New U51 Structural Furnishing Plan from Vvardenfell/Nowhere Vault

MidnightDuel · August 16

According to the patch notes, there is "1 new structural furnishing [that] can be found in Vvardenfell Treasure Map Chests and from chests in the Nowhere Vault." On the surface, it seems a fairly straight forward way to obtain a new plan. The reality is the new plan is double-locked behind nested RNG and nearly impossible to obtain.

Locked behind rare Treasure Maps
If a player wants to get the new plan from Vvardenfell, the furnishing plans is double-locked, first behind a rare zone map and second behind a poor drop rate from an already saturated loot table of zone and general game items.

Vvardenfell maps were already extremely rare and in high demand because they have a chance to drop rare Buoyant Armature Motifs. News of a new item dropping from them in a future patch has made them impossible to find on Guild Traders. As of this writing there were only three (3) Vvardenfell maps listed on TTC and none of those were to be found when visiting the trader.

Vvardenfell has six (6) potential maps that can be obtained from using Unopened Treasure Chest Maps. Any new Vvardenfell map has a small chance to drop from a huge table of 254 maps from 44 different zones. At best, the chance of getting a Vvardenfell map is a 1 in 42 chance (2.38% chance).

After opening 674 Unopened Treasure Maps on the PTS, only 15 Vvardenfell maps dropped. That number represents over 3 months of playing and collecting unopened maps on the Live server. Digging up all 15 Vvardenfell Treasure Chest Maps yielded zero (0) new furnishing plans.

Nowhere Keys are nowhere to be found
The alternative to zone maps is less inviting, being that to access the Nowhere Vault, players must first obtain Nowhere keys. The Unformed Planar Keys, which will become Wondrous Nowhere Keys, are even more rare than the rarest of zone maps. Once in the vault the chances of getting the plan to drop from one of the chests is also astronomically low.

The practice of double-locking items behind layers of nested RNG is appalling. In the very same patch there is an attempt to remedy a years-long problem of double-locking Antiquity furnishings behind rare maps, poor Antiquity drop rates, and saturated loot tables. This new situation is a casebook example of one step forward and three steps backward to lock a new structural furnishing plan behind more rare Vvardenfell maps and even rarer Nowhere Keys.

ESO_player123 · August 17

Do we know which furnishing is that?

Aylish · August 17

ESO_player123 wrote: »

Do we know which furnishing is that?

I‘d like to know that as well. I couldn‘t identify it in ESO-Hub‘s list of new furnishings.

LunaFlora · August 17

probably this mural, the ceilings in the Sheogorad house are like this too so it makes sense for it to drop from Vvardenfell
https://eso-hub.com/en/furniture/mural-fluffy-clouds-tile

MidnightDuel · August 17

Aylish wrote: »

ESO_player123 wrote: »

Do we know which furnishing is that?

I‘d like to know that as well. I couldn‘t identify it in ESO-Hub‘s list of new furnishings.

LunaFlora wrote: »

probably this mural, the ceilings in the Sheogorad house are like this too so it makes sense for it to drop from Vvardenfell

Pretty sure it's the Mural, Fluffy Clowds Tile as @LunaFlora suggests above.

Erorah · August 17

This has also been spoken about as a Pain Point by MANY Decorating enthusiasts.
I also did think that the track would be turning since the Antiquities are not able to drop from the Nowhere Vault (even if we are not receiving any number of the keys by regular means...)

PLEASE - Remove these awful gates to acquiring Furnishings and Furnishing Plans. This is not a trifecta. We just like decorating our houses.

pinkpom · August 17

I don't know whether they want us to play Housing or not.

MidnightDuel · August 17

pinkpom wrote: »

I don't know whether they want us to play Housing or not.

We certainly are getting mixed signals when it comes to housing.

On the one hand, we've been getting more houses that can be earned in-game. And some of the newer Crown-Only houses have been more reasonably priced (e.g. 8K crowns for Dancing Waters Wellspring). A the same time U50 introduces new furnishings that have incredibly low drop rates and just happen to match the new houses.

Now on the U51 PTS, we get to preview two new houses, one of which will be earnable through Events/Trade Bars. New events will also drop furnishing plans as leads. However, it's difficult to tell at what rate they will drop or if/how the plans can be obtained after the event.

One thing that cannot be overlooked are microtransactions. For every rare plan and hard-to-get drop, there is a crown-version of the furnishing that can be purchased from the player-housing Crown Store. The harder a plan is to get, the longer it takes to collect, and the more likely housing players will take the "easy" route and buy the crown version.

Horny_Poney · August 18

And if they don’t, they will spend days and days in game, farming for them: it’s a win-win for ZOS.
Personally I never liked farming urns, so when I heard that the drop rates for the new Breton plans were abismal, I just noped (all the people in my housing guild have stopped too, even the hardest nerds). I’m done farming like this, ZOS will have to find something else to keep me longer online.

MidnightDuel · August 18

Horny_Poney wrote: »

And if they don’t, they will spend days and days in game, farming for them: it’s a win-win for ZOS.
Personally I never liked farming urns, so when I heard that the drop rates for the new Breton plans were abismal, I just noped (all the people in my housing guild have stopped too, even the hardest nerds). I’m done farming like this, ZOS will have to find something else to keep me longer online.

As a mature MMO with over ten years of real content development, there are so many other (and more fun) activities for ESO players to do in-game. ESO is well past the stage where grind and farming endlessly should be arbitrarily applied to housing-related items. Players just want to be able to build and decorate their in-game houses with the newest furnishings and plans.

Mattymoo92 · August 22

I really hope you they keep rare additions to the game, not everything needs to be easy to get

MidnightDuel · August 23

Mattymoo92 wrote: »

I really hope you they keep rare additions to the game, not everything needs to be easy to get

There's rare, and then there's "impossible to get." The problem is that over-time anything and everything combat-related has been made easier to get, while everything housing related has been made harder. Whether that's nested RNG, double-locked sources, or near-zero drop rates, there is a huge gap that punishes players whose focus is housing.