How long to get Ink Amasser achievement?

Aurielle · June 19

Orbital78 wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

Orbital78 wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Nathrai wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

technically you could get more from the quests, if you had 1 character slot that you could delete/remake lol

Yeah, that came to mind before. I don't care too much about the achievement (though I'll give the skill colour a try once I reach 50), but I REALLY want to get into the scribing system. There's a few combinations I was looking forward to testing out.

But I'm a bit reluctant to "farm" the quest with my throw-away char slot. Not just because that feels like cheating, but mainly because I've seen what grinding a quest does to my memory of that quest. I KNOW I loved the companion quests the first time around, but by now I simply detest them and can't even remember how they felt the first time around.

And I'm not sure I want to risk spoiling the memory of a questline I enjoyed so much.

Then again ... 12 ink within a couple of hours ... it's kinda alluring ...

for me while the questline was OK, it was far to repetitive (the dialogs were excellent, the actual "tasks" not so much) that im pretty much unwilling to repeat the wing quests lol

but i completely agree that i was looking forward to playing with the new skills, and the severe lack of ink is basically making the entire system unusable

Yup. I spent some time playing around with a couple of my PVP builds today, and did a few scribing experiments to proc certain set conditions. I’m now down to three ink. Oh well, no more experimenting for a while…

I’m sure the farmers with good RNG luck will be by to condescend and tell me what I’m doing “wrong” in no time, while they add to their piles of gold.

Prices are down 50% already. Cheaper than potent nirncrux. Starter zones, find your fav routes or farms. Not going to lie I have made lots of gold, but I've also spent the time harvesting for those who don't want to.

A very predictable response.

I have farmed the starter zones in farming gear at max running speed multiple times now. I still have not gotten enough ink to properly experiment with the system. My RNG luck has so far sucked royally. I would have to spend the bulk of my in-game time farming to amass enough ink to do what I want to do with the system, instead of engaging in the content where I actually want to use scribed skills in the first place.

Those of you who are farming for profit and not experimenting with your builds may be content to do that for many, many hours, but you don’t represent us all. Please stop defending this drop rate, simply because you have earned lots of gold from it and believe that your earnings and your luck with the grind indicate the drop rate is fine. It is not fine for those of us who play the game, rather than the economy mini game.

Am I defending the drop rate? I think potent nirncrux, full ambers, ayleid plans, vvard mushrooms and many things should be more common drops. Will I find them commonly, who knows but everyone should have a gold making plan in the game to get the things they want or need. I still think ink should be more accessible in the Archive, they sell the scripts.

If you weren’t defending the drop rate, why tell me prices are down? Why tell me to try farming in starter zones (something I’ve already stated I’m doing)? Why tell me you’ve made a lot of gold off farming ink?

Having a “gold making plan” should not be necessary for a system with thousands of possible permutations. It makes no sense for ink to be this rare. It only makes sense if ZOS’s goal here is to pressure more players into buying ESO plus — because you’ll certainly need it if you want to fill your bags with anything other than every kind of crafting node while spending painful hours hunting for ink.

Nathrai · June 19

To be fair, while I don't get WHAT they are trying to achieve by making ink this super-super-super-rare drop when we already have to hunt down scripts, anyway - I'm pretty sure it's not to pressure people into getting ESO+. Would be fairly stupid, too. NOBODY is getting ESO+ for the ink. And in the long run I think they'll rather loose subscribers over the whole grinding sheogorigans.

Strangely enough, yesterday for the first time I had a few mobs drop ink. Still far from a rate that would allow to actively use the scribing system, but unless they were outliers, fixing the bosses might have had an effect on trash mobs, too ...?

Aurielle · June 19

Nathrai wrote: »

To be fair, while I don't get WHAT they are trying to achieve by making ink this super-super-super-rare drop when we already have to hunt down scripts, anyway - I'm pretty sure it's not to pressure people into getting ESO+. Would be fairly stupid, too. NOBODY is getting ESO+ for the ink. And in the long run I think they'll rather loose subscribers over the whole grinding sheogorigans.

Strangely enough, yesterday for the first time I had a few mobs drop ink. Still far from a rate that would allow to actively use the scribing system, but unless they were outliers, fixing the bosses might have had an effect on trash mobs, too ...?

I was mainly being sarcastic, and I agree, it would be fairly stupid to introduce a super low drop rate for a new system just to increase subs — but I literally do not see any other reason why they’d want to arbitrarily limit use of the system this much. It’s not like the skills are OP. I’ve found one rather amusing skill/set combo in Cyrodiil that I’m keeping quiet for now while I’m still testing it out on big zergs, but there’s nothing about scribing on the whole that screams “UNLIMITED POWAAAAH!”

I’ve been using the ESO Farm Buddy addon to track my ink progress per session. And gosh, the number of times I come away from each session with a fat ol’ zero on that tracker… I would suggest that maybe those mobs dropping ink for you yesterday were RNG outliers. I ran Maelstrom Arena yesterday for class script scraps and got nothing from the large number of trash mobs or bosses there. Also filled some missing Blind Path/Tarnished set pieces by running that dungeon over and over again over the last few days… with zero ink drops.

Nathrai · June 19

Yah, I don't get it, either. One would think they WANTED people to experiment and engange with the system. It could be so much fun ...

I'll keep an eye on mob drops, but if nobody else experiences any differences, it probably was just a matter of good luck.

Aurielle · June 19

Nathrai wrote: »

Yah, I don't get it, either. One would think they WANTED people to experiment and engange with the system. It could be so much fun ...

I'll keep an eye on mob drops, but if nobody else experiences any differences, it probably was just a matter of good luck.

Right?! As of right now, I can only scribe ONE new skill. I spent some time theorycrafting over the last few days and ended up burning through what little ink I had. I’m really happy with the skill and set combos I’ve come up with so far (to the point of golding out the sets I’m using with the skills), but there’s still a lot more I wanted to try. It’s going to have to wait a while.

On the one hand, there’s the fun of being able to tinker with builds and fill in the missing pieces or correct stuff that felt lacking … on the other, there’s this godawful grind that makes you just want to not even bother with the MAIN FEATURE of the new chapter. Oh well.

EF321 · June 19

Aurielle wrote: »

Nathrai wrote: »

To be fair, while I don't get WHAT they are trying to achieve by making ink this super-super-super-rare drop when we already have to hunt down scripts, anyway - I'm pretty sure it's not to pressure people into getting ESO+. Would be fairly stupid, too. NOBODY is getting ESO+ for the ink. And in the long run I think they'll rather loose subscribers over the whole grinding sheogorigans.

Strangely enough, yesterday for the first time I had a few mobs drop ink. Still far from a rate that would allow to actively use the scribing system, but unless they were outliers, fixing the bosses might have had an effect on trash mobs, too ...?

I was mainly being sarcastic, and I agree, it would be fairly stupid to introduce a super low drop rate for a new system just to increase subs — but I literally do not see any other reason why they’d want to arbitrarily limit use of the system this much. It’s not like the skills are OP. I’ve found one rather amusing skill/set combo in Cyrodiil that I’m keeping quiet for now while I’m still testing it out on big zergs, but there’s nothing about scribing on the whole that screams “UNLIMITED POWAAAAH!”

I’ve been using the ESO Farm Buddy addon to track my ink progress per session. And gosh, the number of times I come away from each session with a fat ol’ zero on that tracker… I would suggest that maybe those mobs dropping ink for you yesterday were RNG outliers. I ran Maelstrom Arena yesterday for class script scraps and got nothing from the large number of trash mobs or bosses there. Also filled some missing Blind Path/Tarnished set pieces by running that dungeon over and over again over the last few days… with zero ink drops.

Mobs in Maelstrom are not lootable, you can not expect ink from those ever. From reward chest - unclear yet atm, maybe they count as boss drops and have small chance, maybe not, in any case it is not an ink source to rely on. Same goes for other arenas and IA. In DSA mobs are lootable, but only drop tiny amounts of gold, again not clear if ink is possible.

In general mob ink falls more into "nice surprise" category than real source. Like Hakeijos from psijic portals. At least ink form mobs is way more common than nirn from crag mobs.

Aurielle · June 19

EF321 wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

Nathrai wrote: »

To be fair, while I don't get WHAT they are trying to achieve by making ink this super-super-super-rare drop when we already have to hunt down scripts, anyway - I'm pretty sure it's not to pressure people into getting ESO+. Would be fairly stupid, too. NOBODY is getting ESO+ for the ink. And in the long run I think they'll rather loose subscribers over the whole grinding sheogorigans.

Strangely enough, yesterday for the first time I had a few mobs drop ink. Still far from a rate that would allow to actively use the scribing system, but unless they were outliers, fixing the bosses might have had an effect on trash mobs, too ...?

I was mainly being sarcastic, and I agree, it would be fairly stupid to introduce a super low drop rate for a new system just to increase subs — but I literally do not see any other reason why they’d want to arbitrarily limit use of the system this much. It’s not like the skills are OP. I’ve found one rather amusing skill/set combo in Cyrodiil that I’m keeping quiet for now while I’m still testing it out on big zergs, but there’s nothing about scribing on the whole that screams “UNLIMITED POWAAAAH!”

I’ve been using the ESO Farm Buddy addon to track my ink progress per session. And gosh, the number of times I come away from each session with a fat ol’ zero on that tracker… I would suggest that maybe those mobs dropping ink for you yesterday were RNG outliers. I ran Maelstrom Arena yesterday for class script scraps and got nothing from the large number of trash mobs or bosses there. Also filled some missing Blind Path/Tarnished set pieces by running that dungeon over and over again over the last few days… with zero ink drops.

Mobs in Maelstrom are not lootable, you can not expect ink from those ever. From reward chest - unclear yet atm, maybe they count as boss drops and have small chance, maybe not, in any case it is not an ink source to rely on. Same goes for other arenas and IA. In DSA mobs are lootable, but only drop tiny amounts of gold, again not clear if ink is possible.

In general mob ink falls more into "nice surprise" category than real source. Like Hakeijos from psijic portals. At least ink form mobs is way more common than nirn from crag mobs.

Fair point there on the Maelstrom mobs — you’d think chests would have a chance to drop ink, though. I tried grinding Skyreach mobs and Spellscar mobs, and it became very apparent very quickly that it was a pointless alternative to grinding crafting nodes.

I did get one (1) ink from a random spider this morning that attacked me on my way to a crafting node. I agree that it seems to fall more so into the “nice surprise” category, and definitely isn’t a viable way to farm ink. I firmly believe that the ink drop should be increased on mobs, so that those of us with no interest in spending hours harvesting in starter zones can actually get some ink…

Gray_howling_parrot · June 19

Some of yall just have really bad RNG truthfully. I’m not going to sit around and just farm resources for the inks, so I’ve just been going about my daily fun in ESO after having done everything else in gold road and I’ve received like 30-40 I believe? Just doing dungeons, trials, zone completion on alts, and picking up resources along the way.

darvaria · June 19

sarahthes wrote: »

I play every day, 4ish hours on weekdays and longer on weekends.

I'm around 130-140 ink so far.

.

And what type of "play" are you engaging in to get that many inks?

Orbital78 · June 19

Cooperharley wrote: »

Some of yall just have really bad RNG truthfully. I’m not going to sit around and just farm resources for the inks, so I’ve just been going about my daily fun in ESO after having done everything else in gold road and I’ve received like 30-40 I believe? Just doing dungeons, trials, zone completion on alts, and picking up resources along the way.

It could be user error or pissing off harvesters with the competition, I have noticed an increase in "bugged" nodes in Craglorn from people leaving stuff behind. With a heavier harvesting game play I am up to nearly 200/500 now I think. After the patch I feel like I am getting more from killing random mobs doing quests. I recently started working on the newer quest line and some of the older stuff on an alt. It does feel like there could be a cooldown to finding ink perhaps too, I don't think I have ever found drops in quick succession.

I was hoping Archive would be a better place to get it for those not wanting to harvest, since it is instanced and ZoS hasn't really created any new solid AoE grind spots since Craglorn's Spellscar. Although some of the new public dungeons are set up a little more friendly for that, but not nearly as quick of spawn rates. Being able to buy ink for like 30-50k fortunes would be nice, similar to Hakeijo and Dawn-Prisms. Having a small chance to get them from all of the Archive resource bundles could help too.

Elsonso · June 19

darvaria wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

I'm around 130-140 ink so far.

And what type of "play" are you engaging in to get that many inks?

Disclaimer: I don't have that many Ink.

For someone taking the farming route, farming resource nodes is not the way to get Ink. With a drop rate so low that we need a shovel to find it, I find that farming overland mobs is much better. Hopefully, they don't nerf that.

Aurielle · June 19

Cooperharley wrote: »

Some of yall just have really bad RNG truthfully. I’m not going to sit around and just farm resources for the inks, so I’ve just been going about my daily fun in ESO after having done everything else in gold road and I’ve received like 30-40 I believe? Just doing dungeons, trials, zone completion on alts, and picking up resources along the way.

This is what we’ve been saying. A low drop rate punishes people who have bad RNG luck. And some of us seem to have consistent bad RNG luck. I just spent the last 50 minutes farming Bleakrock Isle on a build fully optimized for harvesting before the free ESO plus trial runs out. It was fairly quiet, very little competition for nodes. I only got four ink during that run. With the way some here talk, they would have seen quite a few more ink drops in fifty minutes than I did. I’m at 35/50 for the ink accumulator achievement, and I’ve engaged in multiple crafting node farming sessions — unlike you, and you’re at the same point as me.

Guess who won’t be renewing ESO plus for a while…

sarahthes · June 19

darvaria wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

I play every day, 4ish hours on weekdays and longer on weekends.

I'm around 130-140 ink so far.

.

And what type of "play" are you engaging in to get that many inks?

The bulk of my game time is raiding. I think over the past 2.5 weeks I've gotten 3-4 ink total from that. (2 hours a day)

Then I do writs on some or all of my 19 characters. (0.5-1 hours a day)

After raid I run around starter zones farming for a bit while I hang out with the homies in voice chat. It's usually pretty late by then so that's 1-1.5 hours max.

On weekends I raid a little more, catch up surveys, and farm a little more because when I complained about the price/rarity of columbine a few months ago in the inflation thread, people called me lazy for wanting to buy it instead of farming it.

Quethrosar · June 19

mobs suck for ink, resource nodes are so much better. the only zone i know of that is good for it is telvani since there are 1000s of nodes per meter.

Elsonso · June 19

Quethrosar wrote: »

mobs suck for ink, resource nodes are so much better. the only zone i know of that is good for it is telvani since there are 1000s of nodes per meter.

I got the same number of Ink from mobs in just a couple hours that I got from farming resources for two weeks.
The drop rate for resource nodes has to be less than 1 node per 100 attempts, while the drop rate for mobs feels like three times that, based on my limited sampling.

Nathrai · June 19

Until yesterday I actually got none from mobs - and you bet I did kill "a few" to take advantage of my shiny new Elemental Explosion AOE ...

Veinblood1965 · June 19

sarahthes wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

4 ink per week seems high. After the ink given for the scribing quests, I have not seen one drop from mobs nor nodes.

I'm at 80 ink already with about 10 hours of node farming plus doing the quest line on a single character.

It's rng which means that the way to get ink is to farm it.

Are you mad! every character lol. My hat is off to you, I was so happy to be done with the quest line I have no intention of touching it again! The quest line was good though, just long.

sarahthes · June 19

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

4 ink per week seems high. After the ink given for the scribing quests, I have not seen one drop from mobs nor nodes.

I'm at 80 ink already with about 10 hours of node farming plus doing the quest line on a single character.

It's rng which means that the way to get ink is to farm it.

Are you mad! every character lol. My hat is off to you, I was so happy to be done with the quest line I have no intention of touching it again! The quest line was good though, just long.

LOL I think you misread. I've only done the quest once.

cyclonus11 · June 19

Attempting to quantify: I ran one hour of farming in Craglorn. Master Gatherer and Plentiful Harvest are active from Champion Points and all of the Keen Eye skills filled. I have Ring of the Wild Hunt equipped. 3 ink acquired during this run.

I do not run planned routes and encountered a number of other farmers. I do not have a node map/compass tracker installed.

I only have Rank 10 Potency runestones in the tracker for rune nodes.

Elvenheart · June 20

Nathrai wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

technically you could get more from the quests, if you had 1 character slot that you could delete/remake lol

But I'm a bit reluctant to "farm" the quest with my throw-away char slot. Not just because that feels like cheating, but mainly because I've seen what grinding a quest does to my memory of that quest. I KNOW I loved the companion quests the first time around, but by now I simply detest them and can't even remember how they felt the first time around.

And I'm not sure I want to risk spoiling the memory of a questline I enjoyed so much.

Oh, I feel the same way about the companion quests, and that’s so sad! In and of themselves, the companion quests and especially the Scribing quests are so fun, but if you have more than one character (I have 11 with hopefully more to come someday) even they can get old and one’s memory of them can be ruined.

DreamyLu · June 20

I have reached 48 yesterday. I don't do extra efforts. I just keep playing the usual and let it go over time. I mean, there is no hurry right?

I would estimate that I get about 40 per weeks or so. I find that very fair, even more for an achievement that has no timing. To complete it within a few days or a few months... I really don't care.

DoofusMax · June 20

500? LOL! Don't want much, do they? At the rate I've been collecting inks, I figure that particular achievement will probably pop sometime after the next chapter releases, but hopefully before the one after that.

notyuu · June 20

sarahthes wrote: »

I play every day, 4ish hours on weekdays and longer on weekends.

I'm around 130-140 ink so far.

And I play for an unhealthy amount of time 5 days a week and Ive only gotten 38

Necrotech_Master · June 20

Aurielle wrote: »

Cooperharley wrote: »

Some of yall just have really bad RNG truthfully. I’m not going to sit around and just farm resources for the inks, so I’ve just been going about my daily fun in ESO after having done everything else in gold road and I’ve received like 30-40 I believe? Just doing dungeons, trials, zone completion on alts, and picking up resources along the way.

This is what we’ve been saying. A low drop rate punishes people who have bad RNG luck. And some of us seem to have consistent bad RNG luck. I just spent the last 50 minutes farming Bleakrock Isle on a build fully optimized for harvesting before the free ESO plus trial runs out. It was fairly quiet, very little competition for nodes. I only got four ink during that run. With the way some here talk, they would have seen quite a few more ink drops in fifty minutes than I did. I’m at 35/50 for the ink accumulator achievement, and I’ve engaged in multiple crafting node farming sessions — unlike you, and you’re at the same point as me.

Guess who won’t be renewing ESO plus for a while…

i feel like i generally have pretty good luck with most things in the game, but ink is not one of them lol

im still under 30 ink for the achievement at this point and we are at 2.5 weeks (12 of those were from my main running the quests initially)

so in 2.5 weeks ive obtained about 14 ink as drops, which is equating to maybe 1 unit a day if i avg it out

this is also taking time doing more "farming" style play (harvesting mats in either crag or starter zones, farming public dungeons) and then i have the rest of my normal play which is a mix of trials, dungeons, and other various activities such as the daily quests

Enemy-of-Coldharbour · September 3

I just finished this achievement today. It was a terrible grind, but I now have more mats (and ink) than I will ever use!

I tried farming most of the zones, Telvanni Peninsula was the most productive at first. However, there is a lot of competition there. I switched to Eastmarch last week and knocked out the last 100 ink in just 6 days. I got my last 15 ink in less than an hour this morning.

Necrotech_Master · September 3

Enemy-of-Coldharbour wrote: »

I just finished this achievement today. It was a terrible grind, but I now have more mats (and ink) than I will ever use!

I tried farming most of the zones, Telvanni Peninsula was the most productive at first. However, there is a lot of competition there. I switched to East March last week and knocked out the last 100 ink in just 6 days. I got my last 15 ink in less than an hour this morning.

i wish ink would drop for me at all lol

im still avg less than 5 ink per week, and still have less than 60 ink accumulated for the achievement since gold road release

TaSheen · September 3

I've been fishing on a lowbie on my 3rd account for the last week (this is one of the accounts without Master Angler). This account started out with 12 (from the questlines); it's now got 39 just from my little Bosmer fishergirl collecting EVERY NODE she runs across.

So far, water and rune nodes are the most productive of ink on her.

Enemy-of-Coldharbour · September 3

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Enemy-of-Coldharbour wrote: »

I just finished this achievement today. It was a terrible grind, but I now have more mats (and ink) than I will ever use!

I tried farming most of the zones, Telvanni Peninsula was the most productive at first. However, there is a lot of competition there. I switched to East March last week and knocked out the last 100 ink in just 6 days. I got my last 15 ink in less than an hour this morning.

i wish ink would drop for me at all lol

im still avg less than 5 ink per week, and still have less than 60 ink accumulated for the achievement since gold road release

Since you are on PC, be sure to use the Harvest Map addon. Enable 3D map pins with viewing distance set to max. The whole map will light up; you can't miss anything! Harvest every resource, heavy sack, and treasure chest as you run circles around the map. In the Champion Points, be sure to you are using Plentiful Harvest (it makes a HUGE difference). I almost always got double drops on ink.

DoofusMax · September 3

I'm not not yet halfway to the 500-mark, but generally tend to snag 3 or 4 per day as I'm running around, making it a multi-month achievement. I'll get there eventually, but see no reason to change my playing for a 15-point achievement. It doesn't even unlock anything (the skill style unlock happens at 50 inks).

Necrotech_Master · September 3

Enemy-of-Coldharbour wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Enemy-of-Coldharbour wrote: »

I just finished this achievement today. It was a terrible grind, but I now have more mats (and ink) than I will ever use!

I tried farming most of the zones, Telvanni Peninsula was the most productive at first. However, there is a lot of competition there. I switched to East March last week and knocked out the last 100 ink in just 6 days. I got my last 15 ink in less than an hour this morning.

i wish ink would drop for me at all lol

im still avg less than 5 ink per week, and still have less than 60 ink accumulated for the achievement since gold road release

Since you are on PC, be sure to use the Harvest Map addon. Be sure to enable 3D map pins with viewing distance set to max. The whole map will light up; you can't miss anything! Harvest every resource, heavy sack, and treasure chest as you run circles around the map. In the Champion Points, be sure to you are using Plentiful Harvest (it makes a HUGE difference). I almost always got double drops on ink.

already tried farming nodes, i cant stand doing it for more than an hour and i still rarely if at all get ink from that

the last 2 weekly harvest endeavors (one for 80 and one for 100) in the past couple months, i got 0 ink while completing either of them

the drop rates are horrendous from every source