Farming weapons in dungeons is a torture

JanTanhide

Dax wrote: »

Keep track of Arx runs, 43 runs and I've not seen a Medusa Fire Staff. When I do see one, there will only be a 1/4 chance I'll be the one to get it (and a little better that I'll be able to get it from someone else, though most running it seem to be looking for the same).

I don't mind running it 100 more times to get it, but I don't want to run it 100 more times and still be at the exact same place I am now. After running it for an additional 100 attempts without luck, I'll be just as likely (or unlikely) to get it on that 144th run as I was on the 1st.

I was running it three times a day minimum solo. It's an easy dungeon to burn through especially in Normal. I have soloed it in Vet quite a few times as well to get better chests.

I've seen the Medusa Inferno staff drop three times in well over 100 runs. Two of those were when I was grouped and other's got the drop.

Finally two days ago solo run on my Stam Sorc it dropped on the final boss fight. I didn't keep up with the number of runs but it's well over 100 to get that staff. And all the sets that drop there have also been completed due to all those runs.

But yeah, I agree. It's been the hardest piece for me to get. I got the Overwhelming Inferno staff after about 30 runs in Tempest Island and the Burning Spell Weave Inferno staff many years ago in a pledge run.

Amottica

Shomenuchi wrote: »

The game is getting more and more casual but ppl still find it hard.
Group members item sharing
Transmutation stations
Jewellery
what else ZOS added in game to make sets farming easier...

I do not see the OP suggesting the game is hard. They are complaining about the very low drop rate for weapons. As a new player, I do not know what the weapon drop rate is compared to other aspects of gearing, but it seems armor drops at the highest rate, then jewelry, and weapons seem to drop much less frequently than any of that.

Does anyone know the drop rate of different pieces of gear? Just wondering if OP and myself are unlucky or if it is by design that weapons require much more grinding.

zvavi

Amottica wrote: »

Shomenuchi wrote: »

The game is getting more and more casual but ppl still find it hard.
Group members item sharing
Transmutation stations
Jewellery
what else ZOS added in game to make sets farming easier...

I do not see the OP suggesting the game is hard. They are complaining about the very low drop rate for weapons. As a new player, I do not know what the weapon drop rate is compared to other aspects of gearing, but it seems armor drops at the highest rate, then jewelry, and weapons seem to drop much less frequently than any of that.

Does anyone know the drop rate of different pieces of gear? Just wondering if OP and myself are unlucky or if it is by design that weapons require much more grinding.

mostly armor drops are divided by all non last boss bosses in the dungeon, so u will see much more of them, while last boss is jewelry/weapons.

Larcomar

Like other's have said, it's an MMO. They rely on you grinding. But to be fair, this is the least grindy MMO I've ever played. I mean, the dps difference between running medusa vs some other set in pve is probably minimal - you don't have to have it. Hell even crafted gear isn't all bad. And Zos have just almost entirely stripped out the grind from the pvp side of the game - I mean, there's only a handful of sets that work in cyrodiil now, and most of those are overland/crafted. You don't need to grind gear, transmutes, anything to be competitive now.

Aaxc

A token system would solve this.

heaven13

I believe the way the system is weighted is the problem. It looks like you get a 50/50 chance between a weapon or jewelry item. But then you have only 2 jewelry pieces vs 13 weapons. Either they should be weighted equally, weapons and jewelry should drop, or jewelry should be moved to other bosses and not just final.

Sarannah

Easy solution, stop grinding and start enjoying the game!!! You do not need best in slot gear all the time, you do not need that dungeon set. Any overland set works fine, till you finally get the complete set you want from the dungeon you want it from.
Just because a buildguide says you need something, does not make it mandatory. The need to farm or want a specific piece is all in your own mind.

It's a marathon, not a sprint. Eventually you will get it, even without farming. Just enjoy the game.

PS: By the time you farmed for it, another patch will have made another set best in slot.

Integral1900

I ran Tempest Island more than 150 times and I’m still missing 4 weapons. In a way I am glad for the changes they made in the latest PTS. The alterations requiring high base magic or stamina have affectively shut the door on any build other than the Meta, because let’s face it, you’re going to need to be at least within nodding distance of the Meta to hit stamina or magic numbers that high, for everybody else these sets have all effectively been nerfed into the ground.

In this sense the changes represent the largest reduction in build diversity in the history of this game.

The upside of this is I can now give up farming dungeon gear altogether, as my boredom threshold is not high enough to play meta builds in the first place, I can thoroughly recommend using crafted and overland sets instead of dungeon ones. With a little bit of practice the damage output difference between them is so small that most players will simply never notice. Otherwise just use the body pieces in your builds as those things practically rain out of the sky.

Whatever the weapon drop rates are their set to about four or five times beyond where I’m actually enjoying the dungeon.

GrimTheReaper45

it would be nice if they dropped weapons and jewelry from every boss instead of the final one. it really sucks then your trying to farm your second set and 90% of the bosses are irrelevant to you

Your only guaranteed 1 change at what you need from a whole entire run.

Selminus

Get vampire sprint and the ledgermain hide as well as the CP stuff. Then solo your way thru them and loot the chests. Weapons and jewelry will be common in chests. I did this many times, most recently in CoH 1 and 2. I would rotate them. You'll die occasionally and sometimes hit a door you can't open without killing a boss but you will definitely have good chances.

Mumbles_the_Tank

Aaxc wrote: »

A token system would solve this.

If we have not learned our lesson with reconstruction - we never will. Careful what you wish for with this company.

For years people begged ZOS for a token system that would enable us to trade time spent farming for the specific pieces we desire. Pretty common, player friendly mechanic that exists in many other places.

Instead we got reconstruction and the stickerbook. Such quality of life that we now have to farm for all the drops we do not need - as well as the one or two we actually do!

Just a massive bait and switch papered over by tickling the acquisitive, completionist parts of the brain.

ApoAlaia

Selminus wrote: »

Get vampire sprint and the ledgermain hide as well as the CP stuff. Then solo your way thru them and loot the chests. Weapons and jewelry will be common in chests. I did this many times, most recently in CoH 1 and 2. I would rotate them. You'll die occasionally and sometimes hit a door you can't open without killing a boss but you will definitely have good chances.

This unfortunately does not work with all dungeons. Looking at you Frostvault. I mean is quite on the nose that they put a literal troll with unskippable CC attacks there to gatekeep and troll us.

Joy_Division

Entirely player induced torture.

There are dozens of other high DPS sets that are only a tiny percentage less.

Goregrinder

Especially for people like me who only want to PVP, but have to also PVE just to get gear. It's definitely not fun!

SirAndy

Red99 wrote: »

example im farming a generic trait bsw inferno staff

If you are looking for a staff, farm with a 2H/DW/Bow stamina character.

This has always worked for me, use a character that is the exact opposite spec of what you are looking for and you'll get your drop much sooner.

Supreme_Atromancer

Shomenuchi wrote: »

The game is getting more and more casual but ppl still find it hard.
Group members item sharing
Transmutation stations
Jewellery
what else ZOS added in game to make sets farming easier...

Yeah, there seems to be this stuffy old gate-keeping mentality that "its a MMO!!", so it must be gated to the very small percentage of the playerbase who can dedicate that much time and effort. Otherwise its "casual/bad". Some people need to stop to think about what this actually even means. The number of hours/days/runs it takes to get something is not some sort of achievement to be proud of, its an utterly arbitrary decision based on market. Why is it better for you if it takes far longer to get something? What special thing did you actually do if it took you 100 runs to get something?

I don't know about some of you, but I never EVER needed ZOS to put stuff I want behind literally dozens and dozens of hours of mindless grind just so I would have a reason to log in. In fact, keeping stuff behind a daunting number of hours of mindless, not-fun, and disappointing grind doesn't make me want to keep playing, its disheartening, and its the closest I've come to burning out.

And when I did get what I needed, I didn't feel a sense of accomplishment, because I have a brain and I know that the system is an utterly arbitrary, randomly generated number of hours before I could get what I wanted, so I could focus on the things that I like. How could that be satisfying?

As an aside, I empathise with ZOS about this. I think they designed the game with much more freedom and diversity in mind, where all weapons, traits, gear combos, morphs etc were decisions representing significant trade-offs. But most organised end-game people realised that none of those trade-offs were meaningful if you just put everything into dps. I think that they expected more combinations would be more viable, so it wasn't too important to spent silly numbers of hours grinding. But that's not how it plays out, and usually if you want to do any sort of endgame stuff, you're going to need to grind, possibly for really unhealthy number of hours so you can finally get to running content that you want to run.

SirAndy

Supreme_Atromancer wrote: »

Yeah, there seems to be this stuffy old gate-keeping mentality that "its a MMO!!", so it must be gated to the very small percentage of the playerbase who can dedicate that much time and effort. Otherwise its "casual/bad". Some people need to stop to think about what this actually even means. The number of hours/days/runs it takes to get something is not some sort of achievement to be proud of, its an utterly arbitrary decision based on market. Why is it better for you if it takes far longer to get something? What special thing did you actually do if it took you 100 runs to get something?

I don't know about some of you, but I never EVER needed ZOS to put stuff I want behind literally dozens and dozens of hours of mindless grind just so I would have a reason to log in. In fact, keeping stuff behind a daunting number of hours of mindless, not-fun, and disappointing grind doesn't make me want to keep playing, its disheartening, and its the closest I've come to burning out.

And when I did get what I needed, I didn't feel a sense of accomplishment, because I have a brain and I know that the system is an utterly arbitrary, randomly generated number of hours before I could get what I wanted, so I could focus on the things that I like. How could that be satisfying?

As an aside, I empathise with ZOS about this. I think they designed the game with much more freedom and diversity in mind, where all weapons, traits, gear combos, morphs etc were decisions representing significant trade-offs. But most organised end-game people realised that none of those trade-offs were meaningful if you just put everything into dps. I think that they expected more combinations would be more viable, so it wasn't too important to spent silly numbers of hours grinding. But that's not how it plays out, and usually if you want to do any sort of endgame stuff, you're going to need to grind, possibly for really unhealthy number of hours so you can finally get to running content that you want to run.

All of this ^^^

If grinding hundreds of hours for an elusive piece of gear gives you the feeling of accomplishment and pride, you really need to step back and re-evaluate your general outlook on life.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Thread is a bit of a Necro, but it’s a long time problem.

Bear’s Solution:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/572753/weapon-drops-sticker-book-and-research-idea#latest

Tesman85

Supreme_Atromancer wrote: »

Yeah, there seems to be this stuffy old gate-keeping mentality that "its a MMO!!", so it must be gated to the very small percentage of the playerbase who can dedicate that much time and effort. Otherwise its "casual/bad". Some people need to stop to think about what this actually even means. The number of hours/days/runs it takes to get something is not some sort of achievement to be proud of, its an utterly arbitrary decision based on market. Why is it better for you if it takes far longer to get something? What special thing did you actually do if it took you 100 runs to get something?

I don't know about some of you, but I never EVER needed ZOS to put stuff I want behind literally dozens and dozens of hours of mindless grind just so I would have a reason to log in. In fact, keeping stuff behind a daunting number of hours of mindless, not-fun, and disappointing grind doesn't make me want to keep playing, its disheartening, and its the closest I've come to burning out.

And when I did get what I needed, I didn't feel a sense of accomplishment, because I have a brain and I know that the system is an utterly arbitrary, randomly generated number of hours before I could get what I wanted, so I could focus on the things that I like. How could that be satisfying?

As an aside, I empathise with ZOS about this. I think they designed the game with much more freedom and diversity in mind, where all weapons, traits, gear combos, morphs etc were decisions representing significant trade-offs. But most organised end-game people realised that none of those trade-offs were meaningful if you just put everything into dps. I think that they expected more combinations would be more viable, so it wasn't too important to spent silly numbers of hours grinding. But that's not how it plays out, and usually if you want to do any sort of endgame stuff, you're going to need to grind, possibly for really unhealthy number of hours so you can finally get to running content that you want to run.

Wholehearted agreement from here. After a certain point, the grind really serves no one. Of course, just psychologically speaking getting the best gear should take more than casual effort to feel worth something, but over one hundred runs for one weapon? Not worth it. It's good to remember that MMOs encourage grinding because it's a way to hook players, not reward them. The smart rat knows a Skinner box when it sees it and stops pulling the lever when the amount of treats gets low enough.

Personally I'll grind anything for only the bare minimum necessary to make enjoying things easier. Daily writs (for the moment until I've reached a certain gold goal), surveys, riding lessons, some amount of xp grinding. That's it. And when it gets too boring, I'll stop and play whatever I want. Got burned out from a few games by excessive grinding and learned my lesson. It's a game, after all, and fun should be the most important thing.

Nastassiya

EverQuest burned me on camping. I spent a bit over a months worth of added up play time camping a single drop for my Shadow Knights epic weapon. 730+ hours could have been better spent elsewhere.

Shantu

You know, some people enjoy the feeling of having that certain gear and/or weapon that gives their character that 1% boost in stats. If that's not you and you're fine with crafted gear or whatever, then good on you. However, just because you don't see the need doesn't invalidate how others might enjoy the game.

That being said, having to run content 50/100/150+ times to obtain an item is absolute bull hunky. And I don't buy in to this paradigm that if a creator makes content too easy to grind, then you'll get bored and stop running it. If a dungeon/arena is well designed and fun, it will stand on it's own. However, if you have to run it 150 times to get an item, THAT is what makes people mad and once they get the desired item, never want to run it again. Not because it isn't fun, but because the horrible drop rate creates a gut load of cynicism.

So don't tell me to not get upset because I don't play the game your way. I'm willing to put in a lot of effort...but not endless effort. Some of the drop rates in this game are complete nonsense and accomplish nothing more than pissing people off and making them want to go do something else. I don't care if every MMO ever created does it this way. It's just creatively lazy, insulting, and akin to working at a job for a random paycheck.

So log out and go play something else? Yeah...I do.

AlnilamE

Supreme_Atromancer wrote: »

Shomenuchi wrote: »

The game is getting more and more casual but ppl still find it hard.
Group members item sharing
Transmutation stations
Jewellery
what else ZOS added in game to make sets farming easier...

Yeah, there seems to be this stuffy old gate-keeping mentality that "its a MMO!!", so it must be gated to the very small percentage of the playerbase who can dedicate that much time and effort. Otherwise its "casual/bad". Some people need to stop to think about what this actually even means. The number of hours/days/runs it takes to get something is not some sort of achievement to be proud of, its an utterly arbitrary decision based on market. Why is it better for you if it takes far longer to get something? What special thing did you actually do if it took you 100 runs to get something?

I don't know about some of you, but I never EVER needed ZOS to put stuff I want behind literally dozens and dozens of hours of mindless grind just so I would have a reason to log in. In fact, keeping stuff behind a daunting number of hours of mindless, not-fun, and disappointing grind doesn't make me want to keep playing, its disheartening, and its the closest I've come to burning out.

And when I did get what I needed, I didn't feel a sense of accomplishment, because I have a brain and I know that the system is an utterly arbitrary, randomly generated number of hours before I could get what I wanted, so I could focus on the things that I like. How could that be satisfying?

As an aside, I empathise with ZOS about this. I think they designed the game with much more freedom and diversity in mind, where all weapons, traits, gear combos, morphs etc were decisions representing significant trade-offs. But most organised end-game people realised that none of those trade-offs were meaningful if you just put everything into dps. I think that they expected more combinations would be more viable, so it wasn't too important to spent silly numbers of hours grinding. But that's not how it plays out, and usually if you want to do any sort of endgame stuff, you're going to need to grind, possibly for really unhealthy number of hours so you can finally get to running content that you want to run.

I mean, you could do what normal people do and rearrange your build...

DarcyMardin

I sympathize with players who run a dungeon 100+ times and don’t get the drop they are seeking. I’m never lucky with RNG myself, so I don’t play the farming game. Instead I’ll stick to sets that I can get via crafting or trading if I get bored with trying my luck in a particular dungeon. Maybe some other gear set-up isn’t *quite* as perfect, but it’s probably *good enough.*

Everstorm

Nastassiya wrote: »

EverQuest burned me on camping. I spent a bit over a months worth of added up play time camping a single drop for my Shadow Knights epic weapon. 730+ hours could have been better spent elsewhere.

Decrepit hide?

Rescorla_ESO

I just wish the devs would change the loot rules to where all bosses and chests share the same loot table across the board.

Ippokrates

As I said in different thread connect RNG poll to player sticker book, so player will always receive different weapon/armour till the sticker gets full. And treat Arenas as a one pool.

[Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that this system already works when it comes to BG rewards - I had plenty of Style Pages of all three teams and not even once had the same]

In worst scenario player will have to make 23 runs. Not 100+ like many... (my personal record is 50 runs through AC)

This will be better for everyone: players mental health, servers, bah, maybe even ZOS quarterly report cause instead of mindless grinding, players will take a breath and focus more on fashion & furnitures, cause they will finally have equipment to train rotation in their homes. And no one likes to sit surrounded by empty walls

Goregrinder

Larcomar wrote: »

Like other's have said, it's an MMO. They rely on you grinding. But to be fair, this is the least grindy MMO I've ever played. I mean, the dps difference between running medusa vs some other set in pve is probably minimal - you don't have to have it. Hell even crafted gear isn't all bad. And Zos have just almost entirely stripped out the grind from the pvp side of the game - I mean, there's only a handful of sets that work in cyrodiil now, and most of those are overland/crafted. You don't need to grind gear, transmutes, anything to be competitive now.

I mean...you're technically right about that.

Romilly

I just came in here to say the same thing. I've been playing MMOs since before they were 3D.

I've been trying to get a Medusa Inferno Staff for the last few weeks. I'm on vacation this week. I've run it over and over, I'm guessing at least 30-40 times now in the last week. Nothing. I literally have a full stickerbook of all 3 Arx sets, apart from that. We're talking about a normal dungeon, not some Vet HM Trials weapon I'm trying to get for free.

I should be able to do something like take my Master Craftsman skill at a transmutation station and sacrifice say 100 items of Medusa, 28 transmute stones (whatever, 1000), and learn how to make it.

I am quite literally at the point where I am not enjoying myself in Tamriel in any way whatsover, and am logging out to play Valorant and Fortnite with their screaming infants yelling abuse at me, rather than play ESO after the 10th run of the day.

Bad luck you say? That dungeon has FIVE chests typically and a boss that is solo-able - and I still cant get one. Please don't tell me to run it in Vet - the few times I tried that everyone was looking for the same thing, and you'd generally get a sucky tank that was just there for a fast daily random run who would just pull everything with no time to open chests, and certainly wouldnt loot them for us.

[snip]

[Edited to remove Baiting]

heaven13

Ippokrates wrote: »

As I said in different thread connect RNG poll to player sticker book, so player will always receive different weapon/armour till the sticker gets full. And treat Arenas as a one pool.

[Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that this system already works when it comes to BG rewards - I had plenty of Style Pages of all three teams and not even once had the same]

In worst scenario player will have to make 23 runs. Not 100+ like many... (my personal record is 50 runs through AC)

This will be better for everyone: players mental health, servers, bah, maybe even ZOS quarterly report cause instead of mindless grinding, players will take a breath and focus more on fashion & furnitures, cause they will finally have equipment to train rotation in their homes. And no one likes to sit surrounded by empty walls

Please NO. The way BG style page works is the opposite of rewarding. The more pages you know, the less likely you are to get one. Because, rather than giving you one you still need (though it looks like it does this), it can reward you any of the pages but if it is one already learned, it just doesn't show up. Additionally, because of this, pages are not tradeable so you're stuck with your own RNG only.

Ippokrates

Goregrinder wrote: »

Larcomar wrote: »

Like other's have said, it's an MMO. They rely on you grinding. But to be fair, this is the least grindy MMO I've ever played. I mean, the dps difference between running medusa vs some other set in pve is probably minimal - you don't have to have it. Hell even crafted gear isn't all bad. And Zos have just almost entirely stripped out the grind from the pvp side of the game - I mean, there's only a handful of sets that work in cyrodiil now, and most of those are overland/crafted. You don't need to grind gear, transmutes, anything to be competitive now.

I mean...you're technically right about that.

Even if, what's the point of that?

The most important part of ESO activity on YT is buildcrafting. Which is fine, unless you cannot make or try a build because... RNG. So then what? Looking for Ersatz? That could be hard, cause the difference might seems minimal, but this is the ESO: you do not have single gamechanging artifacts aka armageddon's😅blade. Instead your overall is result of those all little thing that stack up.

So sure, at the beginning player might be vulnerable to the hazardous-alike feel and stay in the game to grind, but as you will see even at this forum, finally people get frustrated and start to look to other things...