Hirelings are useless now

Vanzen

Three hirelings maxed in all crafts. In the past three days, 2 purple mats. Just get rid of them Zos.

Roechacca

Ya I got Iron Ore yesterday lol . What's a VR14 gonna make with that ?

Gyudan

I was getting around 8 gold upgrade mats / day before update 6. Now I'm still waiting for my first post-nerf one.
They will probably be quite popular when they're added to the Crown Store.

helediron

Yes, hirelings got very heavily, like 90% nerfed. I tested it on PTS. Refining is exactly same as 1.5, contrary to what patch notes say. Writs seem to drop goldens, but i had a pause doing them and just restarted. I need to run them now few weeks.

DeLindsay

No ZoS should not get rid of Hirelings, yes they should un-nerf them at least a little.

helediron

Thanks @DeLindsay rescuing a guy who can't type clear posts. No no no, don't get rid of hirelings. Yes yes they were nerfed and yes yes should be unnerfed.

Sacadon

ZOS gave us heads-up on this one... Most definitely sucks. I suspect they want to "encourage" us to do stupid writs and trying to reel in the economy too. The gold dupe didn't help this either.

gwillard_ESO

When they re-set skill points, I'm glad I didn't invest anything in the equipment Hirelings. I did invest 2/3 points in the Provisioning Hirelings on a couple of characters. Seems worthwhile. A couple of purple recipes and plenty of food stuff including frost miriam (sp)

Vanzen

Yes, the provisioning hireling seems to be the only one worth, atm. Still waiting for my first gold mat.

Nestor

I have been tracking my hirelings since 1.6. I don't have all the counts yet, as I want a weeks worth. However the output from them is significantly lower than before.

DeLindsay

Alright, it's been 6 days now and I've spawned all 8 Character Hirelings twice daily except 2 days only once because I was resetting the spawn timer. Here are some very rough result comparisons from 1.5.8 > 1.6 spawning Hirelings twice/day on all 8 Characters:

1.5.8:

• Kuta = 2-3 per day
• Legendary Tempers = 8-10 per day

1.6 (Live):

• Kuta = 1 every 2-3 days
• Legendary Tempers = 1 every day and a half (this part stings the most)

Provision Hirelings are very much worth it now as you get 2 (20) ingredients unless you get Epic then it's (6). The rest of the Hirelings are still valid from the standpoint that you still get raw mats to Refine for a chance to get a Legendary Temper that way. The Writ Coffers only give me (1) Legendary Temper about every day and a half doing all 3 Crafting variants each day. It's really a joke that ZoS is forcing us to do those stupid crafting Writs that require WAY too many mats. Oh, they also haven't increased Nirncrux drops via Survey Reports like they said either. I still haven't gotten even 1 Nirncrux from the few Surveys I've had since 1.6 hit Live.

I_killed_Vivec

DeLindsay wrote: »

Alright, it's been 6 days now and I've spawned all 8 Character Hirelings twice daily except 2 days only once because I was resetting the spawn timer. Here are some very rough result comparisons from 1.5.8 > 1.6 spawning Hirelings twice/day on all 8 Characters:

1.5.8:

• Kuta = 2-3 per day
• Legendary Tempers = 8-10 per day

1.6 (Live):

• Kuta = 1 every 2-3 days
• Legendary Tempers = 1 every day and a half (this part stings the most)

Provision Hirelings are very much worth it now as you get 2 (20) ingredients unless you get Epic then it's (6). The rest of the Hirelings are still valid from the standpoint that you still get raw mats to Refine for a chance to get a Legendary Temper that way. The Writ Coffers only give me (1) Legendary Temper about every day and a half doing all 3 Crafting variants each day. It's really a joke that ZoS is forcing us to do those stupid crafting Writs that require WAY too many mats. Oh, they also haven't increased Nirncrux drops via Survey Reports like they said either. I still haven't gotten even 1 Nirncrux from the few Surveys I've had since 1.6 hit Live.

But...

I never got anything like that number of Kutas and legendary tempers pre 1.6. I'd get 1 Kuta from about 40 hireling mails, which seems like what you are experiencing now.

At one point I went two months without a single Kuta!

I have received much more in the week since 1.6 (from refining, writ rewards and just finding stuff "in the wild") than I did in the month prior to 1.6 dropping.

No nirncrux from surveys (not all of them have been in Upper Craglorn) , but I have picked two up this week - the first I've seen this year.

I'll give it a month or so to see how hirelings compare with writs - if I get a lot more from writs then I might reduce my hireling levels, particularly for wood, metal and cloth.

Ourorboros

Agreed, Hireling nerfed hard, will likely opt out of all but provisioning. I've been getting lots of Legendaries from writs, plus epic recipes, as well as better returns from refining. The latter may be RNG, with drought due, but we'll see. As to nirncux, I've been getting more surveys than pre 1.6. About a quarter have garnered nirncux, and I have gotten a decent amount from farming upper Craglorn. 20 in inventory right now, half acquired in 1.6. I have so much void ore and blooms, I don't even harvest if not in upper Craglorn.

Erock25

As someone who had four character slots taken up by bank mules with 3/3 hirelings in each blacksmith, woodworking, and clothier .... I am glad they nerfed hirelings. It was a dumb system where you gained a HUGE amount of money from logging into characters you never played twice per day.

Halefire

Have 5 crafts with hirelings ... Used to get atleast one mail per day some twice per hireling ... didn't login that much at times.

Now it's one random hireling mail , per day. Not happy here, feel like hurling, because the wasted points spent on crafting again.

Is it a bug or another new feature ?


This is B.S , hell I've been only logging into the game the past few months to collect the daily items in the mail from hirelings, well ... now even less reason to login.

Thought that they were supposed to send something at least once per day, they aren't for my characters anymore, please fix. Seems broken.

Vanzen

Still not a single gold mat beetwen 3 chars with hirelings in all crafts.
Pls unerf them (a bit) !

Turelus

Roechacca wrote: »

Ya I got Iron Ore yesterday lol . What's a VR14 gonna make with that ?

@Roechacca the material quality you receive is based of the level of crafting you're capable of. If you have 9/9 ranks in the main crafting (and can thus use Voidstone) you will get Voidstone.

Grapdjan

I have had about six yellows from my hirelings across three vr crafters. I've been getting quite a few yellows as writ rewards, and had four nirncrux from surveys.

It's too early to tell yet but enchanter writs have been better for yellows than the other ones.

Provvy hirelings are proving very useful and seven of those twice a day is plenty of material.

All in all I like the changes.

Jofish

Well, I still get gold from my 8 3/3 hirelings occasionally, so I'm not so upset with that nerf: but I'm not into giving charity to the "poor slobs" (npc's) that can get stuff from the devs anytime they want it... I want to make a profit from my writs, even if it's just an upper-hand in cyrodiil... But if they want us to play their self proclaimed "awesome end-game" content then they need to keep us from having to run around for hours collecting raw mats to refine just to get improvers...

bloodenragedb14_ESO

i remember the hell of hirelings, just get rid of them entirely.

Jofish

Well, it's the same old story; crafting has become meaningless, 'cuz better gear drops to the end-gamers; doesn't matter how many improvers you get 'cuz the endgame drops are gold anyway... same ol' , same ol'...

Grapdjan

Personally, given how ludicrously simplistic ESO crafting is, there's no way it should be the best gear anyway.

UPrime

I'm glad for the nerf. It always seemed silly that this was a viable game mechanic to "earn" stuff. Forcing you to be out in the world and playing the game seems like the way to go.

f047ys3v3n

I have stopped logging in for hirelings twice a day. I now only log once to feed the storage alts horses. When they are full I will stop that.

Realistically, the pay from hirelings is now so low that it is not worth the time to log in and log out. At this level I agree with many of the posters that they should be simply removed from the game.

I should note that I do not expect the removal of hireling derived gold mats to significantly change prices. If anything I expect prices to begin to drop after an initial bump caused by all the armor made useless by 1.6. I expect this drop because I believe bots have always been the driving source of mats and prices and bots will now produce more mats due to the greater refining drop rate. I came to this belief about the source of most mats on the market following the changes so long ago preventing the opening of level 1 hireling mails on level 3 alts. These changes did not change mat prices one bit indicating to me that people with hireling alts had never been a significant percentage of the market.

As for weather or not rendering hirelings irrelevant is a good or bad change, hirelings, along with horse feeding, daily quests, and daily undaunteds were part of a suite of incentives designed to get people to log in daily. Since horses quickly get maxed outs, daily quests never took because the XP was poor and max level players didn't need it anyway, and players would also eventually get all the undaunted loot, hirelings were easily the biggest of these incentives. They were the reason many people stayed in the habit of daily logging in and therefore daily playing. Now ZOS has enlightenment as this daily incentive though, because it stacks 3 days, it is not really all that daily. They are obviously betting with this incentive they can replace hirelings whole hog as they have made them basically worthless. This is a strange bet from ZOS as they do not really stand to gain anything by wrecking peoples hireling systems and they stand to *** off a lot of people. ZOS decisions continue to baffle me as they continually run the risk of royally pissing people off with some of their changes without any discernible up side to those decisions. The elite gear nerf was another such strange move to wreck something people had worked hard for to no particular end.

Often I have seen ZOS decisions, such as the endless panoply of XP nerfs, 10 or so dwemor motif pages instead of a book, the random trait nature of drops from the second round of elite content with SO and undaunted stuff as opposed to correct traiting as in AA and Hel-ra, and the institution of an endless progression system in the Champion system, as simple attempts to get around the need to create more content by just simply making you do the same content over and over again to get your progression. Indeed, no new content areas have been made in 6 months but all these grinds have been instituted. Sometimes though, as with the case of hirelings, their changes seem not to serve any purpose at all. Perhaps it is like a compulsive lair who lies when the truth would do them better. ZOS may be so used to being a horses backside that they forget why they do it and just start doing random things to *** folks off with no possible upside.

indigoblades

DeLindsay wrote: »

Alright, it's been 6 days now and I've spawned all 8 Character Hirelings twice daily except 2 days only once because I was resetting the spawn timer. Here are some very rough result comparisons from 1.5.8 > 1.6 spawning Hirelings twice/day on all 8 Characters:

1.5.8:

• Kuta = 2-3 per day
• Legendary Tempers = 8-10 per day

1.6 (Live):

• Kuta = 1 every 2-3 days
• Legendary Tempers = 1 every day and a half (this part stings the most)

Provision Hirelings are very much worth it now as you get 2 (20) ingredients unless you get Epic then it's (6). The rest of the Hirelings are still valid from the standpoint that you still get raw mats to Refine for a chance to get a Legendary Temper that way. The Writ Coffers only give me (1) Legendary Temper about every day and a half doing all 3 Crafting variants each day. It's really a joke that ZoS is forcing us to do those stupid crafting Writs that require WAY too many mats. Oh, they also haven't increased Nirncrux drops via Survey Reports like they said either. I still haven't gotten even 1 Nirncrux from the few Surveys I've had since 1.6 hit Live.

I am disappointed to report my results are similar and i track my enchanting delivery's closely. I invested lots of time and gold to level 8 hirelings to max with skill points in everything except keen eye.

Anyway, I only miss a hireling delivery once or twice a week & my spreadsheet corrects for that. I keep a running average of my enchanting hireling deliverys of kutas, and the average total inspiration delivered per day (ex kuta insp. = 26, Rekuta insp. = 20k .... Ta inp = 3.3 k). If i got all kutas's my insp would equal 16 x 26k (416k), if i got all Ta's my Inspiration would equal about 16 x 3.3k (59k). The most Kutas i ever got in a day was 9. The best and worst pre 1.6 inspiration received in a day i recieved was 331k as best and 175k as worst.

Pre 1.6: (old spreadsheet 2/22)

Kutas / day 3.4
avg insp / day 254

Post 1.6 (3/15)
Kuta's / day 0.2 (just one kuta that week)
avg insp / 170k

So they have nerfed Kuta delivery from about 2 to 3 day if u max everything to about 0 to 3 a week. That is just too large a change considering how hard it is to level an enchanter. I have lost all trust in Zos, with some major changes like that. i see no point in planning anything any more in this game .... Minor changes i can expect but picking out masters in enchanting nerfing there income 90% is too much.

This and mostly other changes in 1.6 have forced me to cancel 3 subs. Two were for friends and family whom hardly play so they probally would have dropped anyway, but one was for me i would of kept it, except i really dont like the current direction of ESO is headed. I have also started new games to fill my time.

Also, I didn't write this post to whine, i just wanted to confirm my results are similar for the poster i quoted.

indigoblades

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

I have stopped logging in for hirelings twice a day. I now only log once to feed the storage alts horses. When they are full I will stop that.

Realistically, the pay from hirelings is now so low that it is not worth the time to log in and log out. At this level I agree with many of the posters that they should be simply removed from the game.

I should note that I do not expect the removal of hireling derived gold mats to significantly change prices. If anything I expect prices to begin to drop after an initial bump caused by all the armor made useless by 1.6. I expect this drop because I believe bots have always been the driving source of mats and prices and bots will now produce more mats due to the greater refining drop rate. I came to this belief about the source of most mats on the market following the changes so long ago preventing the opening of level 1 hireling mails on level 3 alts. These changes did not change mat prices one bit indicating to me that people with hireling alts had never been a significant percentage of the market.

As for weather or not rendering hirelings irrelevant is a good or bad change, hirelings, along with horse feeding, daily quests, and daily undaunteds were part of a suite of incentives designed to get people to log in daily. Since horses quickly get maxed outs, daily quests never took because the XP was poor and max level players didn't need it anyway, and players would also eventually get all the undaunted loot, hirelings were easily the biggest of these incentives. They were the reason many people stayed in the habit of daily logging in and therefore daily playing. Now ZOS has enlightenment as this daily incentive though, because it stacks 3 days, it is not really all that daily. They are obviously betting with this incentive they can replace hirelings whole hog as they have made them basically worthless. This is a strange bet from ZOS as they do not really stand to gain anything by wrecking peoples hireling systems and they stand to *** off a lot of people. ZOS decisions continue to baffle me as they continually run the risk of royally pissing people off with some of their changes without any discernible up side to those decisions. The elite gear nerf was another such strange move to wreck something people had worked hard for to no particular end.

Often I have seen ZOS decisions, such as the endless panoply of XP nerfs, 10 or so dwemor motif pages instead of a book, the random trait nature of drops from the second round of elite content with SO and undaunted stuff as opposed to correct traiting as in AA and Hel-ra, and the institution of an endless progression system in the Champion system, as simple attempts to get around the need to create more content by just simply making you do the same content over and over again to get your progression. Indeed, no new content areas have been made in 6 months but all these grinds have been instituted. Sometimes though, as with the case of hirelings, their changes seem not to serve any purpose at all. Perhaps it is like a compulsive lair who lies when the truth would do them better. ZOS may be so used to being a horses backside that they forget why they do it and just start doing random things to *** folks off with no possible upside.

the last 10 days i have logged in twice a day like normal because i wanted to get some good numbers to average which i reported in the previous post. I kinda agree with you its just not worth logging in anymore .... previously i all ways did but loging 8 chars to receive a few purples isnt worth it anymore.

Your post is interesting and insightful because a few previous releases (last summer) upset me so much, all i could do was log in to get hirelings. Later i calmed down and returned playing but hireling deliverys kept me half in the game. At least now i wont need to worry logging in daily since they deliver so little. Once i stop playing a game a week or two i usually find something to replace it and rarely return once the habit is broken.

indigoblades

DELETE'd double post

Ashtaris

UPrime wrote: »

I'm glad for the nerf. It always seemed silly that this was a viable game mechanic to "earn" stuff. Forcing you to be out in the world and playing the game seems like the way to go.

Maybe you have a misunderstand of the crafting system? The only way we were getting the higher level mats from our hirelings is when we invested the time and skill points into the crafting line. You don't start getting Kuta's, Tempering Alloy's, etc. just because you have 3/3 into a hireling. I actually looked at hirelings and the higher level mats they brought you as a reward for investing the time to get to Master level crafting.

Ourorboros

I believe bots have always been the driving source of mats and prices and bots will now produce more mats due to the greater refining drop rate. I came to this belief about the source of most mats on the market following the changes so long ago preventing the opening of level 1 hireling mails on level 3 alts. These changes did not change mat prices one bit indicating to me that people with hireling alts had never been a significant percentage of the market.

Really, bots? If that were true, why are there no threads complaining of bots. Hirelings do not seem a likely source of all the mats for sell, and the resulting price decline. The Refiner achievement generates LOTS of mats for sale. I have thousands of raw mats gathered chasing nirncrux. Bottom-line, this part of your argument is reaching. Bots are not responsible for all the mats. There are more obvious mat sources, including hirelings, for those with hireling on 8 alts.

Grapdjan

Price drop in mats is nothing to do with bots, simply that refining gives golds so people are spending more time harvesting and refining meaning more refined product on stores, meaning lower prices.

Grapdjan

Combine this with a bunch I people used to just logging in and out eight times for profit, who cba to do writs and you have a glut, supply and less demand.