Guild Wars 2

I was performing research into builds for the necromancer I am currently leveling and came across several decent stat combinations to use. The one I decided I would like most is the Apothecary set, to be able to run a very powerful support necromancer.

This led me to begin researching the amount of materials I would need to gather/buy for the armor sets and weapons to max out my potential stat gain. What I found next led me deep into the forums searching for advice and hope.

From what I can tell, gathering the passion flowers for this set has been less than successful for many, and has thus driven trading post prices through the roof. I took this information and added to it the large number of materials required to craft a full apothecary set and my heart sank.

A normal set of fully exotic craft-able armor and jewelry requires an investment of time and gold, but to craft a full apothecary set in the current state of game requires as much gold as a small legendary investment.

I compiled my own list of materials and current gold cost using GW2 Spidy for the material costs on the Trading Post, the following is the average cost per set.
I used only the cost of Ectoplasm, Orbs, Orichalcum, Gossamer Thread, and Fine Materials. I did not include the cost of Gossamer Bolts, Hardened Leather Sections, or Orichalcum Ingots for the armor casings. I also excluded any materials needed for set weapons.

Cleric/Sapphire Set – 25g 69s 29c
Carrion/Chrysocola Set – 21g 68s 84c
Knight/Emerald Set – 23g 9s 4c
Explorer/Opal – 23g 23s 19c
Valkyrie/Beryl – 22g 43s 54c
Rampager/Coral – 25g 15s 54c
Berserker/Ruby – 25g 88s 79c

and everybody drum-roll for the Apothecary set please,

Apothecary/Passion Flower – 200g 84s 99c

Once again this list was made using data collected as average prices for each material as if every piece were bought off of the trading post.

Notable problems causing this price:
Karka Shells vs. Normal Fine Materials
– karka shells currently needed equals 180 pieces just for the armor, add another 30 per weapon and the numbers just get higher and higher, approx. 2g 25s per 30 shells.
– Normal fine material cost for the armor sets runs 58s (Ancient Bones) – 4g 72s (Elaborate Totems). Cost for 180 Karka Shells = 13g 48s 20c.

Orbs vs. Flowers for Jewelry
– Normal jewelry sets require 25 orbs for a full set of orichalcum jewelry. Prices range 55s 50c (Beryl) – 1g 63s 75c (Ruby).
– Flower requirement for full set of jewelry with Apothecary type = 375 Passion flowers. 15 Flowers per jewel = 75 per amulet/ring/earring. Current price per flower = 44s 65c totaling a whopping 167g 43s 75c.

Now I understand that the combination of stats for the Apothecary set are unique to the set, and furthermore all the materials required are rare materials, especially the flowers, with current drop rates rumored to be abysmally low. Even when consortium chests were available for cash/gems these flowers only appeared 1 at a time per box average.
I also understand that the hope was for Southsun Cove to become a higher population area than is currently found, maybe even high enough to carry a larger availability of the flowers to help them stabilize at lower prices than what are currently seen. But even all that taken aside I think the biggest issue of all of this is the overwhelming number of flowers necessary to craft the full jewelry set.

So now comes the question to our devs. Is there a plan to fix this issue?

Maybe a plan to change the required number of flowers to match normal jewelry set costs. Simply dropping the required number of flowers from 375 to 25 would drop the cost of the jewelry to around 20g, still expensive but not overwhelming by any means.

Or leave the numbers where they are at but raise the drop rates of the flowers from harvesting significantly, to maybe a guaranteed 1 flower per harvest, or even a 50/50 chance.

Add this armor set to a currently existing dungeon or two. I would love to have a dungeon set appearance with these awesome stats.

So please, ArenaNet, give us some hope on this issue, help us understand what happened to this specific item in terms of supply/demand/drop rates. Or even just give us some inside information on what is being planned behind the scenes to fix this issue.

I appreciate your time, and I hope many of the members of this community add their voices to this petition.

-Acrid

I’ve come up against the same issue. To farm the ingredients would require a stupidly large investment of time far far more than required for any other set.

The drop rates for the ingredients need to be increased its not like this is an ascended set or has unique looks.

On the other hand, you’re giving me farming ideas

If you have a decent karka farming build you can make a ton of money of these drops. Ye getting a bit lucky is required but I feel like the nonRNG baseline isn’t bad to start while any cool drops are extra.

I know what you men, it sounds like a fantastic idea for making a ton of money, but the problem you are facing here is that the drop rates for Passion Flowers are so low that it’s not worth it. From what people are saying in the forums, they aren’t even finding 1 Passion Flower after as many as 200 harvestings. Orb drop rates are incredibly high by comparison, as the average person doing a daily orichalcum run will usually find at least 1 orb at a bare minimum, and I believe by comparison that there are less nodes oforichalcum in the game than there are Passiflora nodes in Southsun Cove.

Went with a friend the other day to harvest every node on the island. He was using mithril picks and I was using black lion picks. After the run we ended up with a combined total of …. ONE passion flower and that one was obtained by me while using nothing but black lion picks. That was approximately 16 harvest for me and 16 for my friend.

The fact that they are around 30% more expensive than ectos should tell you how rare they are.

Assuming you have enough black lion chests and you get 1 Passion Flower per day you’ll make one exotic every 75 days. In that same amount of time you could have made 7 and a half ascended item.

to be honest i always heard of passion flowers…. yet to see one in my inventory not coming form the TP…. lol
I never knew where these got into the game from.
As for Karka shells they are easy to farm.
One of my fav farming runs makes approx 3.5 g- 4g per hr

According to the Dec. 14th patch notes, the drop rate for Passion flowers was improved … from Passion vines. Now all I have to do is find these vines, anybody seen one yet?

Jarul.8635:

According to the Dec. 14th patch notes, the drop rate for Passion flowers was improved … from Passion vines. Now all I have to do is find these vines, anybody seen one yet?

The things I did above were done AFTER that patch. One or two days ago.

Jarul.8635:

According to the Dec. 14th patch notes, the drop rate for Passion flowers was improved … from Passion vines. Now all I have to do is find these vines, anybody seen one yet?

The passion vines are in Southsun Cove I believe?

Must remeber to be more spesific … back on topic.

1) I’ve also been farming the nodes in Southsun Cove for the Passion flowers, both before and after patch, still haven’t got a single Passion flower yet. So yupps, I agree that the drop rate seems poor (to put it mildly).

2) The spesific nodes I’ve been farming are called Passiflora, not Passion vines as stated in the patch. Hence why I asked if anybody had seen one of thoose Passion vines. It might be a typo in the patch notes, or maybe the vines are found somewhere else in the world, who knows …

(if it is a typo, could some dev say so plz?)

Ah I see I wasn’t sure also, hence the question in the answer… if those are the nodes that drop the Passion Flowers, then the drop rate must be very low because I haven’t seen one either.

Since I need a full apothecary set I started gathering them yesterday, I’ll be posting my finds here if anyone wants to track it down. I’m using 2 lvl 80 characters for a full run for passion flowers at southsun cove.
1st day – 0 passion flowers.
2nd day – 2 passion flowers.
3rd day – 0 passion flowers. (Went with a guildie so count as another 1 full run)
4th day – 0 passion flowers. (Happened to be gethering when the patch came out so I got to gather some nodes twice)
5th day – 0 passion flowers. This is getting ridiculous. I had both guild 10% gathering bonus and WvW 6% bonus (I even got to farm a same node 5 times). The weirdest thing is I got a ruined plant fiber with an ORI sickle, can someone explain me this please?)
6th and 7th day- 0 again. Okay, I’m done with this kitten lol
(I’ll keep editing this post on the following days.)

Of all the times I picked flowers I found one….just one.
And I thought I was a dumb*** for crafting those consortium chest by buying skins through auctions…And didn’t get anything. But still I think I spent way too much gold for it.
I think I have around 20 of them. But that is still way way short of crafting even one jewelery.

Did someone miks the drop rate between the Passion Flowers and Dandeloin Blossoms?
Coz I’m getting loads of the blossoms :|

LOL, with FotM Karka Island is almost a waist land now :-(
As is most of the other Dungeons and Lands of Tyria. But then I think that is a topic of another post.

I seem to farm Flowers, Fruits and shells fine. Though I do have 27% Magic find w/o taking any buffs. With buffs I can get almost 85% Magic find. And that helps :-) (though I still haven’t gotten any Ascended items :-( ). It’s the skins I have issue with. I have yet to get them as a drop. So as a new player or one who has used all their skins 2g to buy a set is not worth it. I am a casual player and earning 2g takes me three days (5 hours of play a day).

Jarul.8635:

Did someone miks the drop rate between the Passion Flowers and Dandeloin Blossoms?
Coz I’m getting loads of the blossoms :|

Haha same you might be onto something here

I submitted a bug report on the topic of the low drop rates so hopefully we can get some clarity on what is going on. Also included the reference to the passion vine drops increase that was quoted in the patch notes to see if they had any info on that as well.

I really was hoping to be able to craft this armor once I reached lvl 80 on my necro but requiring an investment of about 200g just puts me off to this stat set and any hopes I had as a support/condition damage build for my guild activities.

At current drop rates I might be able to craft the whole jewelry set by next Christmas, assuming I get a chance to do a full harvest run every day for just over a year (which I already cant do).

Fingers Crossed for some dev intervention

Well their mats are currently like t6 mats drops. They are needed for infusion.

I do not understand the Problem.

Before the patch: i never find any Passion Flowers from Passion Vines.
The pachnote said Increased the drop rate of Passion Flowers from Passion Vines.
After the pach: i never find any Passion Flowers from Passion Vines.

It is simple math: 0 x [whatever number of increase] = 0.
So everything is OK there. Teher is no reason for complains.

Regard.
—
PS: yes, this post is full of sarcasm.

Sitael.4680:

I do not understand the Problem.

Before the patch: i never find any Passion Flowers from Passion Vines.
The pachnote said Increased the drop rate of Passion Flowers from Passion Vines.
After the pach: i never find any Passion Flowers from Passion Vines.

It is simple math: 0 x [whatever number of increase] = 0.
So everything is OK there. Teher is no reason for complains.

Regard.
—
PS: yes, this post is full of sarcasm.

Lol I was kind of thinking the same thing tbh, did my own run thru Southsun on a Passiflora harvest and got a grand total of 0 Flowers, also saw prices are up to 50s, thats right, nearing double the price of ectos. So currently 187.5g for full set without adding in Ecto and Ori cost, and until things are fixed just going up I am sure

How about this one: (conspiracy mode engage!)
There is quite a bit of gold available ingame at the moment. This allows older, richer players to buy anything they want and control the economy to a certain extent. To prevent oversaturation of gold Anet has reduced the amount of drops for passionfowers and made them available through the TC by a few of their own characters. This would result in quite a bit of gold being removed out of the economy. Also, this would fit the recent change which allows legendaries to be sold/bought on the TC (15% of those prices can tally up quite fast i bet!). (/conspiracide mode!)

I sold one for 74s. Minus all the tax and stuff it ended up 67s…
Reason is not only it is needed for jewelery but it is needed in the forge if u want infusion.

Pixxel.3897:

How about this one: (conspiracy mode engage!)
There is quite a bit of gold available ingame at the moment. This allows older, richer players to buy anything they want and control the economy to a certain extent. To prevent oversaturation of gold Anet has reduced the amount of drops for passionfowers and made them available through the TC by a few of their own characters. This would result in quite a bit of gold being removed out of the economy. Also, this would fit the recent change which allows legendaries to be sold/bought on the TC (15% of those prices can tally up quite fast i bet!). (/conspiracide mode!)

The CRAZY part is that this isn’t even that crazy of an idea.

Stridix.4260:

I sold one for 74s. Minus all the tax and stuff it ended up 67s…
Reason is not only it is needed for jewelery but it is needed in the forge if u want infusion.

So prices keep climbing and we still can’t get any to drop, seriously something needs to be done. This one material is almost worth the price of 2 ecto, thats insane. Especially needing 375 for just exotic jewels

For some reason, they appear to deeply want rapid inflation. I have no idea why, when it only hurts the casual/honest player’s of the game.

For Passion Flowers, I haven’t seen one yet. I’m probably close to a full stack of Passion Fruit too.

Actually I am also a jeweler and I looked at the recipe. I made some consortium chests during the lost shores event through mystic forge and was hoping to get something. Anyway these chest drop 1-2 passion flowers so I was only lucky to have 20. Then I looked at the recipe and it was like a whopping 75 passion flowers to make jewelery or something.
Yeah looked at it and thought wtf and wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to just infuse it to another jewelery set?
But thank goodness Karka shells drop a bit more.

Was wondering but did anyone tried to mystic forge and get passion flowers?

I had a ton of flowers from consortium chests….that I used to level my crafting >.<

Really wish I would have known how rare these would become, I could sell them and buy a precursor.

I’ve been harvesting passion flowers for a while now (for the daily) and haven’t had one passion flower drop.

Hopefully just bugged because it seems just a bit too rare for a level 65 crafting item.

Well they did say that they doubled the drop rate….not that it means anything. If you double say .0001 you end up with .0002 lol

So far I have 2 drops like every 3 days.
Yeah this is gonna take forever is someone wants to use it for craft.
Personally I think they got a formula wrong. They must have done (.1)^2 or something and thought they doubled it.

Is it just me or did they put a limit on how many Passiflora nodes an be picked a day on a single char? Last week they had a comfortable 1h respawn rate. This week…at some point all nodes just go poooof(they are on the map, i can see them, i pick one and everything else is suddenly gone). Which puts them on par with ori nodes….

TWMagimay.9057:

Is it just me or did they put a limit on how many Passiflora nodes an be picked a day on a single char? Last week they had a comfortable 1h respawn rate. This week…at some point all nodes just go poooof(they are on the map, i can see them, i pick one and everything else is suddenly gone). Which puts them on par with ori nodes….

Yeah I noticed that too. Seems like the prolonged the spawn rate. Think I started off the day picking it, went and finished fotm, then do arah, came back and it still havent spawn.

Stridix.4260:

So far I have 2 drops like every 3 days.
Yeah this is gonna take forever is someone wants to use it for craft.
Personally I think they got a formula wrong. They must have done (.1)^2 or something and thought they doubled it.

Doubling the rate is pretty much useless anyway. It would still be nowhere near the rate for the other jewelery ingredients. Plants only have 1 use. That means you get 1/3 as many tries. Then there is the fact that most nodes appear on at least 3 full size maps. Southsun Cove is more like a half size map. Within that half size map the Passiflora nodes only appear on around half of that. The nodes themselves also have a much longer respawn timer. After all that you still need 3 times as many per item.

Khisanth.2948:

Stridix.4260:

So far I have 2 drops like every 3 days.
Yeah this is gonna take forever is someone wants to use it for craft.
Personally I think they got a formula wrong. They must have done (.1)^2 or something and thought they doubled it.

Doubling the rate is pretty much useless anyway. It would still be nowhere near the rate for the other jewelery ingredients. Plants only have 1 use. That means you get 1/3 as many tries. Then there is the fact that most nodes appear on at least 3 full size maps. Southsun Cove is more like a half size map. Within that half size map the Passiflora nodes only appear on around half of that. The nodes themselves also have a much longer respawn timer. After all that you still need 3 times as many per item.

I realize it doesn’t happen very often however that is not correct I have harvested a plant 5 times before and get 2 uses quite a bit, I always have very high harvesting bonus however

BTW why does it say you were infracted for that post???

NateDog.1385:

I realize it doesn’t happen very often however that is not correct I have harvested a plant 5 times before and get 2 uses quite a bit, I always have very high harvesting bonus however

That should not factor into the drop rate AT ALL. It literally depends on the day of the week and the server you are on.

I know quite a few people that have just decided screw it and bought gold pharmer money to get this stuff after pharming for a few weeks and ending up with about 5 passion flowers lol.

The drop rates are totally disproportionate to other items of the same ilk, the fact they have doubled it and they are still woeful tells me something is amiss with something here. Every now and then i get a burst of motivation and go pharm every Passiflora node, usually end up with 0 flowers and think to myself why am i wasting my time out here again.

yeah, i’d never heard of a passion vine and hadn’t really payed that close of attention to the issue. i thought people were just talking about the passiflora nodes and passion fruits. As far as I’m concerned that says it all.

I got one and sold it for over 50s. I will be very rich off these.

Probably a good idea to sell all the flowers one has now, as when the drop rate get’s fixed, the price will drop quite a bit.

Vennyhedgie.5369:

The weirdest thing is I got a ruined plant fiber with an ORI sickle, can someone explain me this please

Yes.

Any traits or runes that proc from taking damage, or when your health drops to a certain point (for example, 75%), will screw up your gathering.
While you are gathering, and a mob is beating on you, you will sort of “cast a spell”. After this proc, all your gatherings will fail.
If you are fast enough you can stop gathering and then do it again, now it will work again.

Why exactly this happens i do not know. I have 6/6 Runes of the Pack on my maingear, and when it procs (procs randomly from taking damage) my gatherings fail and i get ruined produce.
I make sure i got no traits that proc from taking damage (i know this happend from traits aswell), and i switch out pieces of my gear to no longer have the proc effect from Runes by breaking the set bonus. Then, i go gathering.

NateDog.1385:

BTW why does it say you were infracted for that post???

Original Title of the post was “Dear ArenaNet, let’s discuss Passion Flowers.”

Moderators tagged it as a staff call-out which is against Code of Conduct.
Was a simple error on my part, didn’t know about the call-out clause in there when I first posted.

The only thing I can figure to do is grind out the karka shells I need for the armor set and them I am going to have to settle for the stat loss of the masterwork set until a fix is made making even just the rares more affordable, least of all the exotics which I /need.

After 20 uses of the “extremely efficient” black lion sickles, I didn’t get any passion flowers.

I understand this isn’t the biggest issue in game right now, after all, people with multiple legendary weapons that aren’t satisfied with all their hard work seem to garner the most attention, but it would be at least a little reassuring to hear something on this topic.

Starting to wonder if I have a better chance at a precursor drop off a starter zone mob than I do harvesting a passion flower in southsun.

The drop rate is somewhere in the ballpark of 1%. I’ve been running through the area daily for a while now, and I’m averaging around 1 passion flower per 200 passion fruits.

Ensign.2189:

The drop rate is somewhere in the ballpark of 1%. I’ve been running through the area daily for a while now, and I’m averaging around 1 passion flower per 200 passion fruits.

Bigger sample is need. 200 mithril sickles = 5 flowers for me.

PS: You can get more than 1 fruit per harvest.

i tapped about 100 passiflora and only got the fruit. the other day i tapped 4 near eachother and got 2 of the flowers… considering these are on par with orbs, i dont see why its easier for me to just tap a ori node and randomly get an orb but i gotta break my back to get these passion flowers while karka/reef riders etc all annoy the kitten out of me with their high hp and annoying abilities.

For the past 2 days, I’ve taken my Thief through Southsun (mostly for Passion Fruit for Ascended gear) and got 3 Flowers total, using a Guild Gathering Banner both times. Takes about 15-20 minutes per run, slightly longer if I go for the Rich Orich node/Pearl Islet JP

I wouldn’t have a problem with the flowers in their current state if the needed number of them for the jewel set was equal to that of orbs, but in its current state you could make 15 full sets of jewelry for the cost of a single set of the exotic flower set. This of course does us no good if the set we really want it the exotic flower set.

So either the recipes need to change of the flower drops need to be increased, only possible solutions to this problem.

Guild gathering banner buff – Check
Sacrificed a small goat – Check

Result (not including the passion fruit) – 4 Dandeloin Blossoms

:(