Farming for Jewelry Seams: How Bad is the Drop Rate?

VaranisArano

So I've read some of the threads here talking about how rare the jewelry seams seemed to be, but I often heard comments like "I only spotted one or two while I was exploring/playing, but I wasn't farming for them." That left me curious. How rare are the seams if I were actually farming for them?

The Experiment
To answer that question, I hopped on the PTS with my farming character.
I've got all the passives/CP perks you expect on a farming character.
I farmed several zones that I'm very familiar with and know the locations of blacksmithing nodes very well.
I farmed every blacksmithing/jewelry seam I saw, checking all the locations I knew about on a normal farming run and repeated those runs several times. Note that since seams use blacksmithing nodes, I had to farm the ore in order to make sure I was getting the right drop rate as nodes refreshed.
My farmer is max level, has maxed blacksmithing, and Rank 2 in Jewelry Crafting, so I should get 100% rubedite ore, 50% Pewter Dust, and 50% Platinum Dunt, just like similar farmer characters will on Day One of Summerset.

Initial Failure
I got off to a great start, but soon realized I was going to miss out on jewelry seams if I didn't have at least one rank in Keen Eye for Jewelry. So I broke off the experiment, found myself a single piece of blue jewelry and deconstructed that to get to Rank 2 of Jewelry crafting, where I could pick up Rank 1 of Keen Eye.
That gave my farmer Rank 3 Keen Eye for Ores and Rank 1 Keen Eye for Seams.

The Results
Important Caveats: I didn't farm for a statistically significant amount of mats, because I have limited time and enthusiasm. So the numbers that follow are sufficiently accurate for broad conclusions, but not serious number crunching.

The farming runs: I found the metal seams pretty easy to spot in the daytime. At night, pewter is much harder to see against the rocks, so I highly, highly recommend that any farmers start by getting jewelry to decon and unlock at least the first rank in Keen Eye. I was very familiar with the location of the blacksmithing nodes, so I had no trouble finding seams on my farming routes. The seam nodes were not amazingly common, but not uncommon either.

876 Rubedite Ore
163 Platinum Dust - Seams
149 Pewter Dust - Seams

223 Regulus - Blacksmithing Furnishing Mat
12 Ochre - Jewelry Furnishing Mat

2 Pulverized Dawn-Prism (10 needed to make a Dawn-Prism for the Triune trait)

I refined my jewelry dusts with no ranks in refining passives, but I don't really have enough to consider it accurate data, so I'll just include that under a spoiler for anyone interested:

From 149 Pewter Dust:
124 Pewter Ounces
2 Pulverized Zinc (need 10 to make robust)
2 Pulverized Antimony (need 10 to make healthy)
1 Pulverized Cobalt (need 10 to make Arcane)
1 Terne Grains - green plating

From 163 Platinum Dusts:
131 Platinum Ounces
2 Pulverized Cobalt (need 10 to make Arcane)
1 Pulverized Antimony (need 10 to make healthy)
3 Terne Grains - green plating

Conclusions
1. Seams were not horribly rare when I was looking for them on a farming route where I knew where the blacksmithing nodes where located. I know I said I don't want to number crunch, but if I were to hazard a guess based off of my data, I would guess that around 25% of the blacksmithing nodes were made into seams. Speculation under spoiler:

876 rudebite ore + 312 dusts = 1,188 mats farmed that would have previously been all ore. So 312 dusts/1,188 total is 26%, but my data is limited by the number of nodes I had the time to farm, so I suspect that the spawn rate is closer to 25% across the board.

2. Crafting Jewelry Furnishing Sketches is going to suck, unless ZOS seriously cut back on the amount of Ochre needed. Out of all that farming I got 223 regulus and only 12 Ochre, so if Jewelry Furnishing require a similar number of mats as blacksmithing furnishings do, the grind for Ochre is going to be real. I was not able to check any Jewelry Sketches, so if anyone knows how many Ochre are required that'd be great!

3. Contrary to my initial expectations, ore prices are going to plummet. Why? Well, you have to farm all the ore and seams in order to get the seams to refresh properly. So everyone farming for jewelry seams is also going to be farming ore and lots of it. Yes, some people will probably farm just the seams and I'm not sure what effect that will on respawns have since seams do not have dedicated spots but instead share available ore nodes.

Is it really that bad?

Well, kinda yes, kinda not...

There's a couple potential issues with my data that might get better on Live.
1. I didn't farm a whole lot, stastically speaking. There's a lot of room for my numbers to be low on dusts. Conversely, though, there's a lot of room for my numbers to be high on dusts.
2. Someone might have been farming in the same zones, skewing my results. This is possible, but I saw 1 person the whole time I was farming and spawn rate felt very consistent over multiple runs, so I don't think this was a huge issue.

On the other hand...
When Summerset hits Live, loads and loads of people are going to farm jewelry seams. I wouldn't be surprised if the drop rate seems much, much worse because of the sheer number of people grabbing seam nodes. So be prepared, because no matter what the actual drop rate is the Live drop rate is going to seem much worse due to competition.

TLDR
Peacefully farming my routes by my lonesome on the PTS, the spawn rate of jewelry seams felt just right. On Live, I'm bracing for them to be much worse due to competition with fellow farmers.
If I had to guess, about 25% of the blacksmithing nodes became jewelry seams.
Rank 1 Keen Eye is a must for those Pewter nodes, especially at night.
If someone knows how many Ochre are required to make Jewelry Furnishing Sketches, that'd be great to know in order to compare with the drop rate of Regulus.

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO

You know jewelry crafting is not even live but with the research times to make sets I actually wear and the low drop rate. I will not even try it on live in a month or two after release maybe.

Jewelry crafting may only be useful to upgrade dropped sets.