Guild Wars 2

I know for an absolute fact that everyone is having problems with the ridiculously low drop rate.
Butter and chocolate, raining from the skies and coming out of our ears.
Bog Skales in upper Metrica Province dropped plenty of vials of weak blood pre-cooking patch. Now I can raise a freakin skale farm based off the amount of eggs (cooking item) they drop. Not to mention all the amazing dishes I can make from fins!
Fin soup, fin pizza, fins and chips…the list goes on…

What in the world has happened to all the scales, bloods, fangs and all the other materials vital to crafting??
I literally can’t keep up crafting if the drop rate is this bad. It’s even cause those items prices to jack up!

Seriously there’s enough butter and chocolate to make a palace out of it…

It can’t be just me feeling like this.

If you had access to all the materials you needed to craft, you wouldn’t need the Trading Post. Which requires gold. Which you buy from ArenaNet.

A nice tidy package, wouldn’t you say?

I agree, prior to the cooking patch, it was fine. Now? Not fine.

I agree it is causing crafting materials to be more expensive than the finished product; this was a problem in WOW in crafting swords or whatever at various levels. There needs to be an adjustment so that the items used in crafting are more abundant so that a finished product then can be worth more than the items needed to make it.

As is typical in massive programmed things…. such as MMO’s you fix one problem you then create a greater problem with the fix.

By adding cooking ingredients to a drop table you now take items that were in short supply and put them in dire levels.

Furthermore with the anti farming script if you go out and attempt to gather the resources yourself the script kicks in and prevents the drops.

They really need to relook at crafting demands as this is a horrible state of affairs for crafters (not speaking of cooking as this hasn’t changed the ease due to the monumental drop rates).

vjek.4270:

If you had access to all the materials you needed to craft, you wouldn’t need the Trading Post. Which requires gold. Which you buy from ArenaNet.

A nice tidy package, wouldn’t you say?
.

No actually not.
I have 200 spare gems siting in my account- I was desperate enough for crafting materials that I seriously considered turning it into gold- I think at the time I could get 3 silver and some copper for it. I bought those gems with real money.
So really Arena Net is not trying to get you to buy gems for gold.
It is just a case of an imbalance in drop rates that can be fixed.

Yeah I was talking to a guildie earlier about cooking and the Peppercorn change just recently made Cooking go from elite to Legendary
I understand they wanna make it harder to get things you need to craft cooking items with but Holy crap HOW hard do you wanna make it?
Too Hard and Nobody is gonna cook except for the crazy hardcore wackos with nothing but spare time on their hands
a Good start at changing this back would be putting Peppercorns BACK on the merchants as purchasable either Coins or Karma I don’t give a Skritt’s Behind
But please let’s not make things harder than they actually have to be?

Drunken Mad King.8193:

As is typical in massive programmed things…. such as MMO’s you fix one problem you then create a greater problem with the fix.

By adding cooking ingredients to a drop table you now take items that were in short supply and put them in dire levels.

Furthermore with the anti farming script if you go out and attempt to gather the resources yourself the script kicks in and prevents the drops.

They really need to relook at crafting demands as this is a horrible state of affairs for crafters (not speaking of cooking as this hasn’t changed the ease due to the monumental drop rates).

That anti-farming script makes no sense at all. At lv80 if you want gear, you need to grind for it. And then, you punish people for grinding. What?

I hate to be cynical, I hope they did not decrease these item drops just so that we would have to purchase gems to get gold for items we need to craft. Right now you have to spend an hour or so running around getting copper to sell at the auction house in order to purchase items needed to level your crafting abilities.

actually copper was what was Leveling my crafting ability
One of them anyways
Armorsmith/Cooking is what I have
Minute I saw Iron in the 15-25 Zones I was overjoyed but I also mined the heck outta silver too until I went to the forges and realized Armorsmith can’t do anything with Silver so I mailed it to a guildie who could
But the Trading Post is severely hampered too imho since we have to sell these materials to get other materials and the other materials are in seriously short supply
It’s like Dubbya Tee Eff ANet

Actually the changes might be a good thing for crafters. The problem right now is there is a huge herd mentality that everyone must get their crafting to 400 in a few days. We have supply problems because everyone is crafting for no reason other then to get to 400 so they can say they did it. The stuff they do craft, they are NPC’ing it or selling it on the market for a loss of what they could sell it to the NPC’s for.

What ArenaNet needs to do is drive down the supply of items so the things that we are crafting are actually valuable and worth crafting. I have never played another MMO where people are dumping all their crafted items to the sale shops for less then they can sell to NPC’s. Especially in the first few weeks of the game. Usually in other MMO’s this is the golden age of crafting, as the stuff you craft is supposed to be in short supply.

There are a lot of items that are being dumped below the cost of selling it to an NPC. I personally like to craft my own weapons and armor for my character. But I am finding this expensive thing to do under the circumstances, since other items crafted are below costs at the present moment. I am currently crafting items for level 35 my character is 38. It cost me about 1G to get to level 35 and I expect maybe 2g to get to level 40.

I always liked to craft in previous MMO’s and I have always found the same problem even in ones that where far along, that the price of the materials together where always greater than the object being created. The only case I did make profits on items where Armor sets or rare recipes that I was able to turn into a greater profit. But even with those items I knew where to go to get the drops for the ingredients. With the system you have here at certain levels it would take you 8 items of (blood vales, claws or etc.) to make the item for a sword or a piece of armor. Now they go for about .40 in the auction house that total cost would be about 3.20, this is not including wood or items such as copper or iron. If you post the item it sells at cost or slightly higher at 1 silver.

If you increase drop rate it pushes the prices down for the items selling around .4 and let you farm them or buy them. There is no reason for the combined items to be more than the cost of selling it to a vendor. If I was to start a business I would not even bother making such products because I would lose money. So the economics of the game should be that if you make items the total cost should be in line with selling it to a vendor or slightly higher. Otherwise the whole process is just plain bad business.

blakdoxa.7520

Bog Skales in upper Metrica Province dropped plenty of vials of weak blood pre-cooking patch. Now I can raise a freakin skale farm based off the amount of eggs (cooking item) they drop.

Thanks for the tip, have been going crazy trying to find eggs since the nerf.

Well in MMO’s that business practice is highly exploitable. Selling to NPC’s should be a last ditch effort to get rid of stock. If it takes 3 Silver to make an item. The NPC’s should give you 2 Silver, but the market especially in the beginning when things should be rare should be sitting near the 5-6 Silver mark. The problem is we have tons of people selling on the market for less then the 2 Silver the NPC’s will give you. Maybe that is why I usually prefer heavy grind games where people have to work to obtain items. There usually isn’t a race to see who can sell for less when they have to grind for a few weeks/months to make an item.

I think a fair solution should be instead of fixed prices for items to sell to npc’s, they should vary based on market price of the cost of goods of an item. That would take time to implement into the game.

aeonZgamer.5307:

Yeah I was talking to a guildie earlier about cooking and the Peppercorn change just recently made Cooking go from elite to Legendary
I understand they wanna make it harder to get things you need to craft cooking items with but Holy crap HOW hard do you wanna make it?
Too Hard and Nobody is gonna cook except for the crazy hardcore wackos with nothing but spare time on their hands
a Good start at changing this back would be putting Peppercorns BACK on the merchants as purchasable either Coins or Karma I don’t give a Skritt’s Behind
But please let’s not make things harder than they actually have to be?

You can gather the peppercorns now; I believe young herbs have a chance to give them to you, although the mature herbs in the higher zones might also drop them.

… on my 8 characters spread among races and classes, don’t minding what i’m killing to farm, but rather going random, i ended up after each starter zones with fine materials in weird proportions:
Tiny Venom Sacs -> 9 parts
Weak Blood -> 3 parts
Bone Chips -> 1 part

+ Butter -> 36 parts!!!!

Please fix!!!

Yeah you can buy fine materials from the Trader, at 80, when you have the money, but then levelling crafting as you level is completely pointless.

PS: Also Jute and Leather suffer rarity in comparison to ore or wood. I have the latters in double to triple quantity over the the first.

vjek.4270:

If you had access to all the materials you needed to craft, you wouldn’t need the Trading Post. Which requires gold. Which you buy from ArenaNet.

A nice tidy package, wouldn’t you say?

I agree, prior to the cooking patch, it was fine. Now? Not fine.

Problem is that drop rate of blue and green armor/weapons is sky high while there’s too few trash that make money without being usefull.
this meant that there’s a massive deflation, people got too little gold but too many “good enough” items thus the value of crafted items is basically zero, you wont sell any even at ingredients cost.

Ultimately, the drop rates on fine crafting materials are so low that it’s basically impossible to keep two crafts up to your level and wear your own gear, unless you’re taking cooking or jeweling. It’s really, really bad, and it’s saddening how expensive these crafting materials are.

After getting 100% in every map that yields tier 2 fine crafting mats and STILL not having enough to advance my crafting skills past that tier, I essentially gave up on crafting. The drop rates need to be seriously looked at if I can complete every zone and still be short on mats.

This isn’t fun Anet. Please look at it. =(

They need to address this issue as no matter what level bag you get… what do you get a majority of the time….

Butter

I am guessing the programmers are minions of Paula Deen.

Please bring back our blue level crafting materials. Or have two different types of bags drop… Food material bags and crafting material bags.

Terrahero.9358:

Drunken Mad King.8193:

As is typical in massive programmed things…. such as MMO’s you fix one problem you then create a greater problem with the fix.

By adding cooking ingredients to a drop table you now take items that were in short supply and put them in dire levels.

Furthermore with the anti farming script if you go out and attempt to gather the resources yourself the script kicks in and prevents the drops.

They really need to relook at crafting demands as this is a horrible state of affairs for crafters (not speaking of cooking as this hasn’t changed the ease due to the monumental drop rates).

That anti-farming script makes no sense at all. At lv80 if you want gear, you need to grind for it. And then, you punish people for grinding. What?

They also bragged endlessly before release, for YEARS, about how they were going to be different with GW2 and not do things like this.

I like the crafting, mainly because its simple and not some silly mini-game like EQ2 and Vanguard were, but the material supply situation is a joke right now.

I also don’t understand little annoyances like having to run to a marketplace NPC to get items you buy… but you can look at your bank account? Silly, just completely silly, and sometimes a big time waster.

That anti-farming script makes no sense at all. At lv80 if you want gear, you need to grind for it. And then, you punish people for grinding. What?

i’ve only ever seen the script kick in after an hour in the same location with a full grp farming, and only applied to the dropping of armour/weapons, not materials.

It’s also worth mentioning that I’ve only 57 sticks of butter in my bank, and I dont use them for anything, so I mus not be getting as much butter as everyone else…

They also bragged endlessly before release, for YEARS, about how they were going to be different with GW2 and not do things like this.
I like the crafting, mainly because its simple and not some silly mini-game like EQ2 and Vanguard were, but the material supply situation is a joke right now.
I also don’t understand little annoyances like having to run to a marketplace NPC to get items you buy… but you can look at your bank account? Silly, just completely silly, and sometimes a big time waster.

I agree…

and running to the Marketplace after I purchase mats at the crafting station, is one of the annoyances in this game that drives me CRAZY. In fact, I made a bug report that the Trading Post was busted because I could NOT “take all” from the Trading Post after purchasing items from it while standing at the crafting station!

Of course, I felt like an idiot, but just goes to show how silly this is.

In the past 3 days I have collected…..5…. Gaze pieces… FIVE… and I have taken apart each and every cloth drop I have gotten. 5 is not even nearly enough to make one insignia. I am all for lowering it, but while I am bombarded with butter, chocolate, bones and claws, I would just like to see some sort of balancing. I can farm ori-tree and orichalcum twice a day, but I cant get my hands on some dratted cloth!!!!

WvW was great for farming. now all you get is junk items and an ocasional blue. I understand doing that in WvW but in the PvE the drop rates are so bad. Unless you need butter and chocolate.
I think yellow drops are a myth now.

ArenaNet has implemented “diminishing returns” to the game, this applies to drop rates and DEs, basically, the more you do a DE or the longer you are in an area, killing stuff, the higher your DR (Diminishing Return) is.

Example:
I pulled 5 bog skales in Sparkfly Fen, killed them and looted 3 vials of thick blood. My next group I pulled another 5 skales and got none, and then it kept going with no blood drops.

To be honest, this is unacceptable. Guild Wars 1 is a game where you farm to get money, and it works very well. I see what you want to achieve with the DR system, having to keep moving around to get the drops, but the system in itself, to be blunt, is crap. WP cost alot and you would therefore lose alot of money traveling from spot to spot, only getting 3 vials of blood at a time. If I don’t want to spend alot of money buying materials from the TP I very well should be able to!

Spent 2 hours trying to get 5 Vials of powerful blood from snow trolls in Frostgorge sound.
Got 11 potent blood, some large bones (they’re not supposed to drop that right?) and a buch of useless magic items.

GW2 has turned into a massive grind-fest for me. No grinding my foot.

For there to be diminishing returns, there needs to be a return in the first place.

Correction, was looking for powerful, got potent

Spent 2 hours trying to get 5 Vials of powerful blood from snow trolls in Frostgorge sound.
Got 11 potent blood, some large bones (they’re not supposed to drop that right?) and a buch of useless magic items.

GW2 has turned into a massive grind-fest for me. No grinding my foot.

For there to be diminishing returns, there needs to be a return in the first place.

Then adjust your playing style.

I’ll simplify this for you.

Let’s make some assumptions that I cannot verify but will make my point and hopefully make farming easier for you.

Let’s assume that these 5 vials cost 20c, for simplicity’s sake.
Let’s also assume over the course of those two hours you only managed to pick up 50c worth of goods [total value].

Overall, this wasn’t in your interest because you would have to spend even more time just to make enough money to buy them off the TP since they aren’t dropping for you.

Now all you have to do to get ahead is find ONE activity in this game that makes you more than what you made [25c/hour] grinding those snow trolls and then go do it.

2 hours later you may not have one single vial of powerful blood but you will have enough money to buy them, whereas before you did not, as long as you are making 50c an hour by doing it.

So the question remains – how are you going to balance out your desire to get the drops that you want against your playstyle?

Well if grinding this way is frustrating for you, which it clearly is, then grind in another fashion that nets you ever greater revenue and go buy them on the TP.

I ran into this issue in WoW but then the term opportunity cost hit me square in the face – there are times where I want to play a certain way but I know for a fact that by doing so I will make less money than I can doing something else, but that is the price I have to pay for having fun the way I want to have fun.

But the joy is that nobody dictates how I will play this game and if I have to play the game a certain way and that isn’t fun then I simply stop playing it and move on.

I hope you find what works best for you but the easier answer is to adjust your playstyle until they can “fix” whatever problems they deem worth fixing.

It’s simply not worth it to me to pursue anything beyond cooking and jewelcrafting. The drop rate is so low, that even when I break down to buy what I need on the auction house, sometimes, it’s not there either. Preferred playstyle aside, this is an issue that needs to be addressed, regardless of how deep the pockets of some players may be.

It would behoove everyone in this thread to understand that there is more than one way to get that uber-item you are looking for and that most certainly involves it not dropping on the mob you just killed.

putting mats in bags are not the answer. mats as a whole need more structure and less bad rng.

Zeropride,

Let’s hear your solution for that structure, improving randomization of drops and how you intend on doing this in light of the fact that you need to attempt to stop people from automating gameplay [botting].

Your answer will greatly improve this community.

Dishconnected.8360:

It would behoove everyone in this thread to understand that there is more than one way to get that uber-item you are looking for and that most certainly involves it not dropping on the mob you just killed.

I’m not after any particular “uber-item”. I’m after crafting mats and they just aren’t dropping at an even remotely decent rate.

High drop rate = low prices.

Low prices

=

people who farm mats to make money don’t make money

=

we stop using trading post

=

TP is useless

=

NO ECONOMY

Grow up and look at why they did it instead of kittening and complaining constantly.

Your babies make me sick.

NoizeMaker.8367:

High drop rate = low prices.

Low prices

=

people who farm mats to make money don’t make money

=

we stop using trading post

=

TP is useless

=

NO ECONOMY

Grow up and look at why they did it instead of kittening and complaining constantly.

Your babies make me sick.

I’m sorry that my desire to farm my mats rather than pay another player for them “makes you sick”. I like being self-sufficient. I don’t like paying 1-3 silver per tooth, per blood, per scale, etc. Right now, it takes 8-15 scales, blood, bones, etc per item. Now, do the math on that. Would you really want to constantly spend that amount of cash on mats?

Let me add my 0.02 cents worth here.

The plus side. I have played a lot of MMOs in my time going back to EQ and ultima online… yes I’m 40(mumble mumble) I’ve played F2P P2P and even a couple P2W ones. So far the Crafting system in GW2 is one of the better ones I’ve seen. It encourages discovery, and is easy to stay level current with the character…

But with the recent changes. This is no longer the case. The original design was for a character to be able to craft in 2 areas. Pre patch it was difficult for a character to keep their crafting skill level = to their character level if they tried to Craft both a weapon and armor without some grinding. The reason is simply weapons and armor both pull ingredients from the same Fine Crafting materials pools.

Before the patch I was able to Get Tailor/Artifice up to crafting level 20 gear with a bit of farming in the bandit cave in human starting area. ( I am horrible with names) Post patch I was barely able to make 3 of 5 LVL 25 armor pieces after completing the next lvl zone, Because the fine material drops just are not there. I had to buy materials from TP to complete those.

I gained another 5 char levels trying to gather enough materials in a new 1-15 zone to get artifice up to 75 skill level and have not collected enough fine materials to make more then 1 banded mark for to craft an item.

unfortunately using the TP for someone trying to level a char is not viable base fine materials that have a vendor value of 5cp-40cp are selling for 1-2 silver because the drop rate is now so low and the demand is so high, being every armor and weapon crafting skill requires them.

My suggested solutions.

1. as many other people have suggested – Greatly adjust the drop tables

2. Adjust the recipes, lower the required number of fine crafting materials, 3 →1, 8→4
3. Adjust the fine material pools in recipes, Instead of every armor and weapon recipe using the same fine material for a given stat. ( this probably isn’t doable due to massive change in coding that would be required)
4. Make fine ingredients available from a vendor. want to stop farming. boom make your common ingredients/materials available from a vendor for karma or silver. Yeah the items will still be available on TP but the value will be regulated by vendor. And crafters that feel the need power to level 400 crafting can.

As stated The question is “Is it fun?” and currently the crafting of weapons and armor are not fun. A person simply cannot get enough fine crafting materials to even keep the crafting skill on par with character level. Or even gear for a single craft. Let alone enough materials to craft for others or sell for profit.

NoizeMaker.8367:

High drop rate = low prices.
… snip..
Grow up and look at why they did it instead of kittening and complaining constantly.

Your babies make me sick.

If you read the thread you will see currently the drop rates are so low that people cannot even level their crafting skill.

And while you have a level 80, I only have a lvl 30 and can’t afford the 6-10 silver it would cost to make 1 item let alone the 40-80sp to make 7 items for my level in material that are currently overly inflated because of the exceptionally low drop rate.

High drop rate = low prices.
Low prices
=
people who farm mats to make money don’t make money
=
we stop using trading post
=
TP is useless
=
NO ECONOMY
Grow up and look at why they did it instead of kittening and complaining constantly.
Your babies make me sick.

As I recently spent an hour farming Moa’s and Skale’s and only came up with 23 eggs, you can kindly take your invalid argument and jump off a cliff.

/wave s(^_~ )b

Nebarius.8597:

High drop rate = low prices.
Low prices
=
people who farm mats to make money don’t make money
=
we stop using trading post
=
TP is useless
=
NO ECONOMY
Grow up and look at why they did it instead of kittening and complaining constantly.
Your babies make me sick.

As I recently spent an hour farming Moa’s and Skale’s and only came up with 23 eggs, you can kindly take your invalid argument and jump off a cliff.

/wave s(^_~ )b

Is it that low? I don’t seem to have a problem with farming mats. I think it may just be randomized. Basically your lucky or your not.

I farm mats like crazy for my guildies and the mats they don’t need I make bank off of on the TP. I don’t see the problem.

I maxed cooking after they removed items from the shop and… in all honesty the stuff that you really need during key points of the profession are sold at Karma vendors.

Tho for tailoring…. Why is it that starting out the profession is so much more expensive than completing it

I kinda hate myself for NPCing everything at a low level. Now I have all this high rating ingredients sitting in my collectables (because I wised up and started using salvage kits) just WAITING to be used and Im trapped at 160 rating until I muster up the stamina to farm some dungeons for gold….

[/quote]

Is it that low? I don’t seem to have a problem with farming mats. I think it may just be randomized. Basically your lucky or your not.

I farm mats like crazy for my guildies and the mats they don’t need I make bank off of on the TP. I don’t see the problem.[/quote]

It’s worse. I can clear three hearts, a few poi’s, fight my way to some vistas, and walk out with only a few blood and/or claws or bones. Now, take those 3 and subtract them from the 15 I need for one item, and you can start to see why many of us are unhappy. It’s not even remotely fun atm. I enjoy this game, but having to ruthlessly kill EVERYTHING in the zone for even a measly few of the mats I need and the fun begins to quickly fade away.

It’s not even remotely fun atm. I enjoy this game, but having to ruthlessly kill EVERYTHING in the zone for even a measly few of the mats I need and the fun begins to quickly fade away

I couldn’t agree with you more.

150 butter and 70 chocolate. Drop rate is radnom.

Yeah, it’s a little ridiculous… add to the fact there’s 6 pieces of armor and each piece requires 15 fine ingredients at later levels and you’re looking at needing 90 fine ingredients just for your armor.

I’ve given up on crafting at this point, to anyone who claims this is one of the better systems because of discovery hasn’t played many other MMOs… EQ had a discovery system and it felt far less grindy than this one because I didn’t need to far semi-rare drops to craft anything and skill up… you could skill up with common drops or vendor purchased materials. The uncommon drops were required for uncommon gear.

EQ2 didn’t have discovery but it did have utility and the ability to make useful items for yourself when you could use them.

Asheron’s Call was all about discovery (even in magic system, not just crafting) and it was a fun crafting system, but when I played was limited to cooking or alchemy, no weapons/armor.

This is a grind-fest because anything you can make requires multiple fine ingredients which are uncommon drops at best (closer to rare now) in increasing quantities. Add this to the fact the equipment you make from crafting isn’t any better than the abundant drops or task reward items. No point wasting my time trying to farm enough vials of blood to make level 15 armor when decent gear drops from most kills like coins in Mario Bros and the market is so flooded I can buy it for pennies off the TP.

I’d say the fix for this would be to reverse the chances of crafting materials (fine ingredients and salvageables for leather, cloth) and item drops… make pre-made gear the rarer drops and crafting materials abundant. That way material prices would drop and finished products would be more in demand.

Barghaest.3061:

I’d say the fix for this would be to reverse the chances of crafting materials (fine ingredients and salvageables for leather, cloth) and item drops… make pre-made gear the rarer drops and crafting materials abundant. That way material prices would drop and finished products would be more in demand.

I second this. Infact i posted this although no where as elegant in the sujestions area.

Getting full exotic gear(endgame gear) is already very easy to obtain. Try different game and it will take months to get endgame gear.

No changes needed or make it harder to get.

pheuno.3410:

Getting full exotic gear(endgame gear) is already very easy to obtain. Try different game and it will take months to get endgame gear.

No changes needed or make it harder to get.

Exotic gear isent ment to be hard to get. Kinda the point of GW. BUT getting it threw crafting is a lot harder than just going out grinding karma. Crafting is ment to be just as viable but currently due to how hard it is to get fine mats its not. Which is the point of this thread.

pheuno.3410:

Getting full exotic gear(endgame gear) is already very easy to obtain. Try different game and it will take months to get endgame gear.

No changes needed or make it harder to get.

And that’s the problem, why is leveling a crafting profession way harder than crafting the endgame gear ? You need 5 T6 mats per exotic piece once 400, but 15 for a rare and 8 for a masterwork before that.

You’re supposed to be able to level up both professions as you level up your character, but currently that’s not the case. I made the mistake of chosing both Huntsman and Leatherworker for my first character, I managed to level up Huntsman to 400 by using all the materials I got during my leveling, salvaging everything and getting 100% world completion, and I still bought some at the TP. Now I’m leveling Leatherworker, and all I’m doing is going back in a low-level area and killing everything I can find for hours.

Barghaest.3061:

I’d say the fix for this would be to reverse the chances of crafting materials (fine ingredients and salvageables for leather, cloth) and item drops… make pre-made gear the rarer drops and crafting materials abundant. That way material prices would drop and finished products would be more in demand.

THIS THIS THIS

Let me explain to you how bad this has really gotten.

I’ve been leveling my Guardian, my first toon, and have been buying karma gear in the various zones as I went along. The problem is, I’m finding less and less gear with the stats on it I need for my build so a few days ago I decided to get my armorsmith profession up so I could make my own gear. I pretty much had enough rare mats to get through the first tier of armor just from running this toon and another through Queensdale, with some help from the guild bank. The only thing I was in short supply of was copper, so I spent the better part of an evening running around farming a stack of copper to use, and got up to the second tier of amorsmithing.

Now there’s 6 pieces of armor per tier – head, shoulder, chest, arms, leg and foot. Now there’s 8 different sets of armor, with the corresponding stats that you have to discover per teir. Each set and it’s attributed stats are designated by a type of jute insignia that you have to craft as a foundation piece, which are also the pieces that require the rare mats. There’s 6 different types of jute insignias, malign, healing, precise, might, vital, and resilient. So, to discover all the sets of armor in a tier, you need the rare mats to construct each of the 6 types of insignias, 6 times, for the 6 different armor pieces. So, after my initial push a few days ago, I got to the tier 2 armor set, which requires Embroidered Jute Insiginas. Each type of jute takes 8 each of a rare mat. (Each type has it’s own associated rare mat. Mighty-Blood, Healing-Totems, etc etc) So, for me to learn all 6 different armor pieces, that means I need 8×6 of each rare mat, or 48 of EACH RARE MAT. At 6 different armor sets with their corresponding rare mats, that’s TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY EIGHT RARE MATS just to discover all the tier armor sets before the next tier in the profession. Keep in mind, the amount of rare mats you need as you increase the level of the profession also go up each tier, so whatever the next tier armor set is, I need even MORE mats than I will this one.

So, 2 days ago, I was at level 59 and had just managed to get to the second tier of armorsmithing. The second tier of armorsmithing with the Embroidered Jute Insignia require the same rare mats the the first tier did, but just more of them, 8 versus 3. So, beings the fact that I don’t work, and I can afford to play this game all day (and I do) and I have literally spent the last 2 days (and I mean DAYS,) grinding out the 288 rare mats to get me through the discoveries for the next higher tier of armor set. After 2 days, or roughly 26 hours worth of grinding, this is where I’m sitting at:

Bone Chip – 16
Weak Blood – 64
Tiny Venom Sac- 56
Tiny Scale – 7
Tiny Claw – 12
Tiny Totem – 15

Keep in mind, Some of this was leftovers from the grinding for the first tier. Also, as you can see, the items drop at massively different rates. Now the little bags of goods that you get can and will drop all of the different mats, but I tend to find that they largely correspond to the drop rates of the actually items off of the mobs.

continued