Request for change - Alchemy daily writ Essence of Stamina with Mudcrab Chitin

katanagirl1

I know this has been a long-standing consumable crafting daily writ, but unlike the others you do not receive any Mudcrab Chitin in the rewards boxes from doing any of the alchemy daily crafting writs to offset the loss of mats for doing this one.

The only other hard to find mat used in these writs is Violet Coprinus, and you do sometimes get that from the rewards box. Same for Scrib Jelly, it’s more rare but you get some as rewards as well. Other mats are easy to find ones like Lorkhan’s Tears, Alkahest, Imp Stool, or Blessed Thistle and they are also included in the rewards boxes.

I request that this daily alchemy writ for Essence of Stamina to have some other item required for the 3/3 turn in, or have Mudcrab Chitin added to the reward boxes.

I have depleted a multiple year’s worth craftbag contents just doing these dailies and that is not right. If I am going to continue doing this particular daily writ I have to check each character while doing dailies to make sure I have enough and won’t run out in the middle of doing dailies, which takes a little more time as well, and take time each week to specifically farm this one ingredient. I have just decided to sell my current Essence of Stamina potions and abandon this daily writ when it comes up because it is not worth it.

Please bring this daily writ into line with the other ones in terms of effort and rewards.

@ZOS_Kevin can you please bring this to the attention of the appropriate people? Thanks in advance.

XSTRONG

I just go kill some mudcrabs for 10 mins or buy them from trader if they run out for my daily writs.

katanagirl1

XSTRONG wrote: »

I just go kill some mudcrabs for 10 mins or buy them from trader if they run out for my daily writs.

Thanks but I do daily writs on multiple characters so it takes much longer to farm enough mats. I do not wish to buy them either due to the cost.

This post is to show how far out of line this particular daily writ is compared to the others and request a change.

kringled_1

I just stopped doing this particular daily. On PC/NA, mudcrab chitin is now the 5th most expensive alchemy reagent, only behind dragon's blood&rheum, powdered mother of pearl, and columbine. Note that all of those are ingredients for potions that people value highly for high end content, whereas chitin (and coprinus) are really only useful for master writs and daily writs. The time and expense of shopping for chitin has risen above the value I can get from doing this daily, so I don't do the alchemy daily when it's this one.

JARTHEGREY

It's never been a big problem for me, and I have multiple characters. Every time I come cross a crab I kill it - don't always get chitin but most of the time it's enough to keep me 'topped up'.

It's just a question of planning and priorities I guess.

Haenk

Honestly, if you do the writs for lots of money, mats and exp, you can't be bothered to spend a couple of minutes doing crab killing once in a while?

kringled_1

It's not a couple of minutes once in a while. As with Jarthegrey, I kill almost every mudcrab I come across. But just to keep up, I'd need to bring in 6-9 chitin every single day. That's more like taking 10-20 minutes every day just to farm chitin. If that's a small fraction of your in game time per day, go for it. If you spend a lot of time in overland areas with mudcrabs, maybe it will work out naturally, but there's a lot of things to do in the game that will not give many opportunities to kill mudcrabs in passing.
Daily writs bring in decent gold and mats, but not that much xp. At the current cost for chitin, though, while I can afford to buy it on traders easily, I think the outcome becomes negative value for me (i.e. The writ rewards in mats and gold, on average, are less than the mats going in).

katanagirl1

Again, the fact that there is only one ingredient required in a simple daily crafting writ that is not given back in the rewards crate is the problem. It is not an easy ingredient to get like Lorkhan’s Tears that you can find it in just about any container in the world or a plant that you can find anywhere in the world. You have to go to a beach and spend a considerable time doing nothing but farming mudcrabs, and the drop rate for chitin in not great.

I have no idea just how much mudcrab chitin I blew through on these daily crafting writs without realizing it, hundreds, maybe thousands saved up before I started doing alchemy writs on all my toons. I had the craftbag for 6-7 years but only did equipment writs for most of the time. I only noticed when I completely ran out of them and saw that you never get mudcrab chitin back when easy to acquire mats like bugloss are given back. It’s not consistent.

tomfant

I support OP's request to add Mudcrab Chitin to the list of rewards from the writ crates. Those cute animals deserve a peaceful life. It's a shame to be forced to massmurder them.

Dr_Con

there's no reason not to implement this.

Salix_alba

Ok I'm confused Mudcrab chitin while rare is not a requirement in daily alchemy crafting writs
for my toons lvl 10-50 with solvent proficiency 1 for most & 8 on my main crafter

so are you actually referring to master writs rewarded from daily writs? because those are supposed to be harder to source the materials for

mudcrab chitin has the 4 following effects
1 increase spell resist
2 increase armor
3 protection
4 defile

the only 5 potions that I come across with 18 toons doing daily alchemy writs are the different levels of these potions
and some ingredient suggestions that don't use the violet coprinus or mudcrab chitin
sip - essence of magica (bugloss & lady's smock)
sip - essence of health (blue entoloma & mountain flower)
sip - essence of stamina (mountain flower & dragonthorn)
sip - essence of ravage stamina (any 2 of emetic russula, stinkhorn, imp stool, fleshfly larva & luminous russula)
sip - essence of ravage health (nirnroot & nightshade)

tip 1 make these potions with a crafter that can produce 4 at a time make them in stacks bank them and get them from the bank with your other toons for their writs as you need them
tip 2 most if not all of these ingredients (not counting fleshfly larvae) spawn from alchemy surveys.

katanagirl1

No, it is the daily crafting writ at max level, Alchemy 50 and solvent proficiency at max.

EDIT:
@Salix_alba

Got this from benevolentbowd’s site:

Writ Group VIII

(Solvent Proficiency 8 – Lorkhan’s Tears)

Drain Health Poison IX (1), Lorkhan’s Tears (3)
(Blue Entoloma, Bugloss, Butterfly Wings, Columbine [PC-NA][PC-EU], Crimson Nirnroot, Luminous Russula, Mountain Flower[PC-NA][PC-EU], Water Hyacinth)
Damage Stamina Poison IX (1), Spider Egg (3)
(Emetic Russula, Fleshfly Larva, Imp Stool, Luminous Russula, Stinkhorn)
Essence of Stamina (1), Mudcrab Chitin (3)
(Blessed Thistle [PC-NA][PC-EU], Columbine [PC-NA][PC-EU], Dragonthorn [PC-NA][PC-EU], Mountain Flower[PC-NA][PC-EU])
Essence of Magicka (1), Imp Stool (3)
(Bugloss, Columbine [PC-NA][PC-EU], Corn Flower, Lady’s Smock)
Essence Health (1), Nirnroot (3)
(Blue Entoloma, Bugloss, Butterfly Wings, Columbine [PC-NA][PC-EU], Luminous Russula, Mountain Flower[PC-NA][PC-EU], Water Hyacinth)
Damage Magicka Poison IX (1), Violet Coprinus (3)
(Blue Entoloma, Emetic Russula, Scrib Jelly, White Cap, Voilet Coprinus*)
Damage Health Poison IX (1), Nightshade (3)
(Blessed Thistle [PC-NA][PC-EU], Corn Flower, Emetic Russula, Stinkhorn, Violet Coprinus*, Nightshade*, Nirnroot*)
Essence of Ravage Health (1), Alkahest (3)
(Blessed Thistle [PC-NA][PC-EU], Corn Flower, Emetic Russula, Nightshade*, Nirnroot*, Stinkhorn, Violent Coprinus*)

Salix_alba

Ok my bad so you meant the loose item requirement along with the potion.

Well like I said I do these writs on 18 toons some max and have no problems running out of any mats
try running I think its fungal grotto 1 there are tons of mudcrabs in there or just run a costal zone a few times
I don't even do that with any intention and still have around 650 of them just passively collected over time.

Another thing that might help, you should only need 1 max alchemist toon all your other lvl 50 toons can be lower level in alchemy. The max amount of gold you get from the writ (5,075 for all 7 writs in 1 day) is based on the toons overall level not the alchemy level and all levels of proficiency get surveys and alchemy master writs. so if you are running writ group 8 on 1 toon and writ group 1 on all others you won't run out of mudcrab chitin as fast and still get all the same overall rewards just different water and really lorkhans tears are easy to get

tip for others 18 champ level toons doing all 7 crafting writs make 91,350 in gold a day that can buy any mat you need in bulk
that isn't even counting gold from selling mats from surveys

Aislinna

katanagirl1 wrote: »

No, it is the daily crafting writ at max level, Alchemy 50 and solvent proficiency at max.

If you don't want to deal with Mudcrab Chiten and are only doing writs on a given character and not crafting alchemy for use/selling, consider changing the Solvent Proficiency to 6 or 7 instead of level 8. The inspiration reward is the same and the gold reward is based on character level, not Solvent Porficiency.

BenevolentBowd

katanagirl1 wrote: »

No, it is the daily crafting writ at max level, Alchemy 50 and solvent proficiency at max.

EDIT:
@Salix_alba

Got this from benevolentbowd’s site:

Writ Group VIII

(Solvent Proficiency 8 – Lorkhan’s Tears)

Drain Health Poison IX (1), Lorkhan’s Tears (3)
(Blue Entoloma, Bugloss, Butterfly Wings, Columbine [PC-NA][PC-EU], Crimson Nirnroot, Luminous Russula, Mountain Flower[PC-NA][PC-EU], Water Hyacinth)
Damage Stamina Poison IX (1), Spider Egg (3)
(Emetic Russula, Fleshfly Larva, Imp Stool, Luminous Russula, Stinkhorn)
Essence of Stamina (1), Mudcrab Chitin (3)
(Blessed Thistle [PC-NA][PC-EU], Columbine [PC-NA][PC-EU], Dragonthorn [PC-NA][PC-EU], Mountain Flower[PC-NA][PC-EU])
Essence of Magicka (1), Imp Stool (3)
(Bugloss, Columbine [PC-NA][PC-EU], Corn Flower, Lady’s Smock)
Essence Health (1), Nirnroot (3)
(Blue Entoloma, Bugloss, Butterfly Wings, Columbine [PC-NA][PC-EU], Luminous Russula, Mountain Flower[PC-NA][PC-EU], Water Hyacinth)
Damage Magicka Poison IX (1), Violet Coprinus (3)
(Blue Entoloma, Emetic Russula, Scrib Jelly, White Cap, Voilet Coprinus*)
Damage Health Poison IX (1), Nightshade (3)
(Blessed Thistle [PC-NA][PC-EU], Corn Flower, Emetic Russula, Stinkhorn, Violet Coprinus*, Nightshade*, Nirnroot*)
Essence of Ravage Health (1), Alkahest (3)
(Blessed Thistle [PC-NA][PC-EU], Corn Flower, Emetic Russula, Nightshade*, Nirnroot*, Stinkhorn, Violent Coprinus*)

I LOVE THAT SITE!™

BenevolentBowd

It is possible they may change this writ. There was a similar situation in the past with Nirnroot and when they made the updates with One Tamriel, they adjusted the writs requested.

I used to run into this problem a lot doing so many crafting writs per day.

My lazy solution was to use some of that crazy gold I was making from writs to buy a stack every now and then. However, this was done with some trepidation because bots were known to farm this stuff.

One the things I do now to restock my chitin is to hunt down mudcrabs when we have those daily and weekly endeavors to kill X number of creatures with class or weapon skill lines.

kringled_1

Lowering a character's alchemy level would in principle address the situation, but definitely also has drawbacks. It has a one time cost for doing the respec, and an ongoing cost of giving up the chance for master writs. For my own play style, I put points into alchemy on all my characters because I wanted them to be able to make potions quickly for their own use, and not have to swap around if running low on potions before a trial. I think the balance for me is that I'm still better off keeping my characters at max alchemy, and just skipping this one daily out of the 8.

katanagirl1

kringled_1 wrote: »

Lowering a character's alchemy level would in principle address the situation, but definitely also has drawbacks. It has a one time cost for doing the respec, and an ongoing cost of giving up the chance for master writs. For my own play style, I put points into alchemy on all my characters because I wanted them to be able to make potions quickly for their own use, and not have to swap around if running low on potions before a trial. I think the balance for me is that I'm still better off keeping my characters at max alchemy, and just skipping this one daily out of the 8.

Yeah, I want the increased chance for alchemy master writs and be able to do potions at max level as well. Can’t really be a grand master crafter with low level alchemy.

katanagirl1

BenevolentBowd wrote: »

It is possible they may change this writ. There was a similar situation in the past with Nirnroot and when they made the updates with One Tamriel, they adjusted the writs requested.

I used to run into this problem a lot doing so many crafting writs per day.

My lazy solution was to use some of that crazy gold I was making from writs to buy a stack every now and then. However, this was done with some trepidation because bots were known to farm this stuff.

One the things I do now to restock my chitin is to hunt down mudcrabs when we have those daily and weekly endeavors to kill X number of creatures with class or weapon skill lines.

Yeah that guy is awesome! Lol

I’m still using gold to buy motif pages and furnishing plans for housing so I don’t want to buy something that I could just farm myself if it didn’t take so much time. I guess I could see farming it for a master writ because there is a greater return but it’s a monetary loss for a daily writ.

XSTRONG

If you count all the gold mats, Mother of Pearl, frost mirriam, berves juice etc etc that you dont need to use when doing daily writs but you still get them i dont think mudcrab is a pain to either farm or buy.

But if they think its important enough to change it im not arguing.

redlink1979

If I have time/patience I just run around the beaches of Beatnik/Summerset/Southern Elsweyr for a while.
If I'm not in the mood, I just go to a trader.

But the change to this alchemy writ tier would be very welcomed.

pelle412

I say leave it as is and allow players who enjoy farming mudcrabs to make a good profit. The same could be said about platinum ounces. Doing max tier JC writs on 18 characters you have to constantly farm or just buy it. The market is driven by supply vs demand.

deejayvee

Another option would be to increase the drop-rate of chitin when you kill crabs. I ran out yesterday so I did some farming today and I got lots of other junk including weapons and armour (where does the crab keep those?) but the drop-rate for chitin was fairly low. Increasing the drop rate would make farming a bit easier and this would drop the price a bit for those that still don't want to farm.

katanagirl1

pelle412 wrote: »

I say leave it as is and allow players who enjoy farming mudcrabs to make a good profit. The same could be said about platinum ounces. Doing max tier JC writs on 18 characters you have to constantly farm or just buy it. The market is driven by supply vs demand.

I kept wondering to myself why anyone would argue against this change and came to the same realization myself - just like the argument against increasing mundane rune drop rate - only the people farming it would be against it. Honestly, I don’t know how you could farm either and make a good profit unless you had an army of bots.

XSTRONG

katanagirl1 wrote: »

pelle412 wrote: »

I say leave it as is and allow players who enjoy farming mudcrabs to make a good profit. The same could be said about platinum ounces. Doing max tier JC writs on 18 characters you have to constantly farm or just buy it. The market is driven by supply vs demand.

I kept wondering to myself why anyone would argue against this change and came to the same realization myself - just like the argument against increasing mundane rune drop rate - only the people farming it would be against it. Honestly, I don’t know how you could farm either and make a good profit unless you had an army of bots.

I would like them to up the drop rate for crafting mats or make a mythic/set that gives you extra loot when farming mats.

Believe it or not but there are real players still farming mats.

Biggest problem is players like you want it for free lol

tincanman

Half hour round most shorelines gets enough mudcrub chitin for a few weeks/months. A fair bit of leather and decorative wax drop from them, too. And the usual decon/merc trash.

but usually just nuking mudcrabs in passing generates more than enough chitin.

Don't really see it as a problem. Nothing like when nirnroot was the only mat and every water edge was strip-mined....

SpiritKitten

I only make the mudcrab and other potions on my master crafter, and then auto-pull them from the bank for all my characters using an addon for my daily writs. I rarely run out, but I have gotten into the habit of killing every mudcrab I see.

phaneub17_ESO

Remember when Daily crafting quests required 3 of every item for smithing, clothing, or woodworking. They eventually brought them all down to 1 of each. Reducing the secondary requirements for Alchemy from 3 to 2 or even 1 is an acceptable change. I won't say to remove them outright, but getting down at least 1 less is a great saver in the long run.

katanagirl1

XSTRONG wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

pelle412 wrote: »

I say leave it as is and allow players who enjoy farming mudcrabs to make a good profit. The same could be said about platinum ounces. Doing max tier JC writs on 18 characters you have to constantly farm or just buy it. The market is driven by supply vs demand.

I kept wondering to myself why anyone would argue against this change and came to the same realization myself - just like the argument against increasing mundane rune drop rate - only the people farming it would be against it. Honestly, I don’t know how you could farm either and make a good profit unless you had an army of bots.

I would like them to up the drop rate for crafting mats or make a mythic/set that gives you extra loot when farming mats.

Believe it or not but there are real players still farming mats.

Biggest problem is players like you want it for free lol

I am not getting them for free if I turn in 3 and get some back occasionally in the reward box, just like I do with all the other daily crafting mats.

HedgeHugger

The drop rate of chitin is also questionable. Not sure what it is but you don't get chitin more than you do! I could kill 10 crabs and get no chitin, or 1 , or 8. I wouldn't get 10, that's for sure, but I guess with RNG, that scenario is possible too.

With plants, even if it's only one, you are guaranteed the alchemy ingredient. Pick 10 plants, get at least 10 of the ingredient.

I too kill every crab that crosses my path, as well as chasing down a few on occasion.

I_killed_Vivec

Interesting you bring this up. I used to have the same issue, I'd run out of chitin so quickly I'd have to buy it from traders, and it is expensive!

However, I have to say that I haven't had a problem for a while recently, and I'm not sure why. I currently have about 370 in my craft bag, and while I'm careful to never sell them I don't go out of my way to farm them either. So I'm not sure why my stores haven't depleted.

I'd be happy for them to be given in rewards for writs (or maybe hirelings?).

But I do wonder about rewards - you have to give chitin for the war effort... but you get them in return? But of course the same goes for all of the gear you hand in for writs...