Guild Wars 2

Nyspar.6103:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Linen farm: create endless mobs, kill mobs, get loot.
Ambient farm: create endless mobs, kill mobs, get loot.

Linen farm: some players don’t want want to farm linen. Farmers do this for them and sell on TP. People pay market price.
Ambient farm: some players don’t want/can no longer farm ambients. Farmers do this for them, and sell results on TP. People pay market price.

Linen farm: mass bans.
Ambient farm: Dev-approved.

???

My thoughts exactly

Linen farm : create endless mobs by exploiting a bug in the iron marshes or by failing an event on purpose. Insult anyone who completes the event.

Ambient farm : creates endless mobs by spending an item you’ve bought or crafted. Everybody can join. No insults.

I hope this helps clarify. Farming never bothered the devs (unless it’s threatening the game economy but that is an other topic). However, toxic behaviour does.

this should be considered as exploit

you can do this instance only once per account
but some ppl exploit it and kill rats only without finishing it

Lord Kuru.3685:

Linen farm: create endless mobs, kill mobs, get loot.
Ambient farm: create endless mobs, kill mobs, get loot.

Linen farm: some players don’t want want to farm linen. Farmers do this for them and sell on TP. People pay market price.
Ambient farm: some players don’t want/can no longer farm ambients. Farmers do this for them, and sell results on TP. People pay market price.

Linen farm: mass bans.
Ambient farm: Dev-approved.

???

Except that you need to purchase a consumable to use to do this farm.

The price of the consumable versus the price of the output is what made this farm viable.

Lets look at it this way:
You have consumable A that is worth 8s on TP.

You have consumable B that is only worth 4s on TP.

Nobody realized that consumable B can create anywhere from 3 to 9 of consumable A.

After people realized, now prices reflect actual values.

Consumable B now worth 13s and consumable A 7s.

The fact that you need to throw the consumable at an ambient has nothing to do with it at all. It might as well be a bag that gives 3-9 ToT bags.

The Dev even stated that the players set the prices of these items…

I don’t know how hard it is for you to realize that nothing is being created that was never intended…. the balms could have been implemented as a new type of bag that just gave you 3-9 tot bags, and nobody would have said anything…… but you add a little randomness and a little work and voila.

Cheap ToT bags for anyone actually paying attention to what the consumable did early on, and now that ppl have caught on, its not even that cheap any more.

I decided to be honest with ANet and farm it once during the initial instance. Guess that was the price of honesty.

Let’s take a look at this:

ArenaNet defines an exploit as any deliberate action that provides an unfair advantage over other players or otherwise hurts the game, community, or economy; it does not matter whether the exploit is a hack or makes use of a mechanic (bugged or otherwise) within the game. Before taking punitive action on an account, ANet considers whether players made deliberate use of the exploit; use of hacks or bots is always assumed to be deliberate. In addition, players that publicize an exploit are also subject to suspension or even banning, regardless of their motives, since well-publicized exploits require ArenaNet to react immediately to prevent the abuse, which diverts resources away from the rest of the game.

For a variety of reasons, the company cannot equivocally define exactly what will be considered an exploit, but they have offered the following rules of thumb:

• Does it seem to good to be true?
• Would your friends consider this to be an exploit?
• Does it provide you with an unfair advantage over other players?
• Could this be the result of a bug introduced with a recent update or new feature?
• Does this seem like something that could be reasonably considered to be intended by ArenaNet?

If you are still unsure after answer these questions, the safest thing to do is to avoid taking advantage of the potential exploit and report it via the methods listed at the top of this article.

So…

Does it seem to good to be true? Yes, if you bought Balm at 8s, you were breaking even at the 2nd bag. Even now you’re breaking even with the 4th bag, which is easy.

Would your friends consider this to be an exploit? Yes, I consider it an exploit. People on forums consider it an exploit.

Does it provide you with an unfair advantage over other players? Yes, because people who have finished the instance can no longer farm it. To farm it, people deliberately leave the instance, knowing of the exploit and using it.

Could this be the result of a bug introduced with a recent update or new feature? Yes, Halloween patch brought it here.

Does this seem like something that could be reasonably considered to be intended by ArenaNet? No, because there is no “exit instance” button – you have to get “kicked” out of the instance or forcefully log out to fail the instance. No, because once the instance is done, you cannot get back.

ArenaNet defines an exploit as any deliberate action that provides an unfair advantage over other players or otherwise hurts the game, community, or economy. Is it a deliberate action? Yes. Does it hurt the community? Yes – the community is divided into those who can farm it and those who can’t. Does it hurt the economy? Yes – the economy is always driven by the time/profit ratio of any action, whereas this exploit lowers the time required to farm bags considerably, creating unintended oversupply of bags. Does it hurt the game? Yes – changes after changes makes players lose trust in developers’ deeds. This particular change and the official stance on it will lead to more people using borderline “features” in the future and referring to this case as a precedent.

^this

@TheBlackLeech.9360
It’s not the loot generated by the item, that people in this thread consider an exploit. It’s the “workaround” used to replay the instance over and over again in order to have about 30 ambient creatures at once in little time to convert to candy corn elementals instead of the wider spread farms outside the instance, where you even have trouble finding a spot to convert 3 creatures with one throw. It generates an advantage over those, who already have finished the instance as intended and rewards those who abuse it.

If the instance was replayable without any “workarounds”, this would be a different story. Then it would be just another “faster/more efficient farm”.

Chris Cleary.8017:

In a player driven economy, the demand of an item surpassing the supply generated by the playerbase will increase the value of it. While there are some items in these bags that are not based around cosmetics (the low drop rate of T6 mats), the price of these bags is directly relative to the cosmetic value that is being placed on them. While currently profitable, that profit is derrived directly from other players and their willingness to play a higher price. In essence, this is a transfer of wealth not wealth generation.

As far as this specific spawn of ambients is concerned, it’s definatly one of the faster ones to farm. As long as the playerbase is willing to pay for that item, and the demand remains higher than the supply, it will be profitable. This is not an exploit, it’s the playerbase saying “thank you for farming this, because we didn’t want to”.

I think you’re mistaken on the fact that everyone who wants to can farm it. In fact, most of the people cannot do the rat-balm-farm if they wanted. Because they completed the halloween story already. Which is why, people who didn’t and are using the exploit are put in a very profitable position which is relatively unfair to the rest of the population. It’s not that we don’t want to. It’s that we CAN’T.

Sariel V.7024:

Paradox.1380:

This is just silly because there are other places with almost as many ambient creatures in the world.

30+ in one small cluster?

Nope, but each maize balm only gives you 9 ambient to elemental conversions anyway, so the only benefit of a large cluster would be more bags per minute. You’d still be making the same amount of profit per balm anywhere else, just at a slower rate.

Until diminishing returns kicks in.

Simzani.4318:

No it is a scholar exploit of unintended game mechanism. Now we know that game exploits are legit. The red that posted here is tagged “Game Security Lead”, so he endorse exploits, and by him arenanet does. They just have to change their term of service now.

It is an intended mechanism working as intended. It is not an exploit.

Rashy.4165:

Sariel V.7024:

Paradox.1380:

This is just silly because there are other places with almost as many ambient creatures in the world.

30+ in one small cluster?

Nope, but each maize balm only gives you 9 ambient to elemental conversions anyway, so the only benefit of a large cluster would be more bags per minute. You’d still be making the same amount of profit per balm anywhere else, just at a slower rate.

Until diminishing returns kicks in.

• Time rate is important. Any activity has a gold per minute value; this one is far above any others, just like Blix, Coiled Watch, karma exploit and so on.
• Show me that “anywhere else” place in the world where you have a) at least 3 clusters of 3 critters next to each other, b) which turn into yellow no-HP mobs, c) which are situated in a place where no one else can ever come to farm them instead of you, d) which can be respawned rapidly at the very same location.

Kasima.8143:

Simzani.4318:

No it is a scholar exploit of unintended game mechanism. Now we know that game exploits are legit. The red that posted here is tagged “Game Security Lead”, so he endorse exploits, and by him arenanet does. They just have to change their term of service now.

It is an intended mechanism working as intended. It is not an exploit.

Repeatedly failing a one-time instance by logging out or getting forcefully kicked is “intended”? Okaaay…

Maybe it’s not an exploit in the sense of “using a bug”, because there is no bug. But this doesn’t change the fact that it should be fixed. Soon. I wouldn’t have a problem with that if players could repeat the first instance, because, you know – same chances for everyone.

If “playing the game as intended” permanently declines access to the best farming method in the game, that’s not a good example of how things should work.

aRestless.6213:

Maybe it’s not an exploit in the sense of “using a bug”, because there is no bug. But this doesn’t change the fact that it should be fixed. Soon. I wouldn’t have a problem with that if players could repeat the first instance, because, you know – same chances for everyone.

If “playing the game as intended” permanently declines access to the best farming method in the game, that’s not a good example of how things should work.

It is simple.. ANET have no real policy around game exploits until there is a negative impact on gem sales.. so like all the other exploits recently revolving around fail mechanics they come out with red posts to say yeah fine do whatever just be nice to all… then place a patch up when the discontent grows.

This new exploitation which again uses the fail on purpose philosophy does however have a potential positive effect on gem sales as more players hurry to exchange for gold and buy up the transform pots to keep up their farm habit, so of course ANET come out with a show of support.. but in creating this carrot they fell into their own trap of poor consideration of their game as it actually places a limit on that positive because a large majority of the players can no longer get back in to the instance so have to try it elsewhere where its much slower and less productive.. that’s if you can find an area with enough ambient critters in a cluster that respawn fast enough .. there aren’t many for sure.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a patch to allow full replay of the story comes out soon now they know they have potentially cut their own throats.

I completed the story on my main account. Fortunately I have a second account. What I find is the profit is indeed very good. But diminishing return kicks in really fast.

So you need to find walk around for the DR. Like switching char. Making a new char and delete probably works too.

The people who made the most money from this is probably people who just bought huge stock of maize balm. I made 90 gold in 5 minutes just from buying 6 stacks of maize balm. I wish I bought more, but I’m afraid Anet will nerf it and I’m just dont’ like short term investment very much.

Right now I’m farming like crazy trying to use up the stacks of maize balm, because I’m worried the price will crash and Anet will nerf it any minutes.

Ramontique.9852:

So mr. Chris Cleary.. thanks for giving the finger to everyone who completed that story step.. let me be so kind as to return this favor to you: <^>(-_-)<^>

Anet does it again! GG

^ this about sums up my view on the thread, those who went to the second step and got screwed, are kittened. Rightfully so, but it doesn’t make it an exploit IMO, and apparently ANet agrees. Though reading this I wouldn’t have agreed with the Linen farm being wrong either(it was before my time). Just like keyfarming is ok. Lots of inconsistency here I’ll give you that. Farming has always been a big part of MMOs in my experience.

Chris Cleary.8017:

This is not an exploit, it’s the playerbase saying “thank you for farming this, because we didn’t want to”.

So how does that logic not apply to every other farm in the game that’s been killed off?

The Hween story step isn’t even the one with the most ambients. Just sayin’

You play game as intended and then you get stabbed in back by the developers.

Really nice way to support this exploit and screw trading post more.
Wish I could get Shiny Foil Candy Wrapper that easy like them.

SKATE.1394:

Chris Cleary.8017:

This is not an exploit, it’s the playerbase saying “thank you for farming this, because we didn’t want to”.

So how does that logic not apply to every other farm in the game that’s been killed off?

I would guess it’s because the farming method will end naturally once Halloween ends, because the dungeon will disappear, while other farming methods are infinitely repeatable without developer intervention.

So ANet is okay with short-term, high-yield farms that only drop specialized goods because their impact on the economy is limited, but frown on permanent, high-yield farms that drop stuff desired by a significant number of players.

I mean, really, which would you expect to maintain value six months from now? Scraps of linen or candy corn?

Pandaman.4758:

So ANet is okay with short-term, high-yield farms that only drop specialized goods because their impact on the economy is limited, but frown on permanent, high-yield farms that drop stuff desired by a significant number of players.

Last Wintersday’s charged quartz crystal farm was “fixed” on the next day. And that was available to everyone by playing the game and completing events, not only those who knew what to fail. Just saying.

What you don’t get is that it’s us, the players, who “decided” that this was a good farming spot.
If people were not willing to pay more than 1silver per ToT bag, no one would do this.
People abusing of ENDLESS mobs for linen is a totally different concept. Regardless of the value of Linen, people were killing endless waves of mobs respawning constantly. That was clearly not intended. Even if killing those mobs had been not profitable at all, it would still be considered an exploit.

Remember: it’s not the amount of people doing something that make that something an exploit.

hihey.1075:

Remember: it’s not the amount of people doing something that make that something an exploit.

Yes, and you’re getting it backwards. The amount of people doing something is the consequence of an exploit being profitable, and the reason why many people are doing it is that doing it is far easier and faster than any other “intended” means of acquiring the item.

hihey.1075:

Even if killing those mobs had been not profitable at all, it would still be considered an exploit.

Nope, it wouldn’t have been an exploit if it wasn’t profitable. It would’ve been a design oversight or a bug. What made it an exploit was that you could get unintended profits out of it.

Astralporing.1957:

Time breaks do not reset DR. Doing events in different zones does.

ooo Thanks. I figured out I could just go onto a different character and do it but I actually didn’t know you had to do events to reset DR.

Thank you

Chris Cleary.8017:

As far as this specific spawn of ambients is concerned, it’s defiantly one of the faster ones to farm. As long as the playerbase is willing to pay for that item, and the demand remains higher than the supply, it will be profitable. This is not an exploit, it’s the playerbase saying “thank you for farming this, because we didn’t want to”.

It’s not that the playerbase doesn’t want this farm, it’s that most player’s are LOCKED OUT ACCOUNTWIDE, because they finished the first mission before they heard of the farming method. The fact that only a minority of players can actually do this is what makes it so profitable!

if you don’t mind spending 40$, you can get a 2nd account to farm the events. You really only need a lvl1 character to do it.

i find getting a 2nd account quite handy some times.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Linen farm: create endless mobs, kill mobs, get loot.
Ambient farm: create endless mobs, kill mobs, get loot.

Linen farm: some players don’t want want to farm linen. Farmers do this for them and sell on TP. People pay market price.
Ambient farm: some players don’t want/can no longer farm ambients. Farmers do this for them, and sell results on TP. People pay market price.

Linen farm: mass bans.
Ambient farm: Dev-approved.

???

This pretty much sums up my thoughts on the situation. Nice to see the game is flexible with their rules.

ETA: Diminishing Returns: Here’s what John Smith has to say about DR.

John Smith.4610:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

I’ve not read this whole thread so forgive me if this is answered elsewhere. I want to ask a few questions.

1. Is the loot system currently set up so people who play less are more likely to get an awesome RNG drop? There have been numerous posts like, “my friend logged on after 5 months and got X, Y, Z drop while I’ve been playing every day and got nothing!” I want to know if the way it works currently is that those who play lots get decreasing loot in proportion to playtime. Why would ANET do this? To keep people chasing the carrot.

John answered that question in a different thread, there arent any account modifiers.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/I-have-a-question-about-the-economy/page/15#post4487484

what he is speaking of wouldnt be an account modifier, and it probably does exist, mildy. There is Diminishing returns on drops and it decays pretty slowly. You will in fact see more drops in your first few hours after not having played for awhile.

They will never tell us exactly what is happening, but your friend who plays rarely will basically have no DR for almost all of their playtime.

Still catching up, but I wanted to stop to be clear. No to this. This doesn’t happen, it’s a cognitive bias. There’s virtually no DR active on any given day.

No DR active on any given day, folks.

Guhracie.3419:

No DR active on any given day, folks.

This is simply false, and very easy to test for yourself:

1) Get some Maize Balm
2) Find a spot to kill the elementals you spawn
3) In the beginning, each elemental has a 100% drop chance of a trick or treat bag. Not a single one will fail to yield a bag.
4) Keep killing them. Your mileage may vary, but after a certain amount of time, say 1 hour, the drop rate of trick or treat bags will fall to 0%. Not a single bag will drop no matter how many more elementals you kill.

This is far, far too extreme of a result to be cognitive bias.

VincentDW.9376:

Guhracie.3419:

No DR active on any given day, folks.

This is simply false, and very easy to test for yourself:

1) Get some Maize Balm
2) Find a spot to kill the elementals you spawn
3) In the beginning, each elemental has a 100% drop chance of a trick or treat bag. Not a single one will fail to yield a bag.
4) Keep killing them. Your mileage may vary, but after a certain amount of time, say 1 hour, the drop rate of trick or treat bags will fall to 0%. Not a single bag will drop no matter how many more elementals you kill.

This is far, far too extreme of a result to be cognitive bias.

I’m just telling you what the economist says.

iTz Joshz.3961:

Hi,
So i heard about the rat farm recently and decided to try it as it sounds interesting. So i bought 4g worth of balm and started the instance and kept converting rats which was oddly satisfying. After about 15mins i decided to check my loot and i had 215 ToT bags, thinking how oddly alike gw1 festival raptor farming this was i realised that this is very profitable, in fact, it was too profitable. The balms are 9s each and i used maybe 4-5 per run which netted me about 20 bags which is about 1.2g? So i have decided to stop for the time being as guildies have advised me to not continue just in case.

So my question is, is this an exploit? It is pretty much gw1 festival farming and the consumable is doing what its meant to , but still it just seems too good? Maybe it’s only so profitable because the patch only just came out?

I don’t think so.

I think most players that are happy with Anet’s response are too busy farming to say thank you, so on behalf of those folk – thank you.

Sapphic Savvy.8376:

I think most players that are happy with Anet’s response are too busy farming to say thank you, so on behalf of those folk – thank you.

I think allowing this farm is unfair. People who played through the instance as intended are excluded from it. Once again Anets judgement calls fail miserably.

There is a storyline in vigil track before claw island that actually spawns an endless stream of rats where you could do this without resetting the instance year round. AP hunters use it for weaponmaster. Finding the best place to use an item isn’t an exploit, but it sucks for the people that can’t access this anymore when these instances traditionally have been character not account bound.

Zetsuei.8942:

Chris Cleary.8017:

In a player driven economy, the demand of an item surpassing the supply generated by the playerbase will increase the value of it. While there are some items in these bags that are not based around cosmetics (the low drop rate of T6 mats), the price of these bags is directly relative to the cosmetic value that is being placed on them. While currently profitable, that profit is derrived directly from other players and their willingness to play a higher price. In essence, this is a transfer of wealth not wealth generation.

As far as this specific spawn of ambients is concerned, it’s definatly one of the faster ones to farm. As long as the playerbase is willing to pay for that item, and the demand remains higher than the supply, it will be profitable. This is not an exploit, it’s the playerbase saying “thank you for farming this, because we didn’t want to”.

Can’t say I’m surprised at that response. Most players did the dungeon like normal but a very small percentage got lucky and found out about this before they did it. Now they get to reap the rewards while everyone else is out of luck. In Anet’s eyes it must be deemed okay since its not everyone using it but just a few players. Ignore the fact they get to make massive bank on it while everyone else is basically out of luck.

Anet has already shown they don’t really like to give everyone a even playing field, be it this patch or past ones. Either remove the critters the first time you enter or give us a option to re-play it. If you deem this as a non exploit then we all should have the chance to do it.

You have the freedom to make a new character, level it up and get to that story instance.

Just because a farming method is based on dumb, unrepeatable luck – it’s not exploitative.

I would say it lacks a certain amount of foresight (and let’s face it, this probably wasn’t considered heavily by designers) and perhaps maize balms should be removed from the game post-Halloween and not make a return. Learn from the mistakes and go on. Eventually the prices of maize balms and ToT bags would stabilize as well. There’s really no reason to condemn it as exploitative, though.

Cuddy.6247:

Zetsuei.8942:

Chris Cleary.8017:

In a player driven economy, the demand of an item surpassing the supply generated by the playerbase will increase the value of it. While there are some items in these bags that are not based around cosmetics (the low drop rate of T6 mats), the price of these bags is directly relative to the cosmetic value that is being placed on them. While currently profitable, that profit is derrived directly from other players and their willingness to play a higher price. In essence, this is a transfer of wealth not wealth generation.

As far as this specific spawn of ambients is concerned, it’s definatly one of the faster ones to farm. As long as the playerbase is willing to pay for that item, and the demand remains higher than the supply, it will be profitable. This is not an exploit, it’s the playerbase saying “thank you for farming this, because we didn’t want to”.

Can’t say I’m surprised at that response. Most players did the dungeon like normal but a very small percentage got lucky and found out about this before they did it. Now they get to reap the rewards while everyone else is out of luck. In Anet’s eyes it must be deemed okay since its not everyone using it but just a few players. Ignore the fact they get to make massive bank on it while everyone else is basically out of luck.

Anet has already shown they don’t really like to give everyone a even playing field, be it this patch or past ones. Either remove the critters the first time you enter or give us a option to re-play it. If you deem this as a non exploit then we all should have the chance to do it.

You have the freedom to make a new character, level it up and get to that story instance.

Just because a farming method is based on dumb, unrepeatable luck – it’s not exploitative.

The instance is account wide, last time I checked. So we have the freedom to buy a new account and then farm it. Yeah, no thanks.

Guhracie.3419:

I’m just telling you what the economist says.

He said virtually no DR… and he wasn’t clear with regard to whether he was speaking in terms of overall or on a player by player basis (i.e. if DR kicks in for only the top 1% of farmers, that would be virtually no DR but would be a significant impact on those players).

He also made those comments before the Maize Balm was added, so his statement doesn’t necessarily apply here. There could very well be some harsh DR on those.

If you’re confused why they would leave this… it’s because there’s no new halloween stuff pretty much.

They did the same thing with GW1 where in times there wasn’t much going on there were tons of permissible farms.

Savoy.6824:

Man it stinks that ambient creatures only spawn in the story instance and not anywhere else in the world. Also its such a shame that there isn’t a recipe for the maize balm that is made from the ingrediants that drop from the tot bags that would allow you to do this ambient thing all year even after the story is gone. Oh wait there is

IKR? It DOES suck that so many people are ‘locked’ out of this though. Remember that one time when you used to be able to roll new characters and play through the personal story again?

Tman.6349:

Savoy.6824:

Man it stinks that ambient creatures only spawn in the story instance and not anywhere else in the world. Also its such a shame that there isn’t a recipe for the maize balm that is made from the ingrediants that drop from the tot bags that would allow you to do this ambient thing all year even after the story is gone. Oh wait there is

IKR? It DOES suck that so many people are ‘locked’ out of this though. Remember that one time when you used to be able to roll new characters and play through the personal story again?

It’s not the PERSONAL story instance, it’s the halloween story instance. At least get your sarcasm right.

The only reason it is so profitable is that the majority of players got LOCKED OUT because they finished the first story step. Farms like this should at least be accessible to all players.

Sapphic Savvy.8376:

I think most players that are happy with Anet’s response are too busy farming to say thank you, so on behalf of those folk – thank you.

Gonna go ahead and second this notion.

Guhracie.3419:

Cuddy.6247:

Zetsuei.8942:

Chris Cleary.8017:

In a player driven economy, the demand of an item surpassing the supply generated by the playerbase will increase the value of it. While there are some items in these bags that are not based around cosmetics (the low drop rate of T6 mats), the price of these bags is directly relative to the cosmetic value that is being placed on them. While currently profitable, that profit is derrived directly from other players and their willingness to play a higher price. In essence, this is a transfer of wealth not wealth generation.

As far as this specific spawn of ambients is concerned, it’s definatly one of the faster ones to farm. As long as the playerbase is willing to pay for that item, and the demand remains higher than the supply, it will be profitable. This is not an exploit, it’s the playerbase saying “thank you for farming this, because we didn’t want to”.

Can’t say I’m surprised at that response. Most players did the dungeon like normal but a very small percentage got lucky and found out about this before they did it. Now they get to reap the rewards while everyone else is out of luck. In Anet’s eyes it must be deemed okay since its not everyone using it but just a few players. Ignore the fact they get to make massive bank on it while everyone else is basically out of luck.

Anet has already shown they don’t really like to give everyone a even playing field, be it this patch or past ones. Either remove the critters the first time you enter or give us a option to re-play it. If you deem this as a non exploit then we all should have the chance to do it.

You have the freedom to make a new character, level it up and get to that story instance.

Just because a farming method is based on dumb, unrepeatable luck – it’s not exploitative.

The instance is account wide, last time I checked. So we have the freedom to buy a new account and then farm it. Yeah, no thanks.

The rats that you get from the Vigil personal story step are not account wide, they’re tied to the personal story. You don’t need to buy another account. If you’d like to buy another account though to continue amassing your insignificant in-game fortunes though, nobody’s stopping you. It’s as basic as logic gets.

It has been mentioned multiple times that in the personal story no NPCs drop loot.

Edit: Just tested it myself in some random story instance. They give XP, but they don’t drop loot.

i checked the vigil story ( luckily i have a char at that point of the personal story):

millions of rats… but no drops :-(

I’d love to get back into the instance to farm rats. Unfortunately, being once per account, I cannot.

Stealth patch… I see what you did there. A light touch of evil, but not too evil.

Overall, a fair change

Would you like to explain?

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

Stealth patch… I see what you did there. A light touch of evil, but not too evil.

Overall, a fair change

Stealth patch? Mind explain it better?

What was that line about how events are intended to be completed again?

My bad. I assumed the vigil story with it’s infinite respawn was possible as well. There are definitely other areas with huge access to large quantities of ambients though.

not a complete fix, just saying

Not yet, but I’m taking notes and recording video.

Oh, and this morning, I ran an hour with a level 20 and got a drop from every one. This evening, post patch, I was very quickly hammered with a hefty dose of DR.