Wrothgar Nodes are "Hackable"

Nova Sky

Folks:

I noticed this oddity while playing with a guild mate who didn't have his crafting skills maxed out (while my skills are).

We tested this on several nodes, and it occurred repeatedly: When he harvested a node — be it for clothing, woodworking or metalworking — but then chose to leave the material behind, it would remain in this state even when I went to harvest the node. For example, his metalworking skills are basically rank 1, while mine are maxed out. So, he was getting iron ore from Wrothgar nodes. I should have been getting rubedite ore, but whenever I harvested a node he had left behind, it displayed *only* iron ore. This held true for wood and clothing as well.

So, is this working as intended? Or is this a bug that could be exploited to annoy other players, if nothing else?

Kova

That is very interesting. I think it's the same mechanic that allows other players to loot chests you've opened. Have you been able to make the reverse happen?

dem0n1k

Where you grouped? I think it works like that if you are grouped.
Why would he leave the material behind anyway?

Also.. you won't get rubidite ore every mineral node... most often it will still be voidstone.

Birdovic

My guess Is harvest nodes are working exactly like Chests in that regard because they ARE Chests: just the Model got changed, the lockpick minigame disabled and made loot scale depending on learned crafting passives

Nova Sky

Kova wrote: »

That is very interesting. I think it's the same mechanic that allows other players to loot chests you've opened. Have you been able to make the reverse happen?

Yes, we did the reverse, too. If I got the node first, but left behind the material, he would get the highest-ranking materials.

Nova Sky

dem0n1k wrote: »

Where you grouped? I think it works like that if you are grouped.
Why would he leave the material behind anyway?

Also.. you won't get rubidite ore every mineral node... most often it will still be voidstone.

No, we weren't grouped.

It was happenstance. He'd been harvesting, got interrupted, said I could have the node, and, voila! The "hackable" node.

Yes, I'm quite aware that not every metal node produces rubedite. They do look different from the voidstone nodes, for starters.

myrrrorb14_ESO

Yes that is how they work. Nodes will be highest rank or -1 from highest. Whomever opens the node, locks it to an actual value.

If it is opened but not havested, it will despawn in about 5 minutes and respawn according to its timetable.

MrDerrikk

I remember someone mentioning this when Orsinium was on the PTS, but it was figured that not enough griefers would run around and do this. It's easy enough to find the area they're in and going to a different part of the map anyway.

Oldmanlawlor

I am sure it is intended. Imagine;

Player A with Blacksmithung 10 hits a rubedite node, it doesn't double up from the champion passive.
Player B with Blacksmithung 1 hits it and turns it to Iron.
Player A hits it again as rubedite, until it doubles up.

What I mean is, first to it decided it's drop to avoid an exploit. Well.. That atleast makes sense to me to think why that happens.

CaptainObvious

Correct. Node quality and quantity is actually determined on first harvest. Mentioned this a while back where someone could just tweak the nodes to be an annoyance. It is harvesting plants and leaving worms/crawlers rev 2.

Faunter

This has been known since Orsinium first hit the PTS:

DobbaDeuce wrote: »

Not really a bug, but an interesting side effect of scaling if you level up your skill during different stages of finding/looting a harvesting node:



- Step 1: Dwarven: The ore appears visually based on what your skill is when it loads on your screen.
- Step 2: Calcinium: The ore produces whatever ore corresponds to what your current crafting skill is at time of first extraction
- Step 3: Voidstone: The ores "container" name corresponds to what your current crafting skill is regardless of what it actually provides

I haven't tested with other players, but this could potentially mean that a low craft-skill player could go around clicking on nodes, but not taking their contents, and result in higher craft-skill player looting their lower tier rewards even though to them it looks like the node should be high-tier.

danno8

I guess a griefer could go around messing up nodes for fun, but that seems pretty unlikely given the fact that all their work would be undone by just one other person going around harvesting regularly. And given there are dozens or hundreds players harvesting at any point in Wrothgar, I don't see the griefer having much of an impact.

Huge waste of time with no real payoff for the griefer.

Xantaria

danno8 wrote: »

I guess a griefer could go around messing up nodes for fun, but that seems pretty unlikely given the fact that all their work would be undone by just one other person going around harvesting regularly. And given there are dozens or hundreds players harvesting at any point in Wrothgar, I don't see the griefer having much of an impact.

Huge waste of time with no real payoff for the griefer.

what payoff would he get anyway? people's confusion? :')

Nova Sky

Well, at least it's nothing terribly serious. Thought I'd post on it, though, just to be sure. The PTS folks are quite thorough; I should've known that they would have first noted it.

Now, if only aspect nodes dropped something other than Ta items 90 percent of the time ...

FailSaucePro

I've done it to mess with a friend a few times. He got all excited until he noticed it was "sanded ruby maple"

Shader_Shibes

I noticed a similar thing yesterday with a 1/2 looted chest i stumbled on. The weapon left behind was like v1 material weapon.