Surveys and Nirncrux... pre and post patch 1.5.4

Kuratla · November 2014

I have 8 characters all of which are maxed in at least one craft, some maxed in several and some maxed in all crafts. So I do a lot of crafting writs every day.

Pre-patch 1.5.4, clothing and woodworking surveys in Craglorn yielded virtually no nirncrux. I say 'virtually' because in the dozens of surveys I've done, I got a grand total of 1 nirncrux from clothing and wood. Now Blacksmithing was a different animal. Every single Blacksmithing survey in Craglorn yielded exactly 5 nirncrux each time (I know that some people claim to have gotten 4 or 6 but it was always 5 for me).

Now, post-patch 1.5.4 (which arrived last Thursday), the drop rates for nirncrux were altered and I quote "•Fixed an issue that was causing Nirnhoned trait stones to drop more frequently from Ore Survey Reports in Craglorn, and too rarely for Cloth Survey Reports in Craglorn than intended."

I took that to mean that the 3 crafts would now be balanced concerning nirncrux drops rates in Craglorn. So I continued on with my daily crafting writs over multiple toons and, since Thursday, I've gotten maybe 2 or 3 clothing surveys and 3 or 4 wood surveys. And the grand total of nirncrux I've gotten is zero from those which is pretty much identical to the pre-patch drop rates.

So I figured that they didn't in fact change the drop rates in the patch. That was until today however... when I got my first blacksmith survey since the patch. Yeah! 5 nirncrux coming up, I thought.

But.. nope. From that survey, I got zero nirncrux. Same as clothing and wood... so I guess they did balance them out after all.

Now, I know that only one blacksmith survey is a small pool to be drawing conclusions from and I need to get more to come to a definitive answer on this.

In the meantime, you hard working crafters like myself, what's your experience of this? Are you getting nirncrux from clothing and wood surveys in Craglorn? Has your blacksmithing drops been reduced to zero as well?

If it becomes clear that this is the case, then the coffin is nailed on writs for those of us at maxed crafting. Getting nirncrux is literally the only reason to do writs at maxed crafting ranks.

EQBallzz · November 2014

There are tons of threads about this already but I have ceased doing wood/clothing/bs writs entirely. I had a rather large stockpile of mats prior to this patch and I have used up much of it with very little reward. I managed to get a about 10 nirncrud from BS reports prior to latest patch but since then I'm getting almost none from any of them. I think I got 1 from a WW report and that was it.

It's just not worth the time/effort and certainly not worth the wasted mats. A stack of mats is selling for 1500+ gold atm so I'm just going to sell my mats instead of waste them on this pointless activity. It was a great idea but has been poorly implemented.

I would even argue that the rewards are so bad that this method isn't even that great for leveling crafts (I leveled up an alt's provisioning in a matter of minutes for the last few levels when it would have taken days or weeks to get that from the quest inspiration alone so why waste time with these quests?).

Kalman · November 2014

The crafting writs for Blacksmithing, Woodworking, and Clothing need to be changed to only require you to turn in 2 or 3 crafted items (instead of 9) then they would be worth it.

elowan · November 2014

Of the two cloth surveys I've received since patch time, one of them has yielded a single fortified nirncrux (versus zero before).

Of the three for wood, none. Of the two blacksmith surveys, one nirncrux.

They didn't reduce smith to zero, they reduced it to "infrequent," and *ever so slightly* increased wood/cloth to "infrequent" (from absolutely never).

As many have echoed on these forums, none of the three main item-crafting (cloth/bs/wood) are worth doing at max level. The turn-ins themselves are, at best, break-even, and that's only if you're assuming you were going to do a bunch of white-item crafting / vendoring (why would you be doing that, anyway?). The tiny chance of 1) getting a survey, and 2) having it actually yield nirncrux just isn't worth the time commitment, in my opinion.

Natjur · November 2014

Change of getting a survey when handing in a crafting writ is 25%

Before patch 1.5.4
Upper Craglorn Blacksmith survey =100% chance of nirncrux per node
Upper Craglorn Workwork survey = 1.25% chance of nirncrux per node
Upper Craglorn Clothsurvey =0.05% chance of nirncrux per node
Upper Craglorn normal nodes = 0.25% chance

After patch 1.5.4
Upper Craglorn Blacksmith survey =1.25% chance of nirncrux per node
Upper Craglorn Workwork survey = 1.25% chance of nirncrux per node
Upper Craglorn Clothsurvey =1.25% chance of nirncrux per node
Upper Craglorn normal nodes = 0.25% chance
(this info is put together from 4 different dev posts)

EQBallzz · November 2014

*cue family feud music*

Do I hear Nirncrux!? Give me NIRNCRUX!

Survey report says....bupkis.

Ghostbane · November 2014

I am not getting any Survey reports from BS Writs, is this intentional ?

EQBallzz · November 2014

Ghostbane wrote: »

I am not getting any Survey reports from BS Writs, is this intentional ?

You have about a 30% chance to get a report but it's still RNG so you could have a long unlucky streak. They aren't worth doing anyway (at this point) so save your mats IMO.