicated farming time to get a bunch of Polished Ore. I would pay 4.2 million plat for 15 right now, but it seems those that put them on the AH prefer to have no buy out and end up with 100k after the bidding wars end.

some collectables are easier to get than others, but they aren't considered useless. its more, depends on the player, what they need to craft and what they want to craft. they all can be used for crafting and CC gear is considered generally better than random gear and some named gear.

[changelingamuck]

Or - you could argue that many want instant gratification being able to craft not just single items but full sets with minor effort. Either interpretation has merit.

Can you blame people for not wanting to spend even a moderate amount of time going 'Open Quest Window, Set Difficulty, Enter Quest, Run to Collectible Node, Click on Node, Recall, Re-Enter, Rinse/Repeat' over and over and over?

The amount of effort is beside the point, even though I would argue that the amount is excessive in-and-of-itself. The problem is that the effort itself is tedious, mind-numbing, rote repetition. This is a Game, not a Job. Boring mindless repetition is something that is supposed to occur at work, not at play.

The initial version of Cannith crafting didn't come with this new 'mini-game' of collectible farming in order to get regular use out of it. You just played the game, any quests, any levels, doing whatever and you accumulated materials to craft fairly regularly without going out of your way to have the 'fun' of repetitively clicking for a lottery reward. Yes, I know that you're thinking, 'The new Cannith crafted items are actually worth crafting though'. Well, the old Cannith crafted items were worth crafting too when the system was first introduced. And I'd rather be able to craft worse items without eye-bleed farming than better items with eye-bleed farming that doesn't involve actually playing the game.

It genuinely, absolutely mystifies me how anyone could see this collectible farming as a 'fun new addition'. You find running to collectible nodes and clicking on them FUN and think that most people would enjoy that??? If you think that, then there's no point to having this conversation because neither of us will ever agree with the other. And I don't enjoy arguing for the sake of arguing itself either, so.

Besides, we're guilty of de-railing this thread (or at least I'm guilty of it since I think I started the de-rail, which is my bad).

[EllisDee37]

15 Polished Ores to craft 1 item with a Dexterity enchantment.

5, not 15. (Polished Ore is Uncommon.)

Does anyone know if the Ravenloft quest have been added to the crafting planner?

I haven't added Ravenloft farming spots to mine yet because I don't own Ravenloft. Ramzes doesn't appear to have added Ravenloft farming locations to his online planner either.

The amount of effort is beside the point, even though I would argue that the amount is excessive in-and-of-itself. The problem is that the effort itself is tedious, mind-numbing, rote repetition. This is a Game, not a Job. Boring mindless repetition is something that is supposed to occur at work, not at play.

I would argue that the intended design of the game is to run from 1 to 30. If you intentionally only run epics or only run heroics, you are skipping part of the game they intend you to run and thus missing out on collectables you're intended to have. Think of the tedium of collectable farming as the cost of playing the game in a way not intended.

The initial version of Cannith crafting didn't come with this new 'mini-game' of collectible farming in order to get regular use out of it. You just played the game, any quests, any levels, doing whatever and you accumulated materials to craft fairly regularly without going out of your way to have the 'fun' of repetitively clicking for a lottery reward.

This is flat-out not true. Collectables used to come from specific locations, so if you didn't do those quests, you were screwed. (Not just specific levels, specific adventure packs.)

For example, glittering and luminescent dusts were used in the old system, and if you didn't like (and thus skipped) necro packs entirely, well, you were just SoL. Or how about fragrant drowshood? Hope you ran Tangleroot every life!

You have some serious rose-colored glasses for the old system. And no, when it was first introduced, it did not offer anything for epic players.

EDIT: My join is accurate (Feb 2011) and if yours is too (Mar 2011) then we both join just before the first cannith crafting was introduced. My memory of the first introduction was that leveling up for a new player was prohibitive, so I just did without many of the crafted items I would have liked to make. With the new system it's easy to level but the finished items require more collectables, such that you end up going without many of the crafted items you would have liked to make. Seems like six of one, half a dozen of the other.

[Matuse]

If you think the old Cannith system didn't have grind, I challenge you to go to heroic Temple of Vol and ransack it over and over and over again (a process which does not take hours, but WEEKS) to get the Locus Of Vol in order to stick Vampirism onto a weapon.

[changelingamuck]

I would argue that the intended design of the game is to run from 1 to 30. If you intentionally only run epics or only run heroics, you are skipping part of the game they intend you to run and thus missing out on collectables you're intended to have. Think of the tedium of collectable farming as the cost of playing the game in a way not intended.

I don't play the game that way. That was an example of one way in which players are unnaturally funneled by the new Cannith crafting design into entering certain levels of content in order to have Cannith crafting materials, regardless of their preferences for play. There are other possible examples like people who only have one character--that character is obviously only going to be in one level range, but need collectibles from all level ranges in order to craft. I'm sure that you or so-and-so or what's her name are going to take issue with that example for some reason too. But I'm not spending more time out of my life exhaustively listing every scenario like this in order to "prove" someone else's opinion "wrong" who is never going to change their perspective.

This is flat-out not true. Collectables used to come from specific locations, so if you didn't do those quests, you were screwed. (Not just specific levels, specific adventure packs.)

For example, glittering and luminescent dusts were used in the old system, and if you didn't like (and thus skipped) necro packs entirely, well, you were just SoL. Or how about fragrant drowshood? Hope you ran Tangleroot every life!

If you think the old Cannith system didn't have grind, I challenge you to go to heroic Temple of Vol and ransack it over and over and over again (a process which does not take hours, but WEEKS) to get the Locus Of Vol in order to stick Vampirism onto a weapon.

There's a saying, "not being able to see the forest for the trees".

This is nitpicking. The way in which collectibles were originally used in the old system isn't anywhere close to how they're embedded in the current system; so there wasn't this design-inducement into this extent of mindless collectible grinding. Yes, some individuals went out of their way to farm certain collectibles for the few uses that they had back then; but that was an exception to the design of the crafting system. I'm not going to draft DDO message board postings like I'm writing a legal brief. I think most people wouldn't get hung up on exceptional cases and treat leaving them out like it's a crucial flaw in an argument.

You have some serious rose-colored glasses for the old system. And no, when it was first introduced, it did not offer anything for epic players.

And I would say that you have some serious rose-colored glasses for the new system. I haven't discussed my overall feelings about the old system comprehensively; I didn't love everything about it and I like a lot of things about the new system. However, I consider the level-range restricted basis of the collectible ingredients to be a large problem for the reasons that I described. Ultimately, this is a matter of opinion. You disagree with me and you're allowed to feel that way. I disagree with you and I'm allowed to feel that way.

[EllisDee37]

The way in which collectibles were originally used in the old system isn't anywhere close to how they're embedded in the current system

And by the same token, the barrier for entry (ie: leveling up your crafting ability) isn't anywhere close to how it was in the old system. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

What if the new system required no collectables to make your effects shards, but leveling it up cost three times the amount of all collectables you've ever spent in the new system so far. Would it be better, worse, or the same?

[mikarddo]

However, I consider the level-range restricted basis of the collectible ingredients to be a large problem for the reasons that I described.

Thats a very valid point and one I can agree with. It would be better indeed if it was somehow possible to get the ings needed at different levels of play.

However, it could be difficult setting up such a system without either a) making it even easier crafting (I consider it very easy having crafted maybe 50 great items with less effort than it took me to level up in the old system not even capping) or b) making it significantly harder to get the particular ingredient you want at a particular time (which is quite easy if indeed boring right now).

An example of a) would be a trade-in vendor where you could trade "worthless" ingrediences for "valuable" ones even at a 3:1 rate. An example of b) would be making everything just drop randomly at any level meaning you could not focus on getting a particular part.

[Qhualor]

5, not 15. (Polished Ore is Uncommon.)

yep, I was wrong. they are so hard for me to get and so long until I can actually craft a dex item I must have mixed them up with the sour darkcaps.