Where is the ink?

CrashTest · June 11

Do all mob types drop ink or is it just bosses?

cyclonus11 · June 11

CrashTest wrote: »

Do all mob types drop ink or is it just bosses?

I only got 1 ink from killing something, and it was a trash mob in a delve. The rest of the inks I've found were in nodes and containers.

Necrotech_Master · June 11

CrashTest wrote: »

Do all mob types drop ink or is it just bosses?

i think bosses are intended to have a higher drop rate than base mobs, but the bosses ink drops are currently confirmed to be broken

ink drops from base mobs is extraordinarily low, like it feels even lower than harvesting nodes

MidniteOwl1913 · June 11

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

TDVM wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone, just wanted to let you know we've seen your feedback over the drop rate for ink. We've found that ink is not currently dropping from boss enemies, and we'll be fixing that in an upcoming incremental. Additionally, we did double check and confirm ink is dropping as intended from nodes, though it's worth reminding everyone that ink will only begin dropping from nodes after you've completed the Netch quest.

Once the fix goes out for the boss enemies, we'll continue to monitor the drop rate and make further adjustments if necessary.

Fix the problem with boss enemies and additional adjustments drop ink do not need to do, the ink should have value, and such as it is now quite a good value. Unless with a rare chance to give away this ink for entering the game. Otherwise everything is fine and nothing needs to be changed except for the bugs.

If they keep ink hyper rare, then what is the point of Scribing in 1st place ? It is supposed to be a flexible system that gives us the ability to adjust & modify skills to our preferences. But how can we know what those skill even do if all we get is 12 ink for the quest and the rest is hyper rare ? 12 is not even enough to try out all the skills, let alone different "mods" that skills can have.

How do I know what different modifiers do aside from guessing (based on the skill & effect description) ? There is no way to "try out" skill before spending ink currency. It is actually better to go to PTS and test it there, so we would not waste ink on "experimenting". That is not how it is supposed to be. It feels wrong.

I will also point out that for the consoles there is no PTS to try it out on.

Thorncrypt · June 11

they shouldn't make spellcrafting feel like a chore otherwise it won't be popular and will fall off.

Necrotech_Master · June 11

Thorncrypt wrote: »

they shouldn't make spellcrafting feel like a chore otherwise it won't be popular and will fall off.

i mean this is already kind of where the system is for me

due to the severe lack of ink, ive been unable to craft all the skills to play with, to be honest collecting the scripts per character im OK with considering the large source of daily quests they can drop from

my biggest problem though is the ink, i cant experiment with the skills at all (i dont even have enough ink to craft all of the skills at least once on my main for achievements, let alone trying to experiment with my 10 other characters)

so ive kind of left it on the backburner for now while i collect more scripts, maybe by the time i accumulate enough inks ill have scripts learned on all of my characters lol

Jaraal · June 11

Thorncrypt wrote: »

they shouldn't make spellcrafting feel like a chore otherwise it won't be popular and will fall off.

They make everything a chore so that people will keep logging in and keep grinding. If everything is handed to us on a platter, then where's the motivation to keep playing?

It started with making you pay 250 gold per day for six months to train your mount, and it snowballed from there. More systems = more grind = more hours you have to burn to get stuff. It's marketing 101.

Alpheu5 · June 11

Jaraal wrote: »

Thorncrypt wrote: »

they shouldn't make spellcrafting feel like a chore otherwise it won't be popular and will fall off.

If everything is handed to us on a platter, then where's the motivation to keep playing?

...To have fun?

Elvenheart · June 11

Alpheu5 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Thorncrypt wrote: »

they shouldn't make spellcrafting feel like a chore otherwise it won't be popular and will fall off.

If everything is handed to us on a platter, then where's the motivation to keep playing?

...To have fun?

Agreed. Maybe for some people grinding for rewards is fun, but my idea of fun is working on the quests, enjoying the stories, killing the mobs with a powerful character, theory crafting builds, working on houses, etc. I was really looking forward to trying out all sorts of Scribing combinations, but the scarcity of ink makes that impossible. There’s something inside me that cringes at the thought of using something that I could sell for 100,000 gold and then finding out I don’t like what I made. When trying out new sets, I don’t automatically gold them out before even seeing if I like them. That would be incredibly wasteful.

CrashTest · June 11

Alpheu5 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Thorncrypt wrote: »

they shouldn't make spellcrafting feel like a chore otherwise it won't be popular and will fall off.

If everything is handed to us on a platter, then where's the motivation to keep playing?

...To have fun?

fr, it's so weird reading comments that support dreary grinding as a means to keep you playing. It's a game for fun. That should always be the main point.

wolfie1.0. · June 11

Alpheu5 wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Alpheu5 wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

TDVM wrote: »

James-Wayne wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone, just wanted to let you know we've seen your feedback over the drop rate for ink. We've found that ink is not currently dropping from boss enemies, and we'll be fixing that in an upcoming incremental. Additionally, we did double check and confirm ink is dropping as intended from nodes, though it's worth reminding everyone that ink will only begin dropping from nodes after you've completed the Netch quest.

Once the fix goes out for the boss enemies, we'll continue to monitor the drop rate and make further adjustments if necessary.

This is not enough. I have all wings unlocked and have been farming nodes in West Weald for the last 4 hours (did WBs and Dolmens as I went round) and have got nothing, not a single ink drop.

I have unlocked all unlocks in scribing system and nearly finished my class scripts but I dont have ink to use the system. I wont be wasting my time grinding for maybe a chance at one.

Please do more. Put them in the crown store, I will buy them at this rate.

This does not mean that you need to increase the chance of dropping ink, according to reports from different people you can conclude that everyone is +- satisfied, just some are luckier than others

One’s ability to use a new system one has PAID FOR should not be dependent upon luck… No other system in the game is like this.

Antiquities leads.
Furniture plans.
Even curated gear to an extent.

Every zone has guaranteed leads, so you're never locked out of the scrying system.
Housing was a free addition to the game, and many vendors throughout the game have a wide variety of furnishings available for gold so you can still decorate your house without knowing any plans. Also, new plans are not a new system.
Curation is diminishing RNG so you're eventually guaranteed to permanently unlock what you paid to access at some point. Also, new gear is not a new system.

The transmute system has multiple guaranteed ways to acquire crystals for transmuting and reconstructing.
Jewelry crafting added nodes to the world like everything else, and new jewelry could be deconstructed for materials if harvesting wasn't your thing.
Tel Var drops from every single entity in the Imperial City to get Tel Var-exclusive items.

The only other currency entirely dependent on RNG (outside of events/endeavors) is anything involving writ vouchers, which themselves aren't actually required to access an entire gameplay system.

You had to have bought greymoor at the time of launch to access antiquities, and you still need access to it to do so. It was new at the time of launch. While certian leads are available guaranteed the draw of the system are the mythic and collectible leads that drop based on rng. So you paid for it.

Housing and furniture plans also were a new system when they dropped. They didn't exist before. Yes the it is now a very robust system, but rng is still a key element for many plans. Otherwise some wouldn't have 5 mill + asking prices. Also, there are houses that cost way way more than gold road.

Curation, is diminishing rng, but it's still rng.

Jewelry is only in a good state now because of the mass change to grain conversion that recently happened. Prior to that there was a post once a week complaining about chrom prices, and every month someone complaining that refining rng was rigged or changed. You also paid to access it.

Scribing allows access to several ink and the basics of the system by doing a few quests. As well as guaranteed drops of pieces and almost free ways of acquiring them. A guaranteed 1 per day for scripts.

You want an rng based grind? I spent 90 hours in bad man's hallow for a lead. I spent 120 hours in darkshade for a lead. I spent an estimated 600 hours in ruins of mazz for a lead.

So between the two systems, I personally declare that when it comes to rng antiquities is a way way worse rng based system. The only good thing about it is that it's account wide.

I am not saying that scribing is good. I am just pointing out that it's not the only rng based system as you declared.

You misunderstood. Neither Aurielle nor myself said it was the only RNG based system. That would be an absurd statement. It's the only paid system where, thanks to ink only being sourced randomly, the insane odds of the currency/material completely lock you out of the system you paid to use. The 12 you get from the quests is good for 4 brand new skills per character to use on a system that's boasted as being robust and highly customizable with 12 new skill lines.

I also never said anything about the pages specifically because they're guaranteed. I haven't gotten multi-target yet because the RNG hasn't been in my favor but I know for a fact it will drop eventually due to the nature of those drops, and I'm fine with waiting a few more days.

Tough luck if someone doesn't get the lead they're looking for, but they can still dig things up in any zone and walk away with a considerable amount of gold if they just want to play the digging minigame.

Housing as a system has never in the history of ESO required actual dollars to be spent to participate.

Jewelry crafting was just Blacksmithing 2.0. Nobody was barred from crafting rings or researching traits just because the dust was a pain to acquire. Nodes could be found all over the world and decon gear was and still is plentiful.

Nobody had to buy anything for curation to happen. You might have had a point around when Orsinium was released and people could run vMA hundreds of times and not gotten a specific weapon, but lo and behold they added the transmute system and later changed how gear drops work because people were straining the database by hoarding gear in order to not have to grind for them again tired of endlessly running content and having the slimmest chance of getting the gear they wanted.

If ink had a few guaranteed drop sources so we weren't entirely dependent on the abysmal random chance to have the ability to scribe anything at all, there'd be much fewer complaints about it. Otherwise they need to increase the drop rate by orders of magnitude, especially from mobs.

since inks are tradeable your actually not completely locked out of the system. If they were bind on pickup then it's different. But having things be tradeable means that it's accessible to some degree.

That said, otherwise I totally understand your position, frustration, and I for the most part agree. I guess I just don't understand how you are 100% locked out of the content. When it can drop via rng and it's tradeable.

Jaraal · June 11

Alpheu5 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Thorncrypt wrote: »

they shouldn't make spellcrafting feel like a chore otherwise it won't be popular and will fall off.

If everything is handed to us on a platter, then where's the motivation to keep playing?

...To have fun?

Sure, I'm having fun selling ink. I haven't used the scribing system at all. However, there seem to be a lot of people who are resentful about how ZOS is making them "work" to use the new system.

I'm not one of them.

But you'd be mistaken if you think ZOS doesn't create artificial grinds to keep people logged in. Look at the Anniversary event grinds for style pages, and the amount of pushback it generated. Yet April was a huge uptick in players logging in and playing (according to Steam records). People will grumble, but they'll still be driven by FOMO. Just like some people are buying/grinding inks and enjoying the new skills, while others are demanding ZOS increase drop rates and refusing to grind the wing quests on their alts for free inks.

tom6143346 · June 12

So after 2 hours of running from note to note in Bethnik I got a massive amount of 1 ink . Was farming with ring of wild hunt and the double harvest cp. That’s what you can expect

SeaUnicorn · June 12

I am pretty sure ink drops are not account wide, because I was grinding on alts whole week, saw 0 ink. Today intentionally swapped to a toon that has all quests done to verify the theory and got 6 ink in 4 hours.

Orbital78 · June 12

Thorncrypt wrote: »

they shouldn't make spellcrafting feel like a chore otherwise it won't be popular and will fall off.

Not with how powerful some of the skills are, and there really isn't a rush. Just play the game and you will eventually get all the scripts and inks you need just doing associated daily quests and adventures. If you REALLY need to power level it, then just farm/grind the ink or buy it. At some point you won't even be worried about inks and have the setups you like.

Orbital78 · June 12

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

I am pretty sure ink drops are not account wide, because I was grinding on alts whole week, saw 0 ink. Today intentionally swapped to a toon that has all quests done to verify the theory and got 6 ink in 4 hours.

I have found ink on alts killing the mobs leading up to the Scholarium, so they don't even have the intro quest fully unlocked yet. The killing mobs upgrade works at least.

EdjeSwift · June 12

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

I am pretty sure ink drops are not account wide, because I was grinding on alts whole week, saw 0 ink. Today intentionally swapped to a toon that has all quests done to verify the theory and got 6 ink in 4 hours.

I can confirm that account wide is functional, two of my alts got ink doing PvP dailies today. Neither has started the Scribing line at all.

XSTRONG · June 12

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

CrashTest wrote: »

Do all mob types drop ink or is it just bosses?

i think bosses are intended to have a higher drop rate than base mobs, but the bosses ink drops are currently confirmed to be broken

ink drops from base mobs is extraordinarily low, like it feels even lower than harvesting nodes

It wouldnt suprise me if the drops from mobs are lower then harvesting nodes, in certain delves, dungeons and places in overland you can kill hordes of mobs very quick

SeaUnicorn · June 12

Orbital78 wrote: »

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

I am pretty sure ink drops are not account wide, because I was grinding on alts whole week, saw 0 ink. Today intentionally swapped to a toon that has all quests done to verify the theory and got 6 ink in 4 hours.

I have found ink on alts killing the mobs leading up to the Scholarium, so they don't even have the intro quest fully unlocked yet. The killing mobs upgrade works at least.

Thank you for confirming, I guess it was unfortunate RNG then.

Necrotech_Master · June 12

XSTRONG wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

CrashTest wrote: »

Do all mob types drop ink or is it just bosses?

i think bosses are intended to have a higher drop rate than base mobs, but the bosses ink drops are currently confirmed to be broken

ink drops from base mobs is extraordinarily low, like it feels even lower than harvesting nodes

It wouldnt suprise me if the drops from mobs are lower then harvesting nodes, in certain delves, dungeons and places in overland you can kill hordes of mobs very quick

yeah and i get that, but from what ive seen so far, not a single ink from killing anything, it feels like an aetheric cipher level rarity item from mob drops (and ive literally never had one of those drop since they were introduced)

Jaraal · June 12

Orbital78 wrote: »

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

I am pretty sure ink drops are not account wide, because I was grinding on alts whole week, saw 0 ink. Today intentionally swapped to a toon that has all quests done to verify the theory and got 6 ink in 4 hours.

I have found ink on alts killing the mobs leading up to the Scholarium, so they don't even have the intro quest fully unlocked yet. The killing mobs upgrade works at least.

All of the inks I'd harvested had been on the character that I completed the entire scribing quest on. Had picked up or looted over 100 with him. So I decided to try an alt that had never been to the West Weald, and they got hardly any ink. It was like 2 in six hours of focused farming. So I sent them to do the 5 minute qualifying quest to activate scribing, and then back out to harvest. They received 2 more ink in four hours.

Four ink in ten hours of concentrated farming was radically different from my previous experience with the scribing line completer. I switched back to him, and immediately started getting 6-10 inks per hour again. So my theory is that either ZOS has implemented adjusted drop rates for characters based upon how far they have gotten in the scribing quest line (similar to the variable drop rates for master writs that considers expertise and motif knowledge), or it is simply bugged. I find it hard to believe that I could have such pronounced swings in RNG based upon what character I'm farming with. Certainly it's anecdotal rather than scientific evidence, but considering the wide range of results reported here by other players, I would not be surprised in the least if there is some sort of modifier or bug in play here.

@ZOS_GinaBruno or @ZOS_Kevin can you guys confirm or deny that all characters on an account that has unlocked the Sigils have an equal chance to acquire iink?

Gaebriel0410 · June 12

I just completed the story and I have had 20 ink in total, and that is including the 12 you get from the scribing questline. It was enought to experiment a bit on my main char (though I am very selective to keep to his theme, so I knew exactly what would fit), now I'd like to do it for my alts too, but... no ink.

They deffo should increase the drop rate by a lot, the system is very fun imo and I have about a million ideas for things that will perfectly fit some of my chars, but it rrrrrrrrrrrrreally needs to give us some freedom to experiment.

davelbier · June 12

Heh, glad that a quick google search showed me lots of other people are annoyed as well.

I did the main quest, and did the intro on several alts. I mostly do daily crafting writs and pvp. PVP rewards only give a bonus once a day per ACCOUNT, which...well it is what it is. I have been getting scripts this way, which is nice - one reward for the worthy and one IC coffer a day gets me a couple scripts.

But they arent giving me ink. I dont go around farming mats, doing zone dailies, or even doing RND anymore. It would be nice if the once-a-day bonus included an ink as well as a script, or was a 50/50 on getting one or the other. Or maybe a small chance with writs a-la the master writ drop rate, since ill get a couple of those a week at least it would be something.

A small reward for the basic grind would be acceptable, because im not doing mob/dungeon/mat farming for them.

Necrotech_Master · June 12

davelbier wrote: »

Heh, glad that a quick google search showed me lots of other people are annoyed as well.

I did the main quest, and did the intro on several alts. I mostly do daily crafting writs and pvp. PVP rewards only give a bonus once a day per ACCOUNT, which...well it is what it is. I have been getting scripts this way, which is nice - one reward for the worthy and one IC coffer a day gets me a couple scripts.

But they arent giving me ink. I dont go around farming mats, doing zone dailies, or even doing RND anymore. It would be nice if the once-a-day bonus included an ink as well as a script, or was a 50/50 on getting one or the other. Or maybe a small chance with writs a-la the master writ drop rate, since ill get a couple of those a week at least it would be something.

A small reward for the basic grind would be acceptable, because im not doing mob/dungeon/mat farming for them.

you can get more than 1 script a day from each source, but the chance goes to 25% instead of guaranteed

so if you did all 6 IC dailies, your first one is guaranteed, then the other 5 would be 25% each of getting a script (so you could get between 0 and 5 bonus scripts out of those 5 extra boxes)

theres i think 9 total sources you can get a guaranteed script drop per day (WB daily, delve daily, incursion daily, mages guild daily, undaunted daily, fighters guild daily, IC daily, cyro repeatable quests, rewards for the worthy)

davelbier · June 12

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

davelbier wrote: »

Heh, glad that a quick google search showed me lots of other people are annoyed as well.

I did the main quest, and did the intro on several alts. I mostly do daily crafting writs and pvp. PVP rewards only give a bonus once a day per ACCOUNT, which...well it is what it is. I have been getting scripts this way, which is nice - one reward for the worthy and one IC coffer a day gets me a couple scripts.

But they arent giving me ink. I dont go around farming mats, doing zone dailies, or even doing RND anymore. It would be nice if the once-a-day bonus included an ink as well as a script, or was a 50/50 on getting one or the other. Or maybe a small chance with writs a-la the master writ drop rate, since ill get a couple of those a week at least it would be something.

A small reward for the basic grind would be acceptable, because im not doing mob/dungeon/mat farming for them.

you can get more than 1 script a day from each source, but the chance goes to 25% instead of guaranteed

so if you did all 6 IC dailies, your first one is guaranteed, then the other 5 would be 25% each of getting a script (so you could get between 0 and 5 bonus scripts out of those 5 extra boxes)

theres i think 9 total sources you can get a guaranteed script drop per day (WB daily, delve daily, incursion daily, mages guild daily, undaunted daily, fighters guild daily, IC daily, cyro repeatable quests, rewards for the worthy)

gotcha, thank you for clarifying - ill just stick to the one for transmute/script gaurantee

and cross my fingers that they add a basic daily with an ink guarantee. I know in a couple of months the market will be full of it people are selling but i am not grinding for it, and i would rather toy with it before i forget the friggin content even exists lol

ZOS_Kevin · June 12

Jaraal wrote: »

Can you guys confirm or deny that all characters on an account that has unlocked the Sigils have an equal chance to acquire ink?

Checked in with the dev team on this. Yes they do. The base drop rate is account-wide. However an important caveat, the drop quantity can be impacted per character if Plentiful Harvest CP is invested in on a specific character.

EdjeSwift · June 12

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Can you guys confirm or deny that all characters on an account that has unlocked the Sigils have an equal chance to acquire ink?

Checked in with the dev team on this. Yes they do. The base drop rate is account-wide. However an important caveat, the drops can be impacted per character if Plentiful Harvest CP is invested in on a specific character.

Good to know, thanks Kevin.

We all suffer from various levels of copium when it comes to RNG. For me personally last night was a bad bout of copium. I spent an hour or so cleaning surveys on foot in Craglorn while hitting all the nodes along the way and got no ink. Then I got to thinking... hey... I got ink in PvP, and I had no companion out, so I put Isobel away and suddenly 9 ink in 45 minutes.

I know logically that companion v no companion is irrelevant, but when we see something work we want to believe, but it's probably just copium.

Jaraal · June 12

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Can you guys confirm or deny that all characters on an account that has unlocked the Sigils have an equal chance to acquire ink?

Checked in with the dev team on this. Yes they do. The base drop rate is account-wide. However an important caveat, the drops can be impacted per character if Plentiful Harvest CP is invested in on a specific character.

Thank you for letting us know.

I made sure that both characters had that passive equipped. They have identical passives involving Plentiful Harvest, Master Gatherer, Keen Eye, and other harvesting related perks. And both were farming the same area. Must have been just an extremely bad bout of RNG then.

Ode2Order · June 12

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Can you guys confirm or deny that all characters on an account that has unlocked the Sigils have an equal chance to acquire ink?

Checked in with the dev team on this. Yes they do. The base drop rate is account-wide. However an important caveat, the drops can be impacted per character if Plentiful Harvest CP is invested in on a specific character.

impacted positively or negatively?

virtus753 · June 12

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Can you guys confirm or deny that all characters on an account that has unlocked the Sigils have an equal chance to acquire ink?

Checked in with the dev team on this. Yes they do. The base drop rate is account-wide. However an important caveat, the drops can be impacted per character if Plentiful Harvest CP is invested in on a specific character.

Do they mean the drop chances or only the amounts for their comment regarding Plentiful Harvest?

Plentiful Harvest should not change drop chances unless it is bugged. When it works properly, it can only proc when you draw an eligible mat from an eligible source. It thus only improves the amount you get, not how often you get it. The yield is improved by the chance quoted in the tooltip: a 50% chance means 50% greater yield on average.

There are a couple of cases where it is bugged so it does improve drop rates, but these are rare exceptions: Pulverized Titanium from jewelry nodes and bait from clothing survey nodes are the only cases I'm aware of where PH works but not as it should.