Can we have a buff/food that increases the drop rate of Monster Trophies?

Shawn_PT

Oh don't get me wrong. These do NOT drop like candy. No way. I generally play several hours each day, sometimes more than 12. And it took me well over a week to get the Scaly Durzog Hide on my 4th alt, as well as the Ectoplasmic Discharge on my 5th. (see, it was so soul-crushing I still remember it.)

Same, it took me a week of fishing on the Gold Coast on my 2nd alt to get that last blue river fish. Luckily the spots are all close to one another. I pulled 99 green fish, and the blue was literally the 100th. There was no fishing food back then. I was so, so close to giving up. Then it popped. Got over 1k fish fillets and 20 Perfect Roes from that one. And you know what? Yes. I'd do it again. And again.

As a matter of fact, I do. I do it again. And again. Aaaaand I recently noticed not all of my alts have all the Artaeum recipes so I'm gonna go back and grab those one of these days.

So no, these things don't drop like candy, and the RNG is poop. But if you are patient, and spare the time, it's very much doable.

16BitForestCat

The reason why monster trophies are so hard to farm is because, like everything else in the game, they're not really RNG drops. To get a monster trophy, you have to be on a loot drop table that allows them to drop (the game determines what table you get when you log your character in). If you're not on the right table, you can kill trophy-dropping enemies for ten hours and never see a single trophy. Don't ask me how I know. My fingers will recover someday. Edit: This is not new. It's a very common tactic games use to create the illusion of "true" RNG. It's been around since long before ESO.

You can tell you're on the right loot table because you will...loot a monster trophy. Eventually. I usually, not always, get one within the first hour of playing when I'm on the right table. I try to kill everything I see during my first hour or two playing so I get the best chance of finding out if I'm on a trophy table. When you notice you're on a loot table that drops monster trophies, stop what you're doing and go farm more trophies, without logging out of that character or restarting the game! That'll reset your loot table to something else. I average about one trophy per one-and-a-half to two hours, with a rare chance of two about ten minutes apart. That's the game trying to create the illusion that these drops are random. The same drop pattern seems to exist for antiquity leads, and sometimes getting leads seems to conflict with my getting trophies, so I don't dig up any leads I get until I'm done trophy farming. My final night of farming, it took me three hours to get my first drop after I began, during which time I got three leads. After I stopped getting leads in that area (farming durzogs in Toothmaul Gully), I got a scaly durzog hide trophy after a while.

Oh, and if you're farming a specific trophy, make sure you ONLY kill the enemy that drops it. It would suck if you killed a pack of mixed enemies and got a trophy you already had instead of the one you needed. You'd probably be waiting close to two hours for your next drop.

I actually completed my final trophy achievement this month! I will never do this grind again on any other character. Even knowing how to farm, it still took me a few years after I learned just because I know of no way to force the right loot table when you log in. I just had to play as normal, hope I got a trophy, and hope I had the time to farm for more.

We really deserve a freaking title for getting all the monster trophies, maybe a special furnishing.

BTW, I didn't figure all this out myself. Someone I know did who doesn't go here. I'm just sharing what I learned from them, right from their own tutorial.

EDIT: Was coming back here to add that the tutorial mentions that "special" zones, like group dungeons and arenas, seem to have their own loot tables. I notice I often get a trophy from Dragonstar Arena and sometimes from group content, but that never seems to carry over into the rest of the game once I leave the "special" zones.

Oh, and I have no idea if this next bit actually makes any difference at all, but: I didn't want to risk my drop quality getting diluted, so when I was farming monster trophies, I never looted anything but the corpses I needed. No treasure chests, no Psijic portals, no plants, none of it. Since there seemed to be a cooldown on how often you can get certain tiers of loot like trophies, and it's already been confirmed that other types of loot have cooldowns on your chances to drop them, like those motifs from reward containers, I didn't want to make my grind any more tedious than it already was.

emilyhyoyeon

I agree that the achievements definitely need a title and house furnishings. House furnishings would be so cool, probably quite a bit of work depending on how they're done though

NotaDaedraWorshipper

16BitForestCat wrote: »

The reason why monster trophies are so hard to farm is because, like everything else in the game, they're not really RNG drops. To get a monster trophy, you have to be on a loot drop table that allows them to drop (the game determines what table you get when you log your character in). If you're not on the right table, you can kill trophy-dropping enemies for ten hours and never see a single trophy. Don't ask me how I know. My fingers will recover someday.

You can tell you're on the right loot table because you will...loot a monster trophy. Eventually. I usually, not always, get one within the first hour of playing when I'm on the right table. I try to kill everything I see during my first hour or two playing so I get the best chance of finding out if I'm on a trophy table. When you notice you're on a loot table that drops monster trophies, stop what you're doing and go farm more trophies, without logging out of that character or restarting the game! That'll reset your loot table to something else. I average about one trophy per one-and-a-half to two hours, with a rare chance of two about ten minutes apart. That's the game trying to create the illusion that these drops are random. The same drop pattern seems to exist for antiquity leads, and sometimes getting leads seems to conflict with my getting trophies, so I don't dig up any leads I get until I'm done trophy farming. My final night of farming, it took me three hours to get my first drop after I began, during which time I got three leads. After I stopped getting leads in that area (farming durzogs in Toothmaul Gully), I got a scaly durzog hide trophy after a while.

Oh, and if you're farming a specific trophy, make sure you ONLY kill the enemy that drops it. It would suck if you killed a pack of mixed enemies and got a trophy you already had instead of the one you needed. You'd probably be waiting close to two hours for your next drop.

I actually completed my final trophy achievement this month! I will never do this grind again on any other character. Even knowing how to farm, it still took me a few years after I learned just because I know of no way to force the right loot table when you log in. I just had to play as normal, hope I got a trophy, and hope I had the time to farm for more.

We really deserve a freaking title for getting all the monster trophies, maybe a special furnishing.

BTW, I didn't figure all this out myself. Someone I know did who doesn't go here. I'm just sharing what I learned from them, right from their own tutorial

.

This is sounding like some conspiracy theory to explain the horrible RNG.

16BitForestCat

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

This is sounding like some conspiracy theory to explain the horrible RNG.

So try it yourself before slagging off on it. It's a very common tactic games use to create the illusion of "true" RNG. It's been around since long before ESO. Just so you all know, that farming method has worked for me, the person I learned it from, and the six? seven? friends on Discord they also shared it with a few years ago. I had almost no monster trophy achieves in 2019 despite playing since 2014, then bashed them all out in "only" two years using this method. This kind of loot table that changes on load is actually really common in games because it creates the illusion of more randomness than there actually is in anything human-made. Friend who figured it out did so because we all played Diablo III, which uses similar methods to determine loot drops, and since ESO has inspiration from D3, it just made sense that this might work the same way. And it did. (Edit for clarity.)

tmbrinks

Yes, add a food in that increases the drop rate. Have it be an "event" based food from one of the 4 big events (so it comes back yearly).

I shudder every time I kill a wamasu thinking of how long it took me to get that trophy for my own collection.

(Also, if you didn't know, the drop rate for trophies is significantly higher in instanced content, like dungeons. So, if you're hunting for one that has mobs in a dungeon, like the Alit Bezoar for example, you can run Elden Hollow. I've gotten 2 polished shell shards to drop from the mudcrabs in Black Drake Villa, after only getting 1 to ever drop from overland mudcrabs)

Fennwitty

I can't refute @16BitForestCat but if the loot really does work that way -- it's terrible design that should be changed.

We know ESO's RNG is ... weighted or crappy or whatever. It should be something fixed, not perpetuated.

elven.were_wolf

I really hope something is added or done to the game in regards to Monster Trophies.

I feel like the majority of the player base just sweeps those achievements under a rug and pretends they don’t exist as they hardly get any drops anyway, and so this topic never gets enough focus and patch after patch is released without it ever being mentioned. While people who actually bother to get those dyes and achievements wither away in their painful grinding rotations not getting their drops, complaining in isolated bubbles away from the rest of the ESO community (or at least that what it feels like).

The day this topic gets covered by ZOS or the day bosmer get their stealth passive back will be a happy day for me indeed XD

kargen27

Maybe instead of a food it can be the super power for the next companion?

lillybit

kargen27 wrote: »

Maybe instead of a food it can be the super power for the next companion?

Given how hard it is to unlock keepsakes, I'd rather see companion perks that are useful to everyone, rather than excluding people who have already put in the work. It's also a lot of work just for it to be useless in 6 months when it's done its job. Food would work much better, available to people who want it without taking away a potentially worthwhile perk.

16BitForestCat

Fennwitty wrote: »

I can't refute @16BitForestCat but if the loot really does work that way -- it's terrible design that should be changed.

We know ESO's RNG is ... weighted or crappy or whatever. It should be something fixed, not perpetuated.

It's terrible, it's cheap, and it's depressingly common. It's been around in games since long before ZOS decided it was a "good" idea to use it. Unfortunately, at this point in ESO's life cycle, I don't see them doing changing anything, so all we can do is work within the system they gave us. At least this way, it's fairly easy to predict that you'll get another trophy if you've already looted one during that character load.

elven.were_wolf

16BitForestCat wrote: »

The reason why monster trophies are so hard to farm is because, like everything else in the game, they're not really RNG drops. To get a monster trophy, you have to be on a loot drop table that allows them to drop (the game determines what table you get when you log your character in). If you're not on the right table, you can kill trophy-dropping enemies for ten hours and never see a single trophy. Don't ask me how I know. My fingers will recover someday. Edit: This is not new. It's a very common tactic games use to create the illusion of "true" RNG. It's been around since long before ESO.

You can tell you're on the right loot table because you will...loot a monster trophy. Eventually. I usually, not always, get one within the first hour of playing when I'm on the right table. I try to kill everything I see during my first hour or two playing so I get the best chance of finding out if I'm on a trophy table. When you notice you're on a loot table that drops monster trophies, stop what you're doing and go farm more trophies, without logging out of that character or restarting the game! That'll reset your loot table to something else. I average about one trophy per one-and-a-half to two hours, with a rare chance of two about ten minutes apart. That's the game trying to create the illusion that these drops are random. The same drop pattern seems to exist for antiquity leads, and sometimes getting leads seems to conflict with my getting trophies, so I don't dig up any leads I get until I'm done trophy farming. My final night of farming, it took me three hours to get my first drop after I began, during which time I got three leads. After I stopped getting leads in that area (farming durzogs in Toothmaul Gully), I got a scaly durzog hide trophy after a while.

Oh, and if you're farming a specific trophy, make sure you ONLY kill the enemy that drops it. It would suck if you killed a pack of mixed enemies and got a trophy you already had instead of the one you needed. You'd probably be waiting close to two hours for your next drop.

I actually completed my final trophy achievement this month! I will never do this grind again on any other character. Even knowing how to farm, it still took me a few years after I learned just because I know of no way to force the right loot table when you log in. I just had to play as normal, hope I got a trophy, and hope I had the time to farm for more.

We really deserve a freaking title for getting all the monster trophies, maybe a special furnishing.

BTW, I didn't figure all this out myself. Someone I know did who doesn't go here. I'm just sharing what I learned from them, right from their own tutorial.

EDIT: Was coming back here to add that the tutorial mentions that "special" zones, like group dungeons and arenas, seem to have their own loot tables. I notice I often get a trophy from Dragonstar Arena and sometimes from group content, but that never seems to carry over into the rest of the game once I leave the "special" zones.

Oh, and I have no idea if this next bit actually makes any difference at all, but: I didn't want to risk my drop quality getting diluted, so when I was farming monster trophies, I never looted anything but the corpses I needed. No treasure chests, no Psijic portals, no plants, none of it. Since there seemed to be a cooldown on how often you can get certain tiers of loot like trophies, and it's already been confirmed that other types of loot have cooldowns on your chances to drop them, like those motifs from reward containers, I didn't want to make my grind any more tedious than it already was.

16BitForestCat wrote: »

The reason why monster trophies are so hard to farm is because, like everything else in the game, they're not really RNG drops. To get a monster trophy, you have to be on a loot drop table that allows them to drop (the game determines what table you get when you log your character in). If you're not on the right table, you can kill trophy-dropping enemies for ten hours and never see a single trophy. Don't ask me how I know. My fingers will recover someday. Edit: This is not new. It's a very common tactic games use to create the illusion of "true" RNG. It's been around since long before ESO.

You can tell you're on the right loot table because you will...loot a monster trophy. Eventually. I usually, not always, get one within the first hour of playing when I'm on the right table. I try to kill everything I see during my first hour or two playing so I get the best chance of finding out if I'm on a trophy table. When you notice you're on a loot table that drops monster trophies, stop what you're doing and go farm more trophies, without logging out of that character or restarting the game! That'll reset your loot table to something else. I average about one trophy per one-and-a-half to two hours, with a rare chance of two about ten minutes apart. That's the game trying to create the illusion that these drops are random. The same drop pattern seems to exist for antiquity leads, and sometimes getting leads seems to conflict with my getting trophies, so I don't dig up any leads I get until I'm done trophy farming. My final night of farming, it took me three hours to get my first drop after I began, during which time I got three leads. After I stopped getting leads in that area (farming durzogs in Toothmaul Gully), I got a scaly durzog hide trophy after a while.

Oh, and if you're farming a specific trophy, make sure you ONLY kill the enemy that drops it. It would suck if you killed a pack of mixed enemies and got a trophy you already had instead of the one you needed. You'd probably be waiting close to two hours for your next drop.

I actually completed my final trophy achievement this month! I will never do this grind again on any other character. Even knowing how to farm, it still took me a few years after I learned just because I know of no way to force the right loot table when you log in. I just had to play as normal, hope I got a trophy, and hope I had the time to farm for more.

We really deserve a freaking title for getting all the monster trophies, maybe a special furnishing.

BTW, I didn't figure all this out myself. Someone I know did who doesn't go here. I'm just sharing what I learned from them, right from their own tutorial.

EDIT: Was coming back here to add that the tutorial mentions that "special" zones, like group dungeons and arenas, seem to have their own loot tables. I notice I often get a trophy from Dragonstar Arena and sometimes from group content, but that never seems to carry over into the rest of the game once I leave the "special" zones.

Oh, and I have no idea if this next bit actually makes any difference at all, but: I didn't want to risk my drop quality getting diluted, so when I was farming monster trophies, I never looted anything but the corpses I needed. No treasure chests, no Psijic portals, no plants, none of it. Since there seemed to be a cooldown on how often you can get certain tiers of loot like trophies, and it's already been confirmed that other types of loot have cooldowns on your chances to drop them, like those motifs from reward containers, I didn't want to make my grind any more tedious than it already was.

I just want to say thank you! I’m not sure if this is exactly how RNG in ESO works, but something about your post rings true!

I was able to obtain my final ten monster trophies using your method! I even obtained 6 trophies all in one gaming session without logging out after I got 1 drop. And after 6-7 years of grinding them on and off I am finally done!

So with all my heart, THANK YOU!

big_ear_midget

They need to bring in a Luck potion that increases your RNG chances. Every other Elder Scrolls game has had Luck potions. Luck potions affected your chances of lockpicking, crafting potions and spells, selling items to merchants for more gold, talking to people, all sorts of things.

colossalvoids

Would be delightful

Soul_Soliloquy

Increased drop rate with these would be nice, years of play & still only have the Dwarven one complete

Rezdayn

elven.were_wolf wrote: »

I have done Master Angler before there was the Luxury of the Pickled Fish Arteaum Dish or the New Champion Point Star that increases fish drop rate, and fishing has became a much faster and less painful endeavor than it has been a couple of years ago. However, fishing has never and will never be the pain that is Monster Trophy Farming. So would ZOS consider giving a hand with Monster Trophies just like they did with fishing? Pretty please with sprinkles on top?

I agree.

Played since beta. Have mostly finished the game. Every dye. MINUS most of these "common" collectable dyes... Its beyond a joke...

LadyLethalla

After 4+ years of normal play on console I decided that I wanted to finally chase those achievements. Managed to finish I think it was all but two, the Undead one and the Atros, but probably three, I think I could never get the strangler one to drop.
Now I'm on PC and... atm I cannot be bothered trying to farm those things yet again. Even the Dwarven one, with a whole two items (the first one I finished on console) is still incomplete on PC.

Gylzyn

There are multiple frustrating grinds in the game and this is one of them. I have been doing Trophies over the past few months to complete achievements and some of them stubbornly won't drop (looking at the Wamasu especially). A food buff would be nice. Or perhaps when we have an Explorers Weekend Event it could include an increased drop rate for Trophies. This is also an issue that would cause me to vote in favour of some achievements being account wide.

redlink1979

Gylzyn wrote: »

(...) I have been doing Trophies over the past few months to complete achievements and some of them stubbornly won't drop (...)

I've been playing for years, some never ever dropped on same char or alts despite of the thousands of kills.
So, I just stopped caring about this monster related achievements: it's a waste of time.

lillybit

I spent a couple of weeks earlier this year grinding out the many I hadn't picked up since I started playing at console release. I'm sure it's just perception bias but now I have them all the drop rate seems much higher!

It's pretty ridiculous that they have these sort of achievements, based on things so rare that they can't be completed with years of regular play without a stupid grind

16BitForestCat

elven.were_wolf wrote: »

I just want to say thank you! I’m not sure if this is exactly how RNG in ESO works, but something about your post rings true!

I was able to obtain my final ten monster trophies using your method! I even obtained 6 trophies all in one gaming session without logging out after I got 1 drop. And after 6-7 years of grinding them on and off I am finally done!

So with all my heart, THANK YOU!

Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh! You've no idea how happy it makes me that it was helpful for you! I'll pass your post along to the friendo who taught me. That years-long workout was so tedious and awful, I wanted to spare as many people as possible from pointless grinding on the wrong loot table. I know most people will ignore or scoff at these posts, but just helping one person is a good thing in my book.

Troodon80

Food, potion, or new green CP would be ideal for this. Could even be an increase chance to get good loot or gold along with the chance to get trophies. After five years of playing and plenty of time dedicated to this, I got my last trophy last year. The last one I needed was the ice atronach. I spent three months on and off, sometimes spending hours in Willowgrove. Even trying the method of killing stuff for an hour or so and then logging out for a different loot table (it's not the first time this has been referenced), changing zones/instances for similar reasons, etc. Nothing. That was three months of hardcore grinding to get that one trophy. I know others who had similar trouble, trying the same or similar things, with both the Crypt Jar and Stony Heart.

Lheymar3

I am trying to get the last one I need: "Huge mammoth tooth". I kill tons of mammoths, none of them drops the tooth.

Now, ok, sometimes you have to be patient. In this case, it's veeeeeery frustrating to me, because I also needed 2 other master trophies. I had to kill these monsters for about 3 to 4 hours and I got it.
The huge mammoth tooth is still not dropping - and that is exactly what I criticize. We all know that some drops were bugged in the last time (or even in the past few years). Now, If somebody like me comes and gets other missing things in a couple of hours while another one does not drop after some days of looting, this is simply not right.

ZOS should either really have a look on drop rates - and if they notice that a certain thing is not dropped over a certain threshold limit, they should correct it. Or they should players give a simple and easy way to get in contact with them in order to check if the drop of a certain item is bugged.

Under the line: I try to be patient - but if there is only 1-3 items missing, I want to get them in an acceptable amount of time. If this does not happen, I get frustrated.

AND ZOS: As you announced, you are willing to listen more to players. This would be a good point to prove that you're really trying on this and not just talking. Get on your feet, take this serious and work on it.