Feasibility of completing the Opal style pages (spoiler: it's extremely grindy)

code65536

If you are a completionist, there are a total of 28 style pages to collect

• 4 mask styles, requiring a rough average of around 4 runs per mask drop
• 4 shoulder styles, costing a minimum of 100 keys (to purchase four of the 25-key grabbag coffers) from the Undaunted merchant
• 20 weapon styles, of which you are guaranteed only 1 per day

Of those 28 styles, you can earn enough tickets during the event to buy only 3 using tickets. If you had saved at least 10 tickets from previous events, you can buy 5. Leaving at least 23 style pages to be acquired through conventional means.

• Masks: This grind isn't too bad. The drop rate is reasonable.
• Shoulders: To get the shoulders without using tickets, if you didn't have a pre-existing stash of keys, you'd need to do all three pledges on vet HM on 3.3 characters every day of the event to get the 100 keys needed. Or, if you don't do HM for the DLC dungeons, then you need to do the full suite of pledges on 4 characters every day of the event.
• Weapons: You can get only one guaranteed drop per day, for a total of five. What's the drop rate from the blue boxes? I have an addon that logs what I've been getting out of these boxes, and out of 118 boxes across both NA and EU, I've gotten 6 weapon pages. So it's approximately 1-in-20, though this is a very small sample size. That means that, in order to get the other 15 pages out of blue boxes, I'd need to run about 300 dungeons, or 60 dungeons per day.

Practically speaking, there is simply no way anyone can complete these styles without some sort of external sourcing. E.g., buying or otherwise obtaining pages from players who are not collecting them or turning to ticket purchases.

So this brings up the next question: What's the plan for the next Undaunted Event?

Are you going to have the exact same four Opal styles next time, so people can continue to collect them? If so, it would make this grind more tolerable, but then if we're always using these four, then what about all the other monster styles out there?

Are you going to replace them with four different monster styles? Or add other monster styles in addition to these four (and thus potentially diluting their drops)? This would make the event different each year and cover more styles, but then this insane grindiness of the Opal style is made worse by there being no chances or reduced chances of people getting missed pages in the future.

VaranisArano

Working as intended.

That external sourcing:
A. buy event tickets for crowns
B. have someone gift you event tickets for gold
C. buy style pages for lots of gold.
Is exactly what ZOS wants. You can grind, grind, grind. Or you can pay with your preferred currency.

(Incidentally, this is the event that put the nail in the coffin of my urge to "collect 'em all." Because I'm not going to buy/gift event tickets and I'm not going to grind, grind, grind. Events should be reasonable.)

code65536

VaranisArano wrote: »

Working as intended.

That external sourcing:
A. buy event tickets for crowns
B. have someone gift you event tickets for gold
C. buy style pages for lots of gold.
Is exactly what ZOS wants. You can grind, grind, grind. Or you can pay with your preferred currency.

D. Have multiple alt accounts (padding ZOS's active player count) that run dungeons. That's my way of external sourcing, but it's obviously not feasible for 99.9% of the players.

ShawnLaRock

Can confirm the Opal pages are dropping out of regular blue Undaunted Boxes (XBOX NA) - so after main & alt account’s guaranteed drops, I just go back to Random Group Finder on my Main.

Have about 33% of them so far, and haven’t really farmed hard. Yet.

S.

Rex-Umbra

Just get the ones you like. I do one random a day. Got every thing I want already troll and lambert weapons.

Danikat

Honestly if I was trying to get all of them I'd focus on buying them, and I'm not just saying that because I've sold 3 and plan to sell another tomorrow. I've been watching the prices on Tamriel Trade Center and I've seen them listed for as low as 100g, with a lot of copies below 50k and it will be even less by the end of tomorrow. (I know the event ends on Monday but I also know most people can't play on Monday.)

I know even 50k each is a huge amount of gold for some people, but I'm one of those players and I know I'd never expect to be able to collect all the style pages within one event so I imagine other people in the same situation have the same expectations. For other people 1,200,000g (plus 4 weapons as guarenteed drops) is affordable, even at short notice and maybe worth it for a full set of event styles.

SydneyGrey

It's not worth running more than one dungeon per day for the tiny chance at a weapons drop. Once and then I'm done. Luckily I don't want the opal pages that badly, except for the Engine Guardian staff.

valusthecateater

Lol. Nope. It’s just in-game decoration. Games are supposed to be fun, not a repetitive grind. Enjoy your glowing weapons and armor, though. More power to you.

IndianaJames7

I'm convinced that zos tinkers with rng throughout the events... during witches fest I got none of the new recipes for the whole thing no matter how many skulls I opened, until the last couple days I got a dozen or so... could just be RNG but considering some of the ways they have bungled this in the past I'm rightfully suspicious.

So maybe RNG for the weapons will improve

Tryxus

SydneyGrey wrote: »

It's not worth running more than one dungeon per day for the tiny chance at a weapons drop. Once and then I'm done. Luckily I don't want the opal pages that badly, except for the Engine Guardian staff.

Same here, just one dungeon for the tickets and any weapon page I get from it and that's it. All i'm after are the staff pages

Not interested in a massive grind for style pages that I'll never use anyways

logarifmik

And it's extremely ugly. Not worth my time, I can say that.

Saucy_Jack

I got all of them, but it required a lot of dumpster diving in the guild traders.

Iccotak

I had tickets from last time so I just used those to get what I mainly wanted which was a couple weapons.
I'll grind to get a couple other weapons but I am in not rush to get all of them

rumple9

Game is dying. "We killed it"

huntgod_ESO

The way they structured the drops and that it is connected to such a short duration event makes this the event equivalent of giving an itunes gift card to someone as a Christmas bonus.

This definitely borders on the "will frustrate more players than it pleases".

This also killed my "collect em all" because I'm not going to grind that much and though I could afford to buy them, that is a ton of vendor diving and I have other things to do.

gatekeeper13

With 138k gold, a traded motif and a very little grinding, I managed to get the following:

1) All 4 opal masks.
2) Opal Engine Guardian Shoulders.
3) Troll Kings Shoulders. (from mystery coffers with 18 keys)
4) Opal weapons: Troll King Bow & Battle Axe, Bloodspawn Bow & Staff, Engine Guardian Dagger & Shield.
5) Will also get Ilambris bow & Sword with tickets till Monday.

Its impossible to collect all motifs and ofc I am not spending 1 cent on crowns for tickets. But at least I am satisfied I collected what I wanted.

TeamSeinfeld

I’ll collect what I can thru running a dungeon or two a day plus using my tickets. I’m taking the long view of this, after all this is an MMO. My assumption, very possibly wrong, is that the same pages will be available whenever they get around to running the Undaunted event again.

Ackwalan

VaranisArano wrote: »

Working as intended.

That external sourcing:
A. buy event tickets for crowns
B. have someone gift you event tickets for gold
C. buy style pages for lots of gold.
Is exactly what ZOS wants. You can grind, grind, grind. Or you can pay with your preferred currency.

(Incidentally, this is the event that put the nail in the coffin of my urge to "collect 'em all." Because I'm not going to buy/gift event tickets and I'm not going to grind, grind, grind. Events should be reasonable.)

Why do you think ZOS have a 100K daily reward. So people use that gold to buy crown gifts.

Ufretin

They should've made something less ugly to tempt me.
I'm saving my tickets in the vain hope that they'll add some nice Imperial/PvP-themed stuff to the impresario for midyear mayhem.

Dracofyre

more grinds means massive burnouts.

D0PAMINE

I have little desire to obtain the styles. I've been giving some away. Meh.

Ingenon

.

mystfit

I looked at the different styles, decided I was an ilambris girl. I have a plan to aquiue those before the event ends and that's it. I refuse to stress myself to get it all. It's a game, period. I won't make myself nuts. Having said that I 100% get the idea of 100% completion and if you can pull it off no power to you.

weedgenius

code65536 wrote: »

Shoulders: To get the shoulders without using tickets, if you didn't have a pre-existing stash of keys, you'd need to do all three pledges on vet HM on 3.3 characters every day of the event to get the 100 keys needed. Or, if you don't do HM for the DLC dungeons, then you need to do the full suite of pledges on 4 characters every day of the event.

And that's only if you already have the base shoulder motifs already, right? So for someone without those there is another step in the grind.

Kalante

Wait for the prices to tank, buy, sell a few months later and profit. This event is only here for a few days.

DaveMoeDee

Saucy_Jack wrote: »

I got all of them, but it required a lot of dumpster diving in the guild traders.

So what will you use remaining event tickets on?

Saucy_Jack

I spent 10 on my last feather, and by the time the event's done, I'll be up to 8 tix again.

idk

code65536 wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Working as intended.

That external sourcing:
A. buy event tickets for crowns
B. have someone gift you event tickets for gold
C. buy style pages for lots of gold.
Is exactly what ZOS wants. You can grind, grind, grind. Or you can pay with your preferred currency.

D. Have multiple alt accounts (padding ZOS's active player count) that run dungeons. That's my way of external sourcing, but it's obviously not feasible for 99.9% of the players.

LOL, Yea, 4 alt accounts can do it.

Nice informative post. Good questions for what is to come.

code65536

weedgenius wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Shoulders: To get the shoulders without using tickets, if you didn't have a pre-existing stash of keys, you'd need to do all three pledges on vet HM on 3.3 characters every day of the event to get the 100 keys needed. Or, if you don't do HM for the DLC dungeons, then you need to do the full suite of pledges on 4 characters every day of the event.

And that's only if you already have the base shoulder motifs already, right? So for someone without those there is another step in the grind.

@weedgenius No. There are two ways to acquire the Opal shoulders via keys. The first is to spend 50 keys and buy the shoulder that you want directly. This requires knowledge of the non-Opal version.

The second is to spend 25 keys and buy a coffer containing a random Opal shoulder. This is cheaper and does not have a knowledge requirement. My 100-key figure is based on spending keys on the 25-key coffer, the idea being that either you get 4 different shoulders or you get dupes that you trade with other people who are doing the same thing.

pod88kk

I got them all, cost about 1.8mil

Danikat

My guess is that the opal styles are a permanent additon to the Undaunted event and eventually they'll be like the Glenmoril style pages and the Dremora motif where they sell for almost nothing and it can be difficult to even give them away. So if you're willing to wait they will get cheaper and easier to obtain over time, but it might take a long time.

It seems like ZOS is catching on to the idea that a "festival" where you just get double the normal drops from doing the same stuff which is always in the game isn't very appealing to a lot of people and they're fixing 1/2 the problem by starting to introduce unique rewards. Maybe one day they'll finally catch up on other games and start to actually introduce festival quests and activities too, although at this rate that will be a very long time coming.

Ackwalan wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Working as intended.

That external sourcing:
A. buy event tickets for crowns
B. have someone gift you event tickets for gold
C. buy style pages for lots of gold.
Is exactly what ZOS wants. You can grind, grind, grind. Or you can pay with your preferred currency.

(Incidentally, this is the event that put the nail in the coffin of my urge to "collect 'em all." Because I'm not going to buy/gift event tickets and I'm not going to grind, grind, grind. Events should be reasonable.)

Why do you think ZOS have a 100K daily reward. So people use that gold to buy crown gifts.

If that's really their intention then they completely screwed up, because no one will get that 100k until after the Undaunted event is over and the crown store is no longer selling tickets.