Spearhead scrap and Heavily played card drop rate?

DinoZavr · December 17

Dear fellow players, please, help me to solve the math problem:

doing Kishka's ToT dailies forty days in a row i have got 40 purple and 120 green reward boxes, and opening them all found zero Spearhead Scraps.
the Achievement "Memories of the Spearhead" requires player to collect ten Spearhead Scraps.
given the drop rate, how many days it would take me to fulfill the said Achievement, doing win vs 3 NPCs ToT dailies every day?

the original thread with the same name was just closed as irrelevant, though i doubt anything has changed.
and, of course, i have several yet unanswered questions, this is why i would like to return this thread.
1) what was your Spearhead Scraps drop rate? How many days it took you to unlock Captain Kaleen?
2) should i play ToT in Necrom City, or with Almalexia desk, or both, because the Achievement is not "ToT", but "Necrom"?
3) i don't get any Spearhead Scraps, Heavily played cards, and Pelin's/Frandar's style pages. What do i miss? 160 boxes are not a few, and 40 days are not a minute.
4) are the drops of Spearhead Scraps, and Heavily played cards level restricted? (i have just got ToT Rank 5 on a new account)
or should i gave to collect ALL the clues, before achievement fragments start to drop? Or some other limitations i am not aware about?

i have permanent access to both High Isle and Necrom DLC. and puzzled/upset by the math i have asked your kind to help me to solve. Thank you.

TL/DR; how long?

Personofsecrets · December 17

Maybe you need to be going for the Gold boxes.

@ZOS_Kevin , can you please follow up with the team about this one? We have asked before about the TOT collectibles, but to no avail. It's a pretty frequent frustration that players have and it's realistic to think that something is bugged with the drop since those bugs have been happening in recent memory.

It's also the case that the reward structure in TOT has changed. I don't really understand why Expert NPC players give me the same reward box as when I defeat a real player, but regardless, maybe there was some kind of unintended consequence of the change that players are experiencing.

Personofsecrets · December 17

"Acquire and use 10 Scraps of the Spearhead's Colors, acquired from Tales of Tribute match rewards."

The achievements should really tell people exactly what they need to do.

fall0athboy · December 17

I really do wonder if you can only get these after getting all the clues?

Personofsecrets · December 17

fall0athboy wrote: »

I really do wonder if you can only get these after getting all the clues?

If so, then that would have been a change that was made. I got them while not having all clues. I actually have and keep clues that I never plan to dig up in my inventory.

fall0athboy · December 17

Why not upgrade?

Personofsecrets · December 17

fall0athboy wrote: »

Why not upgrade?

Here is an example. I upgraded Runes of the Draoife to Vestments of the Druid King.

I'm incentivized to play Druid King because I like some of the cards and play that it offers when going second.

That said, because I upgraded Runes of the Draoife, sometimes my opponent just get's a turn one Vestments of the Druid King and they spank me. Vestments is way stronger, it's a great turn one option, and I get randomly spanked by it.

If I had never upgraded Runes of the Draoife, then I wouldn't be randomly losing these games where I go second and the opponents get's the "I win" button of Vestments on their first turn when there is no counterplay.

That's why you don't upgrade cards. Unless you have a strategic reason to do something, it's always better to not do that thing. And that is especially so in this case because there is no way to undo the upgrade. My main account is ruined, from a TOT optimization perspective, because I made this dumb error. Don't be like me.

DinoZavr · December 18

what to upgrade in my humble opinion is a matter of personal preference.

Icy just closed the old thread regarding this certain topic: how long does it take to gather 10 Spearhead scraps.
There was no certain answer: like it took me 2 weeks, or 3 month, or whatever - only the advice just to keep playing
(just in case: old thread https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8238657)
@jaws343 said 1:10 (per purple boxes)
@bobsontpm said 1:60
i got 0:41 so far (also started doing one golden coffer a day), and got no responses like: i have completed the Achievement playing approx this number of games every day (and Captain Kaleen is housegiesting in my Autumns Gate (for example)). Ten games are, at least, the statistics.
Also, players could pinpoint some patterns or rules in drops (like clues may completely replace fragments in them drop tables, or significantly decrease fragments drop rate).
What is confirmed: fragments drop from any containers except white, and that clues do not replace fragments.

What baffles me is that Developers establishing some certain drop rate were hoping players will play more and longer,
but what they probably mispredicted is the boundary where "very long time" becomes "too grindy to worth my time", which, of course, deincentivize.
Of course, this boundary varies a plenty for different individuals, though what i look for is like:
"on average 4 months playing 4 games a day" or something similar. It would really help to decide if i should chase the Achievement of just ignore it, because i dont have that much time.
The ToT game is at least 3 minutes (both spamming Orgnum), though normally 10+ or even more minutes when you play against human (especially the one deliberately delaying theirs moves to make you concede), so there is a limitation of how many games you can play a day.

What Devs could do is just to and more untradeable items to drops logics. Like RNG determined to drop a clue, run RNG one more time for another bound item like fragment. (furnishing plans and style pages are tradeable). This could make Achievements.. how to put this?.. Achievable?

fall0athboy · December 18

DinoZavr wrote: »

what to upgrade in my humble opinion is a matter of personal preference.

Icy just closed the old thread regarding this certain topic: how long does it take to gather 10 Spearhead scraps.
There was no certain answer: like it took me 2 weeks, or 3 month, or whatever - only the advice just to keep playing
(just in case: old thread https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8238657)
@jaws343 said 1:10 (per purple boxes)
@bobsontpm said 1:60
i got 0:41 so far (also started doing one golden coffer a day), and got no responses like: i have completed the Achievement playing approx this number of games every day (and Captain Kaleen is housegiesting in my Autumns Gate (for example)). Ten games are, at least, the statistics.
Also, players could pinpoint some patterns or rules in drops (like clues may completely replace fragments in them drop tables, or significantly decrease fragments drop rate).
What is confirmed: fragments drop from any containers except white, and that clues do not replace fragments.

What baffles me is that Developers establishing some certain drop rate were hoping players will play more and longer,
but what they probably mispredicted is the boundary where "very long time" becomes "too grindy to worth my time", which, of course, deincentivize.
Of course, this boundary varies a plenty for different individuals, though what i look for is like:
"on average 4 months playing 4 games a day" or something similar. It would really help to decide if i should chase the Achievement of just ignore it, because i dont have that much time.
The ToT game is at least 3 minutes (both spamming Orgnum), though normally 10+ or even more minutes when you play against human (especially the one deliberately delaying theirs moves to make you concede), so there is a limitation of how many games you can play a day.

What Devs could do is just to and more untradeable items to drops logics. Like RNG determined to drop a clue, run RNG one more time for another bound item like fragment. (furnishing plans and style pages are tradeable). This could make Achievements.. how to put this?.. Achievable?

That's exactly it: Earning these things is taking way too long to be worth my time. I'm still in the grind to get to Master rank, and I still need to earn High Roller but there's no way in hell I'm going to waste my time on the fragments.

Personofsecrets · December 18

DinoZavr wrote: »

What is confirmed: fragments drop from any containers except white, and that clues do not replace fragments.

The time table when those confirmations happened is also important. It's important because match loot has been changed. So even if confirmation has happened with each color box, it's possible that maybe the boxes contents can change from patch to patch. It's not as likely for what's in the boxes to change, maybe, but then again there is this problem of the collectibles not dropping as much as they used to and that must be explained somehow.

Morphixxx · December 21

I farmed those for a few weeks now...
Not any drop at all from many golden/purple boxes.

In the past i got some drops, like when Necrom was released.
I wanted to finish it bur it fells like it is bugged now and do not drop at all.

DinoZavr · December 21

well.. we need statistics. just for science i re-started ToT dailes on my good reliable PC/EU account which is rubedite with all desks (except Gold Road one).. but only 4 days - no drops, while PC/NA toon got no fragments after 3 NPC + 1 ranked games. i'd continue for 36 more days and if at that time ICyIC would not terminate this thread will report the results,
though i also suspect drop tables are bugged.