Guild Wars 2

I just chopped down 10 mins worth of elder saplings and got ONE. Any feedback on drop rate? Seems to be awfully low. Boosters help?

Seems ok to me. I’ve parked 6 alts at the Elder Wood Log spawns (near Paggas) and I get on average 3-5 each time I rotate through all 6.

That’s around 110-120 Elder Wood Logs yielded.

On a side note, we’re collecting an essence of foxfire, which is produced by fungi that live from decaying wood, from saplings, young growing trees. I guess Earth biology only partially applies in Tyria (or someone should get their biology facts straight). On the other hand we’re choping down ancient saplings, I guess those froze in time and never actually had a chance to grow… they do re-spawn though. Oh the idiosyncrasies of MMOs…

i just spent 3 hours and 600 wood axes and got all of 12 of these things. figured i was ok to make the plant food, nope, apparently need 28 of the things for that alone. the drop rate needs to fixed, or at the very least give us some of them as a reward in the final quest of this episode, even just 5 would be helpful

cause we wont have to grind/farm, remember?
it goes in the wrong direction of f2p craps with rng everywhere…

First day: OMG ANet increase the drop rate!!!!! I need these to make stuff!

After a few days: OMG ANet decrease the drop rate!!!! I made my stuff and now it’s clogging up my inventory!

Seriously people. It hasn’t even been 24 hours. You will have at least 2 weeks to get these things and probably much longer.

The drop rate is fine imo.

fishball.7204:

That’s around 110-120 Elder Wood Logs yielded.

Anyone can confirm this estimate?

This is a very wrong step in the right path.

There have been good scavenger hunts before, see:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Thackeray%27s_scavenger_hunt
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Black_Moa_Chick

However, this is not one of them. Having to go to places to purify items is great, but forcing all of us to spent days running around cutting trees is extremely disappointing. In the hunts I listed above, we were made to run around Tyria to fetch different items, often having to interact with quests to do it. This would be perfect for GW2, but instead they decided to add ANOTHER grindfest, something which they say they don’t want, despite their actions.

Come on, Anet. I’m starting to seriously believe that none of the living world team ever worked on or even played GW1.

I’ve gone through 367 Elder Wood logs now. Haven’t seen one. I’m convinced RNG hates me.

But honestly I’m not too upset about it. Sure I’d love to finish the backpiece. But I still have a week on making the foodstuffs and at the same time its a permanent drop from the high tier tree nodes so its not too terrible I suppose…

Katreyn.4218:

I’ve gone through 367 Elder Wood logs now. Haven’t seen one. I’m convinced RNG hates me.

But honestly I’m not too upset about it. Sure I’d love to finish the backpiece. But I still have a week on making the foodstuffs and at the same time its a permanent drop from the high tier tree nodes so its not too terrible I suppose…

Your luck is terrible
I had 6 for around 150 logs I think…

Walked through Orr (Straits to Malchor to Cursed Shore). I wound up with 14, husband had 7. As it is the first day and not going anywhere…seems fine to me.

narwhalsbend.7059:

In the hunts I listed above, we were made to run around Tyria to fetch different items.

Get the Bog Skale Fin and the Skree Wing for the Moa Chick quest was a bit annoying, but far from the current one, but on the bright side, you can just buy it and exchange time/annoyance for gold

All in all this new scavenger hunt is great, I’m sure they will tune the next ones based on our feedback.

narwhalsbend.7059:

This is a very wrong step in the right path.

There have been good scavenger hunts before, see:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Thackeray%27s_scavenger_hunt
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Black_Moa_Chick

However, this is not one of them. Having to go to places to purify items is great, but forcing all of us to spent days running around cutting trees is extremely disappointing. In the hunts I listed above, we were made to run around Tyria to fetch different items, often having to interact with quests to do it. This would be perfect for GW2, but instead they decided to add ANOTHER grindfest, something which they say they don’t want, despite their actions.

Come on, Anet. I’m starting to seriously believe that none of the living world team ever worked on or even played GW1.

And then there’s http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Nicholas_the_Traveler who had some items that were truly terrible to grind for

Blix.8021:

narwhalsbend.7059:

This is a very wrong step in the right path.

There have been good scavenger hunts before, see:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Thackeray%27s_scavenger_hunt
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Black_Moa_Chick

However, this is not one of them. Having to go to places to purify items is great, but forcing all of us to spent days running around cutting trees is extremely disappointing. In the hunts I listed above, we were made to run around Tyria to fetch different items, often having to interact with quests to do it. This would be perfect for GW2, but instead they decided to add ANOTHER grindfest, something which they say they don’t want, despite their actions.

Come on, Anet. I’m starting to seriously believe that none of the living world team ever worked on or even played GW1.

And then there’s http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Nicholas_the_Traveler who had some items that were truly terrible to grind for

That’s not a fair comparison because it’s not a scavenger hunt that you only do once. It’s like saying the Zaishen quests were unfair because they forced you to vanquish a zone every day.

found 14 in about one hour with the same toon , running around in cursed shore and Strait of devastation. Sold 7 at 4G each Tonight ill do the same run with Alts and gathering Boosters.

droprate seems just fine, picked up 3 so far and I haven’t really put in an effort to grind them.

Farming Flats.5370:

found 14 in about one hour with the same toon , running around in cursed shore and Strait of devastation. Sold 7 at 4G each Tonight ill do the same run with Alts and gathering Boosters.

oh! so it’s Tyria wide?!!
I was under the lame impression it was Dry Top wide. kitten , I feel silly.

Domino.1359:

Farming Flats.5370:

found 14 in about one hour with the same toon , running around in cursed shore and Strait of devastation. Sold 7 at 4G each Tonight ill do the same run with Alts and gathering Boosters.

oh! so it’s Tyria wide?!!
I was under the lame impression it was Dry Top wide. kitten , I feel silly.

i tried several essence of trees …. i get them only on Elder woods , and Ancient wood
so yes any zone with elder woods will do …. don’t forget to hop on Southsun Cove.

I chopped two trees in Dry Top and got one. I’m worried about trying again

Drop rate is fine, I’m getting about 15-20 an hour.

First day: OMG ANet increase the drop rate!!!!! I need these to make stuff!

After a few days: OMG ANet decrease the drop rate!!!! I made my stuff and now it’s clogging up my inventory!

Seriously people. It hasn’t even been 24 hours. You will have at least 2 weeks to get these things and probably much longer.

I have never once asked ANet to decrease the drop rate for anything. I have on many occasions asked them to increase the usefulness of stuff though. I have about 50K units of bloodstone dust at this point, I do not want them to make bloodstone dust drop less often, but I definitely want them to add recipes by which I can make a reasonable return from them.

Guildies have reported getting them from Mordrem mobs as well. Instead of trying to get them purely via logging trees, maybe mix it up with some farming too?

Ohoni.6057:

First day: OMG ANet increase the drop rate!!!!! I need these to make stuff!

After a few days: OMG ANet decrease the drop rate!!!! I made my stuff and now it’s clogging up my inventory!

Seriously people. It hasn’t even been 24 hours. You will have at least 2 weeks to get these things and probably much longer.

I have never once asked ANet to decrease the drop rate for anything. I have on many occasions asked them to increase the usefulness of stuff though. I have about 50K units of bloodstone dust at this point, I do not want them to make bloodstone dust drop less often, but I definitely want them to add recipes by which I can make a reasonable return from them.

Since I didn’t quote you, then I never said you said that. Whether or not any one person has ever asked for a decrease is irrelevant. I have seen posts asking for various account bound materials to have the drop rate adjusted, up for those who aren’t getting as many as they want and down for others who are done, up when the material is new and down when the material is old. That is what my post is talking about.

Since I didn’t quote you, then I never said you said that.

I’m just saying, I’ve heard complaints that certain common drops did not have any practical use so they keep piling up (the solution being to give them more useful, repeatable purposes), but I’ve never once heard ANYONE complain that anything should be dropping less than it is.

Ohoni.6057:

Since I didn’t quote you, then I never said you said that.

I’m just saying, I’ve heard complaints that certain common drops did not have any practical use so they keep piling up (the solution being to give them more useful, repeatable purposes), but I’ve never once heard ANYONE complain that anything should be dropping less than it is.

I remember when butter was popping out of trees. Pretty sure I heard people being annoyed/confused/amused by the sheer amount of butter, including “Why is this dropping so much!?”

I got 3 on the first two trees I cut down….haven’t seen another one since.

Seems that the drop rate decreased compared to yesterday ?? anyone noticed that ?

Lea.6194:

Seems that the drop rate decreased compared to yesterday ?? anyone noticed that ?

Gees.. whenever someone doesn’t get what they want, the way they want it from an RNG mechanic they automatically take to conspiracy theories that ANET has dropped the rates etc… welcome to RNG – sometimes you win, sometimes you loose.

Maybe what you should do is post your large sample sizes from yesterday and the same for today… not a small sample size I mean real and useable sample size.. say 5000 trees, yields 15000 logs and “X” Foxfires .. then we can debate drop rates being stealth tweaked. Even then the samples wouldn’t say much as its only been like 24hours…

Rome wasn’t built in a day, quit worrying about drop rates, it’s not a race… sheeez

It probably hasn’t decreased because it’s an RNG based system. The general idea is that for every ‘x’ you get ‘y’ but since every single time you farm an ‘x’ you have the exact same percentage chance to get ‘y’. Like a coin toss. Every time it’s 50/50. But for the trees we’ll say it’s closer to 1/50 (since that’s the rate I’ve generally gotten them and managed to get 6 yesterday in my 3 hours of lumberjacking). This means you have a 2% chance each time you swing your axe to get one, but that is not always going to happen since there’s a 98% chance you won’t.

An RNG so close to 100% chance not to drop is why some people have farmed 300+ elder wood and haven’t seen a single foxfire. Now, with the thousands of people playing, it is also understandable to see people who have the opposite side of the luck spectrum, but for every 1 of them there’s probably 45-48 who get the actual ‘drop rate’ and 1-4 who never see any.

Yeah I know that it is RNG and don’t fire me, that was my feeling after some runs ^^
Just asking if some people have the same feeling ;-)
(same duration, yesterday 42 foxfire clusters and today 30)

I remember when butter was popping out of trees. Pretty sure I heard people being annoyed/confused/amused by the sheer amount of butter, including “Why is this dropping so much!?”

Well, to be fair, in the real world, most trees barely produce a single stick of butter per season.

If you use the Gem Store booster, you get a +33% increased chance at drops. That’s not including any Banner or Guild boosts that you may have as well.

Sweept through Orr (Straits, Malchor and Cursed), spent almost 3 Ori Axes cutting down every tree i could find and got 7 Foxfire Clusters. Not bat but its a bit of a grind.

I’m a Lumberjack and i’m ok…

narwhalsbend.7059:

This is a very wrong step in the right path.

There have been good scavenger hunts before, see:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Thackeray%27s_scavenger_hunt
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Black_Moa_Chick

However, this is not one of them. Having to go to places to purify items is great, but forcing all of us to spent days running around cutting trees is extremely disappointing. In the hunts I listed above, we were made to run around Tyria to fetch different items, often having to interact with quests to do it. This would be perfect for GW2, but instead they decided to add ANOTHER grindfest, something which they say they don’t want, despite their actions.

Come on, Anet. I’m starting to seriously believe that none of the living world team ever worked on or even played GW1.

See, I knew something was wrong with this scavenger hunt! There wasn’t an excruciatingly sharp pain in my butt.

Go back to your roots, ArenaNet. Your players want pain, enough of this nonsensical notion of “fun”.

Ohoni.6057:

Since I didn’t quote you, then I never said you said that.

I’m just saying, I’ve heard complaints that certain common drops did not have any practical use so they keep piling up (the solution being to give them more useful, repeatable purposes), but I’ve never once heard ANYONE complain that anything should be dropping less than it is.

Some samples:

Bloodstone dust: “The rate at acquiring bloodstone dust is, in my opinion, too high” too much bloodstone dust.
Butter and chocolate: can you tone down the butter and chocolate (there were numerous posts around that time about butter and chocolate)
Individual post: dragonite
“Dragonite drop need to be nerfed. I get so many of these things, it’s unreal. The drops exceed even the Bloodstones.” source

I’m sure I can find more if I wanted to search longer but that’s what a few minutes got me. While most people do call for additional uses, in the ~2 years I’ve played I’ve seen a number of posts about increasing/decreasing drop rates of various items.

The currency sinks in this game are unreal. Your choices are: 1) Run around farming nonsense for a single backpiece or 2) Buy basically everything.

But honestly, the main part that bugs me is that the update text is a bit deceiving. “Begin construction of a new back item which will grow and change as your adventures continue in Episodes 3 and 4” makes me think that the game is going to give you what you need through the story.

Instead, you get a few enticing pieces and a fun little run-around-the-world scavenger hunt, followed by realizing that the pieces you just changed are only the base components of numerous recipes requiring a lot of farming that has little to do with the story quests.

In other words, unless you want to spend hours and hours farming or spend all of your gold to buy components for one back piece, you realize that you just (potentially) wasted all of that time with their little mini-game to get nothing.

I mean, by the current prices I’ve seen, if you bought all of the crafted components, you could easily spend over 100 gold. 100+ gold worth of farming for one skin with stats that you may not even want. When I put it in perspective like that, it’s extremely off-putting game design. I don’t expect handouts, but I expect item acquisition to be fun once in a while.

Wait…you can’t choose it’s stats when you make it?

The drop rate is about 1/50. You need to cut about 3-3,5k logs to get all the foxfire you need for the back piece.

Oh noes, I can’t get the item I want on the first day. I only have the rest of my life to do it.

You do know that you can buy it off the TP as well, right?

Also, if you are upset about about not being able to farm it and sell it, you do know that the price is high because of the drop rate, right?

Nilkemia.8507:

Wait…you can’t choose it’s stats when you make it?

I don’t know. I may be wrong about that part.

Lévis.5489:

The drop rate is about 1/50. You need to cut about 3-3,5k logs to get all the foxfire you need for the back piece.

That’s… preposterous. Not to mention incredibly grindy. Especially since we have to assume that the upgrades to the backpiece that have been promised for future episodes will require even more Foxfire.

On the other hand, Foxfire has no use outside the single backpiece, at least so far. So increasing the drop rate would inevitably lead to people moaning about their inventories being filled with a useless resource.

The real lesson here is, of course, that adding drops for single-use materials is a thoroughly bad idea, because whatever the drop rate, you’re kittened if you do, and kittened if you don’t.

got 14 vs 500 logs (circa) in about 1 hour in Orr. Didn’t feel at all grindy (it’s one hour only, come on :P). Maybe I got lucky, but price already dropped under 1g/ea, so it’s viable to just buy them all.

All in all, can’t complain.

Labjax.2465:

Nilkemia.8507:

Wait…you can’t choose it’s stats when you make it?

I don’t know. I may be wrong about that part.

No, you can’t.

Gudy.3607:

Lévis.5489:

The drop rate is about 1/50. You need to cut about 3-3,5k logs to get all the foxfire you need for the back piece.

That’s… preposterous. Not to mention incredibly grindy. Especially since we have to assume that the upgrades to the backpiece that have been promised for future episodes will require even more Foxfire.

That chance seems too low. I just completed cycling through my alts to chop down approximately 3500 wood logs and ended up with 102 clusters. I had the hero’s banner buff on but that’s about it.

They drop in bags and off mobs too… not sure why everyone is just chopping down trees.

Based on their plummeting price on the TP it seems the drop rate may be too high, it may need to be adjusted down to keep their value up.

I think foxfire drops are a permanent addition to the game, so over time they will become cheaper.

Astral Projections.7320:

Ohoni.6057:

Since I didn’t quote you, then I never said you said that.

I’m just saying, I’ve heard complaints that certain common drops did not have any practical use so they keep piling up (the solution being to give them more useful, repeatable purposes), but I’ve never once heard ANYONE complain that anything should be dropping less than it is.

Some samples:

Bloodstone dust: “The rate at acquiring bloodstone dust is, in my opinion, too high” too much bloodstone dust.
Butter and chocolate: can you tone down the butter and chocolate (there were numerous posts around that time about butter and chocolate)
Individual post: dragonite
“Dragonite drop need to be nerfed. I get so many of these things, it’s unreal. The drops exceed even the Bloodstones.” source

I’m sure I can find more if I wanted to search longer but that’s what a few minutes got me. While most people do call for additional uses, in the ~2 years I’ve played I’ve seen a number of posts about increasing/decreasing drop rates of various items.

To be fair, Butter Wars 2 was an actual problem. It was coming out of just about every bag.

But yeah, I only did maybe 30 trees yesterday and didn’t get even 1 foxfire. At least the price will hopefully keep dropping. Might have to take an hour or so and go clear cutting across Orr.

I’ve found that the Cursed Shore tends to drop plenty of them for me. On a single run-through chopping down trees there I can typically average 4-5 of the Clusters. I spent all day yesterday farming up 24 Clusters. 20 for the pot, 4 for the cooldown timer. Now I’ll take it easy and just farm 4 clusters a day until I’ve got all the plant food I need.

skullmount.1758:

Astral Projections.7320:

Ohoni.6057:

Since I didn’t quote you, then I never said you said that.

I’m just saying, I’ve heard complaints that certain common drops did not have any practical use so they keep piling up (the solution being to give them more useful, repeatable purposes), but I’ve never once heard ANYONE complain that anything should be dropping less than it is.

Some samples:

Bloodstone dust: “The rate at acquiring bloodstone dust is, in my opinion, too high” too much bloodstone dust.
Butter and chocolate: can you tone down the butter and chocolate (there were numerous posts around that time about butter and chocolate)
Individual post: dragonite
“Dragonite drop need to be nerfed. I get so many of these things, it’s unreal. The drops exceed even the Bloodstones.” source

I’m sure I can find more if I wanted to search longer but that’s what a few minutes got me. While most people do call for additional uses, in the ~2 years I’ve played I’ve seen a number of posts about increasing/decreasing drop rates of various items.

To be fair, Butter Wars 2 was an actual problem. It was coming out of just about every bag.

But yeah, I only did maybe 30 trees yesterday and didn’t get even 1 foxfire. At least the price will hopefully keep dropping. Might have to take an hour or so and go clear cutting across Orr.

And the butter was coming out in stacks of 2-10… Shudders I still have nightmares.