Guild Wars 2

The lodestone system can be improved by copying something another MMO did right. Instead of mobs dropping entire lodestones, they would drop “motes”. 10 motes could be made into a single lodestone. In the end, we would receive lodestones at the same rate, but during farming we could clearly see we’re making progress towards our goal.

I know we can combine cores to make lodestones, but I feel that breaking it down further will provide more satisfaction to players. Instead of farming for a fruitless hour, you can see your efforts and progress.

I dislike this idea. It is arbitrary in the bad way and would lead to further fragmentation and less inventory space. Also it could serve as a means to aggravate the market. Passable but unnecessary feature.

Actually I’d suggest just reusing existing mechanics to do the same thing. If an enemy drops some certain level of rare material, give them a chance to drop lower tier components of the same type as well with a sliding probability scale. I.e. if they drop a lodestone .01% of the time, they drop cores .1% of the time and tier 4s .5% of the time (Obviously numbers need balancing). This gives the player something for their effort, makes them feel like like they are accomplishing something and maybe just missed a better drop, teaches players which enemies drop which type of materials (high levels would drop lots of tier 1 stuff so players see who drop, charged, or onyx or whatever), and involves reusing existing mechanics and systems. The major downside is potentially making low level rare material worthless (which, last time I checked, they already kind of are).

All I want is something for my effort and something to show progress.

Why not make them tradable for badges? You can already get runes of balefire/sigils of ghost slaying (and possibly on the 15th dungeon armour!) as drops from dungeon chests – you can also (rarely) get cores/lodestones, so why not just add them to the token merchant’s lists?

I thought cores can be put in the Mystic forge to turn into Lodestones.

Get some MF gear and start Lodestone farming in better areas. In 1h I farmed 2 charged lodestones.

@BabelFish I farmed in Malchor’s Leap south of Dwayna for 45 minutes and didn’t get a single core, let alone a lodestone.

Catrenna.4298:

@BabelFish I farmed in Malchor’s Leap south of Dwayna for 45 minutes and didn’t get a single core, let alone a lodestone.

Yeah, you’re just plain unlucky then. Get some MF gear (I hear rune of the pirate is cheap) and go farm for 1-2 hours. You should see a charged lodestone drop. 45 mins isn’t long enough.

I have 99% MF without food. So I’m just plain unlucky?

Very considering when I did my lode farming for 1 hour I had 3% MF, ended up with 2 charged lodestones.

Can I ask where you farmed?

Catrenna.4298:

Can I ask where you farmed?

Mel’s Reach at one of the temples. There’s a quest that infinitely spawns the lightning ball things if you don’t progress the quest.

BabelFish.7234:

Very considering when I did my lode farming for 1 hour I had 3% MF, ended up with 2 charged lodestones.

Maybe you just got really lucky? I don’t know, I’ve never tried to farm the things.