No Hollowjack this year?

SeaGtGruff

I've already learned all of the Hollowjack pages on both my PC NA and PC EU mains, so no big deal for me, because I'm not worried about whether all of my alts are able to master the Hollowjack style.

But I'm thinking about the witch coven house, which requires mastering the Hollowjack style as one of its stipulations.

I'd already bought the witch coven house last year on PC NA, and was able to buy it this year on PC EU because all I was lacking were a dozen more plunder skulls to put me at 100, so again, no big deal for me.

But if the only way for new players to learn the Hollowjack style is to buy the pages from guild traders at outrageously exorbitant prices, that's pretty much going to screw a lot of players out of the opportunity to buy the witch coven house-- with in-game gold, anyway, since I guess buying it with Crowns waives all requirements related to the Witch Festival achievements, right?

Guyle

It can still be acquired from the grab bags the event vendor sells. Presumably this will always be a way to obtain them in the future.

JamieAubrey

God no, my bank was full of these I ended up having to delete them just to get rid of them, you could buy the full set for like 1000 gold total

Starlight_Whisper

Guyle wrote: »

It can still be acquired from the grab bags the event vendor sells. Presumably this will always be a way to obtain them in the future.

Still massive amount of tickets needed. Not mention it's motif so needed for master crafter rngess of writs. You can't buy them later so you are incomplete till halloween time again.

Starlight_Whisper

Okay so I was sitting thinking. They should just throw these as rare chance from stealing or murdering an npc. It's so fitting.

SteveCampsOut

RNG Gods have you by the short hairs now! You can only buy the grab bags and hope there's a motif that you need inside. I'm still selling off leftovers from the last time they flooded the market. I don't have the whole style anymore. This is on EU by the way....Watch Pacrooti's Hirelings Trader...

Sylvermynx

? The house isn't showing a requirement for purchase to me (other than crowns of course). I haven't tried to buy it even though I have the crowns, because it's.... um.... SO not my thing....

SeaGtGruff

It won't show the requirement if you've already met the requirement (which is an achievement that requires earning multiple other achievements related to the Witches Festival), or if you're looking at the Crowns price instead of the in-game gold price.

It's not really my thing, either, but I bought it for the sake of completeness and because it provides a convenient free port to the northern half of Glenumbra, with a waystation fairly close by.

Starlight_Whisper

Sylvermynx wrote: »

? The house isn't showing a requirement for purchase to me (other than crowns of course). I haven't tried to buy it even though I have the crowns, because it's.... um.... SO not my thing....

Yeah requirement exists. I did it four years ago or whenever ever it first festival was with it.

But yeah, doesn't matter for us...but truly sucks to be a new player.

Kiyakotari

Yeah, this is just complete horse pucky. Each year I do this achievement on a new account, so I can buy the house again using gold. Was planning to do it again this year. Have been cheerfully handing out Hollowjack pages to new players all year long, as I expected to be able to earn new ones during this event, and it's a fun motif for people to be able to play around in outfitting with that doesn't require reaching a certain level in crafting to learn. I give out many other holiday even styles, like Skinchanger and Dremora, for the same reason.

Well, I guess I'll be running around trying to find pages on traders, instead - and the prices on them have already shot way, WAY up!

Prof_Bawbag

For anyone who thinks this was an ace idea and have zero issue with motifs being hidden behind the vendor, feel free to send me:

Chest, helms, gloves or legs if you happen to be on the Xbox EU server. They would be greatly appreciated rather than forking out the 60k folk are now asking for those pieces.

Moved over to the xbox a few weeks ago and require those pieces. Amazing the amount of established players who think the game revolves around them and to hell with new players and the likes. As long as they have what folk need, ZoS can do what they want. The vendor seems to be heavily weighted towards those awful mementos. I've had a single hollowjack motif and had to shop around for hours to get the pieces i do have.

Could buy event tickets for 250 crns a pop should i still be missing pieces come the end, but I'd rather stick rusty needs into my eyeballs than fall for that money grabbing garbage.

Dark_Lord_Kuro

It was a nice idea to remove them from the loot table but it could have been better executed
At least the grab bag cant give you duplicate

Full motif book for 12 tickets would have been a nice alternative

Guyle

Starlight_Whisper wrote: »

Guyle wrote: »

It can still be acquired from the grab bags the event vendor sells. Presumably this will always be a way to obtain them in the future.

Still massive amount of tickets needed. Not mention it's motif so needed for master crafter rngess of writs. You can't buy them later so you are incomplete till halloween time again.

28 to be precise, and most events have almost half again that many tickets you can possibly earn. I've been playing 3 and a half years, been doing master writs for more than 3, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've done master writs that were for Hollowjack, so thats not exactly a compelling argument. Personally I don't see this as being too big of a deal, I missed the first cake from the first jubilee event, and shelled out over 2 million during the last anniversary event for a cake voucher so I could get it.... which granted me a memento of something that can just barely be considered a cake, serves no practical purpose, but did allow me to buy a furnishing replica of it, and I don't even do housing. The point being, old event items should ultimately be cycled out of drop pools, to keep things fresh, and not dilute the drop pool. Some players will always want items from previous events that can no longer be found as drops, and this is a way for them to do it. It's not a perfect system, but I'm not surprised when I need to fork over a small fortune for something I want that isn't in circulation anymore. If anything, I'm just happy there is a way to still get it.

edit: Should have mentioned that I have done A LOT of master writs, and only ever done a handful of Hollowjacks. All combined I have probably completed upwards of 25k writ vouchers worth of writs, primarily gear ones.

gatekeeper13

I saw the title of your topic, yesterday, but ignored it.

Logged in today to check the requirements for Sun's Dusk Reaper title for my magsorc, only to find out that the Hollowjack pages are locked behind event tickets. And every page is sold for 50k+ at guild traders.

What a joke.

SerraKBella

"Sun's Dusk Reaper" title has "Happy Work For Hollowjack" as one of the requirements. I think having this title is the requirement for the house, if I remember correctly. Getting these festival titles on alt characters is part of the fun for me.

I think it will be really hard getting the complete Hollowjack motifs set for a handful of alt characters now (28 tickets per) and that is not counting the Skeletal Marionette parts that would drop because it is listed as an in-game achievement to combine 10 for each character, not account, even though you can't gain another memento to sell for combining. So using an alt to open a grab bag, because they need a certain hollowjack motif page and they need to be the one to open it, then gets harder because they might get the skeletal marionette part too.

I think the grab bags recognize the Spectre Mask Collectibles and Apple-Bobbing Cauldron if your main character has already learned them (needs confirmation, just a guess). It would be nice if the Skeletal Marionette parts could have been recognized as account wide too, not a per character in-game achievement. Maybe they could just remove that in-game achievement so all our alts don't have to gather an absurd amount of skeletal marionette parts either, just to complete all the Witches Festival in-game achievements. It would really help out all those completionist out there (myself included ).


Edit: Math 28 tickets Hollowjack motif pages (14 pages), 20 tickets Skeletal Marionette Memento (10 parts), 14 tickets Apple-Bobbing Cauldron (7 fragments) and 8 tickets Spectre Mask Collection (4 masks).

Alt characters could need up to 48 tickets to get the Sun's Duck Reaper title, (28 Hollowjack motif and the 20 for Skeletal Marionette parts dropping before you might collect the last motif page. RNG could be better for some. Remember the Skeletal Marionette is a per character, in-game achievement, not account wide. And that is just one alt character, if you have many...?

A new character would need to spend 70 tickets on grab bags to get all the existing items. I love the idea of the grab bag, but that is a lot of tickets to spend, and that does not even leave room for the Crimson Indrik berries or feathers.

SeaGtGruff

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

It was a nice idea to remove them from the loot table but it could have been better executed
At least the grab bag cant give you duplicate

Full motif book for 12 tickets would have been a nice alternative

Actually, the regular Plunder Skulls seem to have very little in them in the way of "rewards," so it wouldn't have hurt the Golden Plunder Skulls loot table to have Hollowjack pages drop in the regular Plunder Skulls.

SeaGtGruff

Eh, now I'm confused. I just reread the news announcement for the event, and it says that Hollowjack pages ARE in the loot table for regular Plunder Skulls!

I sure haven't seen any, but I've mainly just gotten four or five Golden Plunder Skulls per day-- no trials or arenas for me, and sometimes no group dungeons-- instead of farming as many Plunder Skulls as I can.

To be frank, my main problem is that I keep picking up more pieces of set gear, and I've been hanging on to so much of that stuff since getting ESO+ that I'm practically out of inventory space again and am almost afraid to do anything that might give me yet more pieces of set gear.

It looks like I'll have to start farming regular Plunder Skulls in earnest-- not that I need any Hollowjack pages, but for the other stuff that's supposedly got a chande to drop in regular Plunder Skulls.

gatekeeper13

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Eh, now I'm confused. I just reread the news announcement for the event, and it says that Hollowjack pages ARE in the loot table for regular Plunder Skulls!

I dont think they drop from plunder skulls. In achievement description it states that they only drop from grab bags. I guess the announcement is wrong, since I ve opened more than 100 skulls with 0 Hollowjack drop. And I dont know anyone else who got 1 either.

Prof_Bawbag

gatekeeper13 wrote: »

I saw the title of your topic, yesterday, but ignored it.

Logged in today to check the requirements for Sun's Dusk Reaper title for my magsorc, only to find out that the Hollowjack pages are locked behind event tickets. And every page is sold for 50k+ at guild traders.

What a joke.

Yeah, it's nothing more than an attempt to make buying event tickets from the CS more of a necessity for those who are new commers or switch platforms.

I get folk are selling them in game, but what noob has 60k gold per page? This is the only folk who it's hurting and not those who are flooded with those motifs or have a complete set. Add to that, they polute the loot pool by adding in those trash mementoes no one uses. Here, buy tickets at 250 crs a-pop.

SickleCider

Yes, this was a mistake. If they were going to do this they ought to have shifted achievement requirements around. I have the cottage but I'm a little upset that I just told some friends how easy it is to get with gold and now they have a big hurdle ahead of them. I too wanted to get the Sun's Dusk Reaper title on an alt and am rethinking that one, too.

SerraKBella

I edited my post above with this information, but I should have just made a new post with what I think the math for this event is. I hope that is allowed.

28 tickets Hollowjack motif pages (14 pages), 20 tickets Skeletal Marionette Memento (10 parts), 14 tickets Apple-Bobbing Cauldron (7 fragments) and 8 tickets Spectre Mask Collection (4 masks).

Alt characters could need up to 48 tickets to get the Sun's Duck Reaper title, (28 Hollowjack motif and the 20 for Skeletal Marionette parts dropping before you might collect the last motif page. RNG could be better for some. Remember the Skeletal Marionette is a per character, in-game achievement, not account wide. And that is just one alt character, if you have many...?

A new character would need to spend 70 tickets on grab bags to get all the existing items. I love the idea of the grab bag, but that is a lot of tickets to spend, and that does not even leave room for the Crimson Indrik berries or feathers

Elvenheart

Sylvermynx wrote: »

? The house isn't showing a requirement for purchase to me (other than crowns of course). I haven't tried to buy it even though I have the crowns, because it's.... um.... SO not my thing....

I bought it mostly for completionist reasons too like another poster above and decorated it with the Halloween themed pack. The jack-o’-lanterns look really neat lining the path up to the house! And this year, it finally has someone living there, that new witchy houseguest 🧙‍♀️

Jaraal

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Eh, now I'm confused. I just reread the news announcement for the event, and it says that Hollowjack pages ARE in the loot table for regular Plunder Skulls!

It says Hollowjack style items, meaning the Amber Marbles that are required to craft in that style.

I can confirm that they do drop from the purple Plunder Skulls. But the actual motif pages you have to get from players, guild traders, or grab bags.

AyeshaBelladonna

@ZOS_GinaBruno What gives? You guys sucked basically all the incentive out of farming normal plunder skulls. No rune boxes? No Hollowjack pages? and BTW the in-game economy has gotten completely out of hand these last couple months- i we don't get an increase in drops rates of things rather than decreases it's going to start turning people off of events and your housing cash cow, js. Yeah the grab bag is great is someone has tickets to blow to finish their collectibles.... but you have a house and multiple achievements tied to a motif style now locked behind a paywall basically. That's just really crappy imho.

starkerealm

Sylvermynx wrote: »

? The house isn't showing a requirement for purchase to me (other than crowns of course). I haven't tried to buy it even though I have the crowns, because it's.... um.... SO not my thing....

They might have changed it. I think some of the houses may have had their achievement requirements removed. Though, I'm honestly not sure if those simply never had a requirement at all.

SeaGtGruff

Jaraal wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Eh, now I'm confused. I just reread the news announcement for the event, and it says that Hollowjack pages ARE in the loot table for regular Plunder Skulls!

It says Hollowjack style items, meaning the Amber Marbles that are required to craft in that style.

I can confirm that they do drop from the purple Plunder Skulls. But the actual motif pages you have to get from players, guild traders, or grab bags.

Yeah, I figured that out and mentioned it in one of the other threads about this, but didn't mention it in my own thread!

Jaraal

starkerealm wrote: »

Sylvermynx wrote: »

? The house isn't showing a requirement for purchase to me (other than crowns of course). I haven't tried to buy it even though I have the crowns, because it's.... um.... SO not my thing....

They might have changed it. I think some of the houses may have had their achievement requirements removed. Though, I'm honestly not sure if those simply never had a requirement at all.

Well that would be disturbing.

Removing achievements to be able to buy a house for gold and making it Crown Store only? I suppose if revoking skills previously earned and introducing Crown Store methods to get them back faster is a thing, then revoking the ability to earn a house by non-Crown Store means would not be surprising.

Sephyr

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

It was a nice idea to remove them from the loot table but it could have been better executed
At least the grab bag cant give you duplicate

Full motif book for 12 tickets would have been a nice alternative

^This. @ZOS_GinaBruno if developers are intending on getting rid of something that drops within Master Writs, there should be a better way to get the motif.

Jaraal wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Sylvermynx wrote: »

? The house isn't showing a requirement for purchase to me (other than crowns of course). I haven't tried to buy it even though I have the crowns, because it's.... um.... SO not my thing....

They might have changed it. I think some of the houses may have had their achievement requirements removed. Though, I'm honestly not sure if those simply never had a requirement at all.

Well that would be disturbing.

Removing achievements to be able to buy a house for gold and making it Crown Store only? I suppose if revoking skills previously earned and introducing Crown Store methods to get them back faster is a thing, then revoking the ability to earn a house by non-Crown Store means would not be surprising.

I was still able to buy it with gold this year, although most of my characters have that achievement because at the time that was the only way I could get RID of the darned things. Now they're selling for a mint.

Feels bad, man. Feels so bad.

SeaGtGruff

Jaraal wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Sylvermynx wrote: »

? The house isn't showing a requirement for purchase to me (other than crowns of course). I haven't tried to buy it even though I have the crowns, because it's.... um.... SO not my thing....

They might have changed it. I think some of the houses may have had their achievement requirements removed. Though, I'm honestly not sure if those simply never had a requirement at all.

Well that would be disturbing.

Removing achievements to be able to buy a house for gold and making it Crown Store only? I suppose if revoking skills previously earned and introducing Crown Store methods to get them back faster is a thing, then revoking the ability to earn a house by non-Crown Store means would not be surprising.

I don't think that's what was meant. I think the suggestion was that maybe you no longer need to earn the achievement before being allowed to buy the house for in-game gold-- i.e., that perhaps anyone who has enough in-game gold can buy the house unfurnished just like always, except there's no stipulation that you need to earn the achievement first.

I bought the house with in-game gold on the second day of the event (October 23, 2020), so it's still available that way.

However, I don't remember whether I tried to buy it before I finally earned the achievement for getting 100 Plunder Skulls, so I don't know whether the requirement for the achievement was/is still in effect.

Someone who doesn't have the house yet, and who hasn't earned the achievement yet, should preview the house before the event ends and check its in-game gold price to see if the achievement still shows as being required.

Sylvermynx

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Someone who doesn't have the house yet, and who hasn't earned the achievement yet, should preview the house before the event ends and check its in-game gold price to see if the achievement still shows as being required.

I just checked. It shows unfurnished for 250k gold, and that I haven't met the requirements for buying it.

Sirona_Starr

AyeshaBelladonna wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno What gives? You guys sucked basically all the incentive out of farming normal plunder skulls. No rune boxes? No Hollowjack pages? and BTW the in-game economy has gotten completely out of hand these last couple months- i we don't get an increase in drops rates of things rather than decreases it's going to start turning people off of events and your housing cash cow, js. Yeah the grab bag is great is someone has tickets to blow to finish their collectibles.... but you have a house and multiple achievements tied to a motif style now locked behind a paywall basically. That's just really crappy imho.

I was really shocked at the no drop Hollowjack Motif and the outrageous prices in trader. I only care about them because aside from the house, they are a requirement for the Sun's Dusk Reaper title. I play 18 toons, and about 8 of them are SOL for that, because I'm filling in motifs on the 10 above. I have been using grab bags, and have even bought a few from traders...... so, they need to NOT lock achievements behind a paywall or impossible to get, otherwise, or implement account wide achievements. I know people argue against this. Not having accountwide achievements stops me from playing things until my main gets an achievement. Now it's stopping me from playing because the achievement is way to expensive to get. So frustrated............