Ancient Sandstone - lack of new sources

Northwold

neverwalk wrote: »

use crown mimic stones

You can't in furnishings. Edit: and, yes, you could craft gear and deconstruct but given that you're not guaranteed to get a style material back that just sounds like a good way for ZOS to make a mint selling crown mimic stones that get immediately pulverised.

Arunei

neverwalk wrote: »

use crown mimic stones

Afaik you can't use the Mimic Stones for crafting furniture, only for crafting actual gear in whatever particular Style you want.

However, you CAN use the Mimic Stones to make pieces in Ra Gada and then decon them to try and get actual Ancient Sandstone (or any other Style mat for that matter, as long as you know at least one chapter of that Motif).

gary.mcleodeb17_ESO

Crag treasure chests were in the general, ignored by Nirn harvesters, I happily used them to help level up legerdemain, and crafting levelling by deconstruction of looted stuff. I (as did many others probably) ignored the build up of ancient sandstone in my crafting bag, until last week, when I noted Arttea highlighting in one of her superb videos, just how valuable they'd become. I tested the water, listed at the lower end of TTC suggested price, sold a stack within minutes. One of the great benefits of ESO plus crafting bag, things go in, and you forget about them until you learn those stacks of stuff are now very sellable.

Marcusorion1

Despite there being a supply of ancient sandstone in players' craft bags from earlier adventures in Craglorn it does not address the concern I have raised for this thread : the introduction of new furniture " recipes " as a reward did not include any new way to acquire them.

As one can see from previous posts here, not everyone is even sure of where those previous Ancient Sandstones specifically came from. Although they do have a chance from treasure chest in Craglorn it appears to be from intermediate and up and it is not guaranteed, nor are they a "sure thing " from various bosses in the area. Considering Treasure chests are shared across the shard and are only a possible source they are not an adequate source at all.

Considering the amounts required to build a single item ( 6-16 ) farming these is beyond tedious and simply results in the value of the new items' recipes falling quicker than ever before.

Historically new furniture recipes as possible daily rewards always comes with their individualistic material source also coming with the reward. In fact on more than one occasion, due to player requests the amount received has been increased ( Summerset is an example but also Markarth comes to mind ).

Why the change in " tradition " ?

Was this a deliberate move by ZOS to push housing editor purchases ( crowns ) ? I sincerely hope not.

Perhaps just an oversight ? let us hope so , one that can be rectified very easily in the immediate future please.

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno

Marcusorion1

While we wait - hopefully - for some kind of answer from the powers-that-be, do any of the trials in Craglorn drop armour that may have a chance to provide the mat on decon ?

Side note, I see the price of the mat is climbing steadily and rapidly in the market place, if farming it is too slow the current stockpiles may be depleted rather quickly.

kringled_1

Marcusorion1 wrote: »

While we wait - hopefully - for some kind of answer from the powers-that-be, do any of the trials in Craglorn drop armour that may have a chance to provide the mat on decon ?

Side note, I see the price of the mat is climbing steadily and rapidly in the market place, if farming it is too slow the current stockpiles may be depleted rather quickly.

I thought so initially but no. The gear in Crag trials is either Celestial style or Yokudan.
Crag trial treasure chests might drop it; that's the only thing I can think of that explains how much I have (I've run quite a lot of Crag trials but I don't go to Crag overland often).

katanagirl1

You should get a guaranteed style mat for the zone when you do the dailies but they seem to be removing that now.

No one wants to do Blackwood dailies for one stinking Black Fin gear drop. Geez.

Pyr0xyrecuprotite

In my opinion, this is part of a ZOS strategy to try spread players out between different zones. More dispersion across zones means better performance. Events where a lot of players need to cluster up in just a few zones (e.g. Murkmire event) tend to cause a lot of lag and problems in those zones. So, making a style mat which drops in Craglorn valuable again means that there will be a few more people farming in Craglorn - instead of on the starter islands, or Deadlands etc.

aaisoaho

Every chest I've looted in veteran version of Craglorn trials has so far contained an ancient sandstone. Only started to pay attention to it after I found out how much people are willing to pay for them in gold. I cannot comment on the droprate of ancient sandstone in normal version, because haven't been in normal craglorn trials in a while.

TiaFrye

neverwalk wrote: »

use crown mimic stones

you can't use mimic in furniture crafting

ectoplasmicninja

neverwalk wrote: »

use crown mimic stones

I actually did this yesterday - made a bunch of Ivory Brigade stuff, deconned for the clasps, sold a stack. A good use for them, like the secondary use of crystals to transmute to nirnhoned and decon for nirncrux.

kringled_1

Syvarra's scales, one of the 2 sets from Hew's bane, appears to be in Ra Gada but that's the only one I can find.

Wolf_Eye

Pyr0xyrecuprotite wrote: »

In my opinion, this is part of a ZOS strategy to try spread players out between different zones. More dispersion across zones means better performance. Events where a lot of players need to cluster up in just a few zones (e.g. Murkmire event) tend to cause a lot of lag and problems in those zones. So, making a style mat which drops in Craglorn valuable again means that there will be a few more people farming in Craglorn - instead of on the starter islands, or Deadlands etc.

I would agree, except Craglorn was already a popular place to farm (because of Nirn), and also already a popular place to hang out, since that was where most groups would go to pick up trial runs (as well as Skyreach runs).

I think it's more likely that this is their way of keeping older style stones "relevant". Sandstone was one of the cheapest style mats (that wasn't one of the basic racial motifs). By adding another reason to farm it, they make it more valuable now. Encouraging people to use their stock that's otherwise sitting in a craft bag gathering dust. It's similar to how they sometimes re-vamp old gear sets that very few people use in hopes of making them more popular.

Vylaera

because there's a surplus of them. Craglorn has been in the game since 2014. There's hundreds of thousands of them sitting idle in craft bags, and getting new ones isn't that difficult. You get one guaranteed from the chest in Skyreach, and you also get a few set pieces each time you run it as well, which is about 3 ancient sandstone on average for a 4 minute walkaround farming exp. If you, for whatever reason, can't run skyreach, try harder. Anyone can do it and I can do the entire exp loop, enter load screen to exit load screen, in 4 minutes flat. I've got 400 ancient sandstone listed in stacks of 25 on my guild trader in Shimmerene.

Marcusorion1

There is a vast surplus of many materials sitting idle in craft bags - that is neither here nor there for the purpose of this thread which is why not include the specific material in the zone that requires it for crafting the item.

Being able to run Skyreach or not ( I can ) really should not be the issue for sourcing a material for a Deadlands/Fargrave furnishing material. "Try harder" is not a statement that helps the explanation - how any player decides to play the game is up to them. Glad you have some stashed, I would hazard a guess that you are selling yours above the average price ?

As noted above Craglorn is hardly in a need to have more players drawn to it - in fact , outside of events or new content the Deadlands world bosses and the Amolation areas are quite empty the rest of the time. Often the final boss at Amolation has no players waiting for a spawn and drives solo players away from attempting it - seems like a very good place to include ancient sandstone in the reward chest there !

Kiralyn2000

Hmm, I need to look in my craft bag. I'd bet I have very little Ancient Sandstone, given that I've rarely done anything in Craglorn since I started in 2016. Being an entirely solo player, who never did trials or 'farmed xp' in Skyreach. (or anywhere else. "Farming XP" is boring.)

Random ones from Anniversary boxes, might be the only real source.

BroughBreaux wrote: »

I've got 400 ancient sandstone...

Which, at 6-16 per craft, isn't a whole lot.

SidraWillowsky

Marcusorion1 wrote: »

There is a vast surplus of many materials sitting idle in craft bags - that is neither here nor there for the purpose of this thread which is why not include the specific material in the zone that requires it for crafting the item.

Being able to run Skyreach or not ( I can ) really should not be the issue for sourcing a material for a Deadlands/Fargrave furnishing material. "Try harder" is not a statement that helps the explanation - how any player decides to play the game is up to them. Glad you have some stashed, I would hazard a guess that you are selling yours above the average price ?

As noted above Craglorn is hardly in a need to have more players drawn to it - in fact , outside of events or new content the Deadlands world bosses and the Amolation areas are quite empty the rest of the time. Often the final boss at Amolation has no players waiting for a spawn and drives solo players away from attempting it - seems like a very good place to include ancient sandstone in the reward chest there !

Yeah, I get what you're saying now. The price of sandstone is skyrocketing.

I tried running Skyreach. No sandstone.

Syvarra's Scales is, unfortunately, Thieves Guild style.

I've been farming chests in Crag and I seem to get a sandstone every 3 chests or so and got about 7 in half an hour. That was during off-peak hours, though, so I'll get steamrolled by the expert Crag farmers if I try for a busy time. On top of that, as more and more people figure out that chests are the easiest source of it, I predict that Crag will be overridden with chest farmers.

I went into a delve but lost the motivation to make it to the end and deal with the boss.

Even if there's a guaranteed sandstone drop from bosses and rifts, that still gives you ONE. The Fargrave bridge takes 16, and I see most of the other Fargrave structural items take 12. So you're looking at at least 12 bosses just to make ONE piece, and it doesn't sound like it's even a guaranteed drop!

Culanda lacquer is the only other style mat that I know of that's as difficult to acquire because it's *only* obtainable from a few sources. And the Alinor plans seem to account for that-- they take at most 2 lacquers... so the requirements for the Fargrave stuff seem pretty absurd in comparison.

I like your idea of having it drop from sources in the Deadlands. They're pretty, well... dead, as of right now.

Wolfkeks

They def have to tweak the drop chances a bit, I know they drop from treasure chests inside the zone and from the trials.

Or they can add more materials that are being used for housing to the writs or other dailies.

kringled_1

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

Marcusorion1 wrote: »

There is a vast surplus of many materials sitting idle in craft bags - that is neither here nor there for the purpose of this thread which is why not include the specific material in the zone that requires it for crafting the item.

Being able to run Skyreach or not ( I can ) really should not be the issue for sourcing a material for a Deadlands/Fargrave furnishing material. "Try harder" is not a statement that helps the explanation - how any player decides to play the game is up to them. Glad you have some stashed, I would hazard a guess that you are selling yours above the average price ?

As noted above Craglorn is hardly in a need to have more players drawn to it - in fact , outside of events or new content the Deadlands world bosses and the Amolation areas are quite empty the rest of the time. Often the final boss at Amolation has no players waiting for a spawn and drives solo players away from attempting it - seems like a very good place to include ancient sandstone in the reward chest there !

Yeah, I get what you're saying now. The price of sandstone is skyrocketing.

I tried running Skyreach. No sandstone.

Syvarra's Scales is, unfortunately, Thieves Guild style.

I've been farming chests in Crag and I seem to get a sandstone every 3 chests or so and got about 7 in half an hour. That was during off-peak hours, though, so I'll get steamrolled by the expert Crag farmers if I try for a busy time. On top of that, as more and more people figure out that chests are the easiest source of it, I predict that Crag will be overridden with chest farmers.

I'm now confused about Syvarra's Scales. I looked at online sources the other day and saw Thieves guild. But I happened to be looking in the set collection this morning (in game) and it's listed as Ra Gada there. It would be odd to drop in one style and reconstruct in another, and now I'm curious if it's different if it comes from a heist coffer vs a regular drop.
My experience with overland Craglorn chests today (grabbed a few while picking up surveys) was similar or worse than yours, so I'm now certain my collection came from Craglorn trial chests.

Dagoth_Rac

There are a bunch of Craglorn daily quests. They could add Ancient Sandstone as a guaranteed drop from Craglorn dailies.

Arunei

BroughBreaux wrote: »

because there's a surplus of them. Craglorn has been in the game since 2014. There's hundreds of thousands of them sitting idle in craft bags, and getting new ones isn't that difficult. You get one guaranteed from the chest in Skyreach, and you also get a few set pieces each time you run it as well, which is about 3 ancient sandstone on average for a 4 minute walkaround farming exp. If you, for whatever reason, can't run skyreach, try harder. Anyone can do it and I can do the entire exp loop, enter load screen to exit load screen, in 4 minutes flat. I've got 400 ancient sandstone listed in stacks of 25 on my guild trader in Shimmerene.

If you can run Skyreach, that's great for you, but this mindset of "I can do it so anyone else should be able to" really needs to be done away with. What you can do and what you're capable of farming is NOT the baseline for what everyone else in the game can do.

I can also guarantee a lot of people, even those who are capable of farming there, can't do it in only four minutes. I've run numerous friends through there as they level characters and it's never been that fast, especially considering the several waves of enemies that spawn when you interact with the chest. That alone takes several minutes just because no matter how fast you kill the mobs, you still have to wait several seconds for each wave to fully spawn in.

KMarble

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

Culanda lacquer is the only other style mat that I know of that's as difficult to acquire because it's *only* obtainable from a few sources. And the Alinor plans seem to account for that-- they take at most 2 lacquers... so the requirements for the Fargrave stuff seem pretty absurd in comparison.

Culanda isn't the only other one. The style mat for Reachmen furniture (Fryse Willow) only drops from a group dungeon - Icereach.

FluffWit

Me and a couple other 7 year vets checked our craft bags last night, we all had less then 100. Unless you're a Craglorn farmer or a Skyreach grinder you just don't end up with much.

If nothing else simply drop the mat requirements to 1 for greens and blues and 2 for purples and gold- the base line that was set for style mats on dlc furnishings with Summerset.

An easy solution that will keep the mat at a reasonible price.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

aaisoaho wrote: »

Every chest I've looted in veteran version of Craglorn trials has so far contained an ancient sandstone. Only started to pay attention to it after I found out how much people are willing to pay for them in gold. I cannot comment on the droprate of ancient sandstone in normal version, because haven't been in normal craglorn trials in a while.

Ran normal Hel Ra earlier today, got a Sandstone from one of the chests there. I didn’t pay special attention to what I was getting so I don’t know if it dropped for every chest or not.

Beilin_Balreis_Colcan

After reading this thread, I recalled that last week I completed the Buried Sands delve in Craglorn, and got some ancient sandstone from the delve boss. So I went in there again this week, killed the boss again, and got some more of the same.

Marcusorion1

Craglorn delve bosses certainly have a chance to drop ancient sandstone, but it's just a chance and it is only 1. Furnishings can require from 6 ( green ) to 16 ( purple ) per item made. These are structural items - a player will normally want to construct several of any particular piece with which to build anything. 4 walls and a floor = 60 ancient sandstone, add a colonnade hall, another 16; happy farming?

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno

Kiralyn2000

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Hmm, I need to look in my craft bag. I'd bet I have very little Ancient Sandstone, given that I've rarely done anything in Craglorn since I started in 2016. Being an entirely solo player, who never did trials or 'farmed xp' in Skyreach. (or anywhere else. "Farming XP" is boring.).

Oh, good. I've got 33.

SidraWillowsky

.

alberichtano

neverwalk wrote: »

use crown mimic stones

don't think you can do that for furniture though.

Vylaera

Arunei wrote: »

BroughBreaux wrote: »

because there's a surplus of them. Craglorn has been in the game since 2014. There's hundreds of thousands of them sitting idle in craft bags, and getting new ones isn't that difficult. You get one guaranteed from the chest in Skyreach, and you also get a few set pieces each time you run it as well, which is about 3 ancient sandstone on average for a 4 minute walkaround farming exp. If you, for whatever reason, can't run skyreach, try harder. Anyone can do it and I can do the entire exp loop, enter load screen to exit load screen, in 4 minutes flat. I've got 400 ancient sandstone listed in stacks of 25 on my guild trader in Shimmerene.

If you can run Skyreach, that's great for you, but this mindset of "I can do it so anyone else should be able to" really needs to be done away with. What you can do and what you're capable of farming is NOT the baseline for what everyone else in the game can do.

I can also guarantee a lot of people, even those who are capable of farming there, can't do it in only four minutes. I've run numerous friends through there as they level characters and it's never been that fast, especially considering the several waves of enemies that spawn when you interact with the chest. That alone takes several minutes just because no matter how fast you kill the mobs, you still have to wait several seconds for each wave to fully spawn in.

"I can do it so everyone else should be able to" is not what I was saying. I was saying anyone can do it (factually true) and then gave examples of my speed, which I am aware is much faster than most people can run it, which is why I put my speed in my "wts" advertisement when selling runs in crag, because it justifies my rate of 10k per run.

I shouldn't reveal trade secrets because it's my main business, but all you need is a Ring of the Pale Order, Plaguebreak, and a direct damage AOE. I do the chest start to finish in 1 minute and 20 seconds average and I also pull and kill the Cursed Orator and his purple ghosts you sneak past to get to the chest, while doing the chest.

Proof video + build link in description: https://youtu.be/DVD3kI5Q1Dg

So as long as you have greymoor and can buy set pieces of plaguebreak on guild traders, then you can do skyreach xp runs. I've soloed skyreach at level 8 (with CP slotted). It took a while longer obviously, but I did it.

But anyway, sandstone is guaranteed as a drop from the chest and you get multiple Ra Gada style set pieces each run usually and can decon and usually get another sandstone. The Green CP tree has a star which increases odds for extracting mats from decon, plus there's skill tree passives for each of the professions, so it's rare if you don't get the style mat from a decon.

It's also worth noting that the price per sandstone has dropped like 2k in less than a week after it shot up when the patch went live. There's like 15 pages of them on TTC PC NA all sub-2k gold each, so I'd expect that to keep dropping lower as more people list the stacks they have in their craft bags trying to undercut the average price for quick sales.