Bad Grind Hallow

JohnSmith · September 2023

Over the past 4 weeks, I've been grinding Bad Man's Hallow in the hopes of getting my last lead for both the Ring of the Pale Order, and the Ring of the Wild Hunt.

[snip]

I found myself a rather productive circuit around the dungeon, and after around 14 hours of grinding (not counting the first 3 hours), I have:

Run the circuit 206 times
Killed 4,012 hostiles
Killed 259 bosses
I have rage-quit at least 6 times

…and I am still waiting for either ring's lead to drop.

Now before the usual, "Bro, I got it in 5 minutes" flash mob arrives, this is not about you. This is about the RNG. We're all very proud of you and how lucky you are. Also, I agree with the usual gang of "Bro, you don't need to do it," but I want to, since, well… why not?

I also understand the Mythics should be rare, and special… but… 14-hours and no drops? I already have a full-time job, and running around in circles in a dungeon isn't exactly my idea of fun. In fact, every time I am done with a session, I don't feel like engaging with any part of Extreme Suffering Online any more, and I end up playing something else. (One more things, all the Mythics have been nerfed so much, are they really THAT special that the RNG odds are THIS bad?)

Even though the sample size is super small (just me), should both rings drop on my next kill, then my odds on the RNG for the Ring of the Wild Hunt is standing at 0.004% and for the Ring of the Pale Order it is 0.0002%! That's just silly.

These kinds of odds are indefensible. I wish ZOS would stop punishing its players with weak design and really-super-low-odds, and instead just make it challenging but do-able.

[edited for bashing]

emilyhyoyeon · September 2023

yeah completely agree here. I've put about 36 hours of raw time into trying to get a music box lead (one of ten leads needed for the whole thing). Never had to put that much time into a drop in any other game except for runescape. That is disgusting

finehair · September 2023

When I'm in one of those situations I usually end up opening a TV series I like on pc. And park my character nearby a boss or a mob spawn point in the dungeon/zone. I watch my movie/show, and whenever a mob/boss spawns I hear the game music and switch to that to kill in few seconds. If it drops it drops, if not I'm back to watching. Actively farming it while you are frustrated in rng is one of the worst things in the game i think.

Also, obligatory comment; yeah I got that one in 10 minutes or something.

WaywardArgonian · September 2023

It took me 3+ hours. Nowhere near your bad luck but still one of the most mind-numbing grinds I've done in the game. I feel like there should be some sort of pity system for mythics, if it's at all technically possible to implement that. I don't mind working to get special items, but some leads can be brutal if luck's against you.

Hapexamendios · September 2023

I got the Velothi Ur-Mage Amulet and my desire to do any more grinding for these damn things has completely evaporated. I am done seeking them out. They just aren't worth the aggravation.

AlterBlika · September 2023

It also took me quite some while to get the lead for pale order, to eventually find out that I don't even need that. At least now there aren't so many players farming, unlike the time after the release

Treeshka · September 2023

Lead randomness should have a worst case scenario and once a player reaches that point lead should drop guaranteed.

For example leads that are sourced from random mobs in certain locations should drop that lead after set amount of kill. You can still get the lead without killing set amount though. But this would probably need a lot of data stored in server for each account and each lead.

Tra_Lalan · September 2023

Try digging up up all your active leads (golden and purple) and try again. Maybe it will help somehow.
This really should drop already so possibly something is blocking it to drop. But that is just a guess based on my own RNG expierience.

SgtWinnie · September 2023

I have got those mythics on 4 accts NA +EU and some of them have been brutal.
However nothing like you mate. It really irritates me that you're not the first person I've heard with a similar experience.
Enough things are a grind in the game without adding crappy RNG to the mix.
I hope you get it very soon mate.
Good hunting.

SeaGtGruff · September 2023

Were those 14 continuous hours? Because I probably would have quit after 1 hour (or less) and come back another time to try again. Grinding is one of those activities I simply can't tolerate unless (1) the content is reasonable enjoyable to me or (2) I'm doing something else-- such as listening to music or watching TV-- at the same time.

Vulsahdaal · September 2023

JohnSmith wrote: »

I also understand the Mythics should be rare, and special… but… 14-hours and no drops? I already have a full-time job, and running around in circles in a dungeon isn't exactly my idea of fun. In fact, every time I am done with a session, I don't feel like engaging with any part of Extreme Suffering Online any more, and I end up playing something else. (One more things, all the Mythics have been nerfed so much, are they really THAT special that the RNG odds are THIS bad?)

I feel for you. I went through the same thing as have many others. Its been almost 3 years since I got my Pale order lead, and to this day I have still not gone back to that hellhole and probably never will.

While I was in still into self-punishment, I did change my strategy and it worked out better for me. Im gonna just copy a post I made here in November 2020 to explain how I got through it and kept the few shreds of sanity that I had left.

Ugh... That one was the worst. I spent about 11 hours there in total for that lead before it finally dropped.

I guess that's because it came too easy for me on the other leads. The delve boss dropped it on my 5th try. The Wrothgar WB on the 2cd try The 3rd chest I found (in a matter of about 20 minutes of searching) gave me a lead.

But Bad Mans Hallows was awful. Very few things to kill and when you do kill something it drops nothing. Not even a few gold or a white trash item.

I finally got lazy about it, and just stayed at the very beginning (facing the 2 tunnels that enter the area). The mobs there spawn very quickly and I just let the others run around inside the dungeon either finding nothing or trying to get a single hit on a shalk before someone else kills it.

If you just stay in front facing the 2 tunnels, theres 3 deranged whatever things that spawn on the left. Kill them, then go to tunnel on right. There will be 3 more deranged whatevers there at the entrance.Then just a little further in, a skeleton. Just a few steps more are 2 more deranged whatevers and in a side tunnel on left is a single skeever you can pull into the fight with these 2.

Then you go back to beginning, rinse and repeat (if original 3 arent up yet they will be within seconds).

Oh and not so quick spawning (like every 4 loops or so) will be 4 or 5 skeevers on your right.

I started doing this the last 3 hours I was there and finally it was the original 3 deranged whatevers that dropped the lead.

Ill tell you, unless ZOS decides to put yet another new lead in there for a golden 'total godmode win the entire game' ring, nothing short of that will ever get me to step one foot into that hell-pit again

Tenthirty2 · September 2023

Tra_Lalan wrote: »

Try digging up up all your active leads (golden and purple) and try again. Maybe it will help somehow.
This really should drop already so possibly something is blocking it to drop. But that is just a guess based on my own RNG expierience.

I really feel there is something to this yeah. I don't know about unrelated "one-off" leads, but with mythics oh yeah.

One thing I have noticed with mythic leads, very often as I get leads my drop chances go up a lot. This has happened TOO often for me to not believe it's more than random luck.
So with some mythics I'll save the leads with more difficult sources to farm until the last, works quite well.

This won't help OP with these mythics as they say they've the other 4 leads already, but perhaps for future mythics

KlauthWarthog · September 2023

That Ring of Pale Order lead you are talking about took me about 5 hours to drop, on and off.
I thought it was bad, then Mora's Whisper came about and... well... about 30 hours killing watchlings. I had more productive evenings watching paint dry.

Yes, it is entirely possible to get it on the first kill, but... problem is, it is also entirely possible to never get it. Those full RNG drops are, in essence, grinding a glorified lottery. Awful design.

MasterSpatula · September 2023

It's not about bad odds, because the numbers you're seeing don't reflect what the typical player experiences.

It's about straight-RNG without any factors to mitigate the potential quirks of RNG. Something could have a 50% drop chance and still not drop after 1000 attempts. It's highly improbable but not impossible, and with a large enough sample size, highly-improbable events become certainties.

ZOS has become a bit less devoted to the inherently-bad concept of unmitigated RNG in recent years, giving us curated loot tables and trait transmutations and the like. But the system is still rolling a straight RNG roll every time. And an improbably high number of improbably poor results is absolutely a possible result of a straight, unmitigated RNG system.

It is not, however, a possible result of good game design.

Straight RNG rolls to determine rewards are bad. Anyone who has any business working in game design knows the possible outcomes, knows that it is inevitable that some players will be singled out for (and I cannot stress this part enough) results that you'd have to be actively hostile to your players to consider acceptable.

Players should never feel singled out. That shouldn't be controversial, much less an uncommon opinion among designers.

katanagirl1 · September 2023

Sometimes switching characters will make the lead drop almost immediately. 13 runs in Volenfell in one day on my main and the next run on an alt got me the lead. Someone in my guild suggested it when I was expressing my misery in chat.

I get the feeling that the longer you play on one character, the worse your rng gets.

ZOS_Hadeostry · September 2023

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic, as it deals with a public dungeon.

Thank you for your understanding

rpa · September 2023

MasterSpatula wrote: »

It's not about bad odds, because the numbers you're seeing don't reflect what the typical player experiences.

It's about straight-RNG without any factors to mitigate the potential quirks of RNG. Something could have a 50% drop chance and still not drop after 1000 attempts. It's highly improbable but not impossible, and with a large enough sample size, highly-improbable events become certainties.

ZOS has become a bit less devoted to the inherently-bad concept of unmitigated RNG in recent years, giving us curated loot tables and trait transmutations and the like. But the system is still rolling a straight RNG roll every time. And an improbably high number of improbably poor results is absolutely a possible result of a straight, unmitigated RNG system.

It is not, however, a possible result of good game design.

Straight RNG rolls to determine rewards are bad. Anyone who has any business working in game design knows the possible outcomes, knows that it is inevitable that some players will be singled out for (and I cannot stress this part enough) results that you'd have to be actively hostile to your players to consider acceptable.

Players should never feel singled out. That shouldn't be controversial, much less an uncommon opinion among designers.

About 1/1000 of 10 try runs at 50% win per try change fails to win at least once. Failing 50% change per try 1000 times in row is so cosmologically unlucky (probability of 9.333*10^-302) it's much more likely the RNG is broken. Like if you bet for heads and get tails on 1000 tosses in row you are tossing a coin with two tails sides with probability of about 0.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999990667 which is rather close to 1. ESO RNG appears streaky at times but it definitely should not be that streaky.

prof-dracko · September 2023

I've spent about three days in the Vile Manse looking for the chest lead. I've opened at least 80 so far. It's insulting. But at least the loops get my companion levelled up.

MidniteOwl1913 · September 2023

Yeah I spent over 2 weeks of a 1-2 hours a day in Moonlit Cove looking for the lead to the moon pool. It was the 3rd one as I wanted to be able to buy this furnishing.

It was an awful grind. Not as bad as the watchling one, but not something I would want to do again. I really think ZOS should add some modifiers to the lead drop that reflects the effort. So the drop rate would go up after a certain number of attempts.

MasterSpatula · September 2023

rpa wrote: »

MasterSpatula wrote: »

It's not about bad odds, because the numbers you're seeing don't reflect what the typical player experiences.

It's about straight-RNG without any factors to mitigate the potential quirks of RNG. Something could have a 50% drop chance and still not drop after 1000 attempts. It's highly improbable but not impossible, and with a large enough sample size, highly-improbable events become certainties.

ZOS has become a bit less devoted to the inherently-bad concept of unmitigated RNG in recent years, giving us curated loot tables and trait transmutations and the like. But the system is still rolling a straight RNG roll every time. And an improbably high number of improbably poor results is absolutely a possible result of a straight, unmitigated RNG system.

It is not, however, a possible result of good game design.

Straight RNG rolls to determine rewards are bad. Anyone who has any business working in game design knows the possible outcomes, knows that it is inevitable that some players will be singled out for (and I cannot stress this part enough) results that you'd have to be actively hostile to your players to consider acceptable.

Players should never feel singled out. That shouldn't be controversial, much less an uncommon opinion among designers.

About 1/1000 of 10 try runs at 50% win per try change fails to win at least once. Failing 50% change per try 1000 times in row is so cosmologically unlucky (probability of 9.333*10^-302) it's much more likely the RNG is broken. Like if you bet for heads and get tails on 1000 tosses in row you are tossing a coin with two tails sides with probability of about 0.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999990667 which is rather close to 1. ESO RNG appears streaky at times but it definitely should not be that streaky.

@rpa , I think you're taking me just a smidge too literally. But I suppose I probably should have made the "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" reference a bit more obvious if I wanted to use an absurdity to illustrate a reality.

Hapexamendios · September 2023

ZOS_Hadeostry wrote: »

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic, as it deals with a public dungeon.

Thank you for your understanding

I disagree with this assessment. The main point of the topic is about the grind, not the location itself.

MasterSpatula · September 2023

Hapexamendios wrote: »

ZOS_Hadeostry wrote: »

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic, as it deals with a public dungeon.

Thank you for your understanding

I disagree with this assessment. The main point of the topic is about the grind, not the location itself.

"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

TheDuke · September 2023

I’m getting Shadowfen flashbacks..