Where is the ink?

SeaGtGruff

Aurielle wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

FeedbackOnly wrote: »

The grind is unrealistic.... reminds me of when cp was account wide.

Not at all, you can buy ink from other players should you wish to.

At a rate of 80k-100k per ink? So 240k-300k gold per skill? And what if the skill you ultimately scribe is terrible in actual use? Now we’re up to 480k-600k to try again?

Not all people who play this game have millions upon millions of gold in reserve, unlike those of you who make grinding for lucrative items your full-time in-game activity. I personally have ~3 million gold, and have never had much more than that. The grind is unrealistic if you plan to actually play the game, rather than spending every moment of your available play time running the crafting mode circuits on Bleakrock Isle.

I imagine the prices for Luminous Ink will come down as the in-game quantities of Luminous Ink go up. Right now the demand is high and the supply is low, so players are able to get away with charging higher prices. But as players find more and more Luminous Ink of their own, the demand should drop, the supply should go up, and the prices that players are willing to pay should come down.

Necrotech_Master

Elvenheart wrote: »

Well, I scribed my first skill using the 3 precious inks I’ve collected. Although I have all but 3 affix scripts now on my character that did all of the scribing quests, I really wanted to try out shield throw on one of my other characters as soon as he got Multi-Target, which happened yesterday. He still needs a lot of the other scripts so my first version of shield throw isn’t the best one for me until he unlocks more scripts, but wasting the inks is on me because I didn’t want to wait to try out the skill. But it’s a shame I have to feel like I wasted something rare just to give it a try. I actually tried scribing the skill with just two scripts instead of three, but it wouldn’t let me do that.

Edited to add: Something I just noticed about Multi-Target, the damage seems backward. The damage goes higher for the second target and then higher still for the third target. It seems like it should hit the first target for the most damage, with the damage going down for each subsequent target. That would make it a better skill when using it during those times we only have one target. Just my humble opinion 😊

i think there is some precedent for that, i think the bouncing dagger morph of the dagger throw gets increased dmg per bounce

LonePirate

What is the reason for keeping the Ink drop rates so low? It's like ZOS decided to side with the few people who want to profit from the low drop rate instead of siding with the vast majority of players who want to try and use the heavily hyped new system which is largely sitting idle because people can't obtain Ink. This one is a real head scratcher. There is no reason for the drop rate not to be 20x what it currently is.

Aurielle

LonePirate wrote: »

What is the reason for keeping the Ink drop rates so low? It's like ZOS decided to side with the few people who want to profit from the low drop rate instead of siding with the vast majority of players who want to try and use the heavily hyped new system which is largely sitting idle because people can't obtain Ink. This one is a real head scratcher. There is no reason for the drop rate not to be 20x what it currently is.

It really makes no sense. The only people who appear happy with the ink status quo thus far are those who are making a killing off it in their traders.

I love how ZOS boasted about having close to 4000 possible skill combinations with scribing, and then made it such that regular players who aren’t constantly farming to “game” the economy can only scribe a handful of skills. Ink should be a guaranteed harvestable node in the environment with predictable spawn locations, like rubedite ore or ancestor silk. It doesn’t even make logical sense that this vial of ink should “randomly” drop from, say, an enchanting rune. What, does the rune have pockets now? Do the mystical, unseen purveyors of ink walk up to an ore node, chisel a little chunk of ore away, and lodge a vial of ink in there for funsies?

BlueRaven

Sarannah wrote: »

Hmm. After playing a while with the possibility of ink drops, I have to think it is bugged somehow. Even from regular mobs and harvest nodes.

The reason I think this is because, the previous two days I found 25+ ink in two days(about 14h playtime total). While today I was online even longer(8h playtime), and did about the same things, but dropped 0 ink. Which is weird. This leads me to the conclusion something is wrong with the ink drops. Causing them to not drop at all for some reason.

The ink droprate seemed fine before today. Maybe this is something to look into.

PS: Those 25+ ink drops were: 4 from monsters, all others dropped from harvesting nodes.

This and the whole “jubilee event” debacle, leads me to believe it’s zos rng system that is the issue. Too many people are running hot and cold on the ink drops, and if both are to be believed then I think it’s the internal rng system that is to blame.

sarahthes

There are thousands of ink listed on traders on PC NA.

It's not that rare (I farm it daily for an hour here or there), and the price will drop.

Necrotech_Master

sarahthes wrote: »

There are thousands of ink listed on traders on PC NA.

It's not that rare (I farm it daily for an hour here or there), and the price will drop.

explicitly farming for it and getting it through normal gameplay are 2 different things

ink is far too rare of a drop for me to be useable, and im not paying 100k+ gold per unit of ink

how much of that ink is probably from people just rerunning the questline, which is currently the only guaranteed method to get ink?

sarahthes

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

There are thousands of ink listed on traders on PC NA.

It's not that rare (I farm it daily for an hour here or there), and the price will drop.

explicitly farming for it and getting it through normal gameplay are 2 different things

ink is far too rare of a drop for me to be useable, and im not paying 100k+ gold per unit of ink

how much of that ink is probably from people just rerunning the questline, which is currently the only guaranteed method to get ink?

They're already below 80K. In a week they'll be even lower.

All 80 that I've listed for sale have been from node farming or mobs (I think a total of like 6 from enemies?). I held back a small amount from the quest for personal use.

XSTRONG

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

There are thousands of ink listed on traders on PC NA.

It's not that rare (I farm it daily for an hour here or there), and the price will drop.

explicitly farming for it and getting it through normal gameplay are 2 different things

ink is far too rare of a drop for me to be useable, and im not paying 100k+ gold per unit of ink

how much of that ink is probably from people just rerunning the questline, which is currently the only guaranteed method to get ink?

How long does it take to rerun the questline? Im on Console so still have to wait lol.

100k for 1 Ink on PCNA cant be that bad? Im on PS5EU and I would guess 100k is like 10-20k here.

For a completly new material that many players need it isnt bad.

EdjeSwift

XSTRONG wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

There are thousands of ink listed on traders on PC NA.

It's not that rare (I farm it daily for an hour here or there), and the price will drop.

explicitly farming for it and getting it through normal gameplay are 2 different things

ink is far too rare of a drop for me to be useable, and im not paying 100k+ gold per unit of ink

how much of that ink is probably from people just rerunning the questline, which is currently the only guaranteed method to get ink?

How long does it take to rerun the questline? Im on Console so still have to wait lol.

100k for 1 Ink on PCNA cant be that bad? Im on PS5EU and I would guess 100k is like 10-20k here.

For a completly new material that many players need it isnt bad.

The length depends on your wayshirne/port ability. If you're reasonably able to port/beam to most places required by the quests you can knock out the wings in maybe 2-3 hours max for all 4, maybe faster. The initial time is all about learning and finding the wards, once you know where they are and which challenges are the most efficient you can breeze through the others.

Alpheu5

virtus753 wrote: »

BergisMacBride wrote: »

Apologies if this already been brought up since I haven't had the time to read all of this thread:

Seems to me one of the easiest ways to increase ink drops is to have them drop in surveys like ninrcrux. Would give incentive for all those folks banking their surveys and create abit more stable supply of ink without completely tanking the market for them.

We asked for this on the PTS, or at the very least an acknowledgment as to intention. The current implementation does not align with the descriptions in the patch notes or in-game tooltips for Sigil of the Luminary Netch, which claim that Ink drops from “resource nodes” full stop. It clearly doesn’t.

We have not gotten any form of acknowledgment on this question, even to say this is intended.

I will die on the hill arguing that ZOS should have a public loot table like what Warframe does. It would pretty much eliminate times like this where we're left in the dark about drop sources because of vague wording and a history of inconsistency (Motifs/style pages drop once a day per character/account, except for the times they don't). Instead, we go weeks and sometimes months without a word, until the badgering gets to a point where forum moderation has to step in and maybe finally we get an answer or, Divines be praised, a hotfix.

Necrotech_Master

sarahthes wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

There are thousands of ink listed on traders on PC NA.

It's not that rare (I farm it daily for an hour here or there), and the price will drop.

explicitly farming for it and getting it through normal gameplay are 2 different things

ink is far too rare of a drop for me to be useable, and im not paying 100k+ gold per unit of ink

how much of that ink is probably from people just rerunning the questline, which is currently the only guaranteed method to get ink?

They're already below 80K. In a week they'll be even lower.

All 80 that I've listed for sale have been from node farming or mobs (I think a total of like 6 from enemies?). I held back a small amount from the quest for personal use.

thats still an absurd cost, i fully believe that the reason the price is dropping is because people are either rerunning the questline and selling all of the freebie inks, or they have given up on the system entirely and just selling it to "cash in" while others want to play with the new system

if your trying to play solo and working on only your own gains without buying it, the drop rate is still too low if it requires hard grinding of material nodes

ill harvest nodes here and there, but i dont enjoy full on node grinding, its not how i want to spend my time in game

i certainly kill enemies far more often than harvesting nodes, but the drop rate from enemies is virtually nonexistent (and yes i know the boss drops are bugged)

literally the only people who have said they have any amounts of ink have been grinding harvesting nodes, as you said your doing it for like at least an hour a day

yesterday for example, my play session was spent 2 hours gathering my sales, doing all 3 west weald dailies (with some harvesting mixed in), doing all 3 guild dailies (again with mixed harvesting), then i did 3 BGs

0 ink from any of the nodes i harvested, 0 ink from any kills doing 6 daily quests, and obviously, BGs dont give any ink whatsoever either

the ink drop rate is extremely poor right now, and based on all the threads im not the only one dealing with this

BasP

I've played at least a few hours per day since Gold Road dropped and, while I am not really interested in using any of the existing Scribing skills, I've done all of the Scribing quests on my main (I actually found them pretty fun to do once).

Because I figured I might change my mind regarding Scribing skills in the future, however, I figured I'd try to acquire more Ink while doing my regular activities. So I've picked up every resource node I came across (something I don't normally go out of my way to do), killed hundreds of basepop enemies along the way and received a grand total of 1 Ink.

I've probably been unlucky, but I still find it a bit annoying that being able to properly use a new system requires having RNG on your side or spending a relatively large amount of gold at guild traders.

davelbier

zeal of zenithar event announced, check rewards....nothing for scribing at all?
smh ZOS.

Nathrai

BlueRaven wrote: »

This and the whole “jubilee event” debacle, leads me to believe it’s zos rng system that is the issue. Too many people are running hot and cold on the ink drops, and if both are to be believed then I think it’s the internal rng system that is to blame.

It is, I tried this with a friend a couple of years back. For well over one year we kept comparing our furniture mat collection results. They almost ALWAYS scored 3 to 5 times the furniture mats from the same amount of nodes than I did.

It seems that they are still using account IDs in their RNG. If you're lucky, you have an account that always scores well on RNG. If you're me unlucky, you always have bad results.

It seems that's once again what's happening here. Some people's account IDs affords them RNGs with 15 inks an hour. Others are lucky to get one ink in 3 hours of grinding.

(For reference: I switched to Steam on the first and thanks to being on sick leave right now I'm at 200 hours since then - subtract 8h for forgetting to close the client one night XD - and I'm at a whooping 6 inks so far. That's like one ink every 20 hours of non PvP playtime.)

The sad thing is, I was looking forward to playing around with the system. But I won't do that when it takes me 60 hours to buy ONE spell. There's so much potential and fun in that system, but how many people are actually going to use it this way? I was actually planning on grinding scripts to outfit 19 characters with various different spells, but I can't even afford playing around with the system on my main.

(The system itself? I LOVE it, I even love the script hunting. Guess that's why this hurts so much.)

EdjeSwift

davelbier wrote: »

zeal of zenithar event announced, check rewards....nothing for scribing at all?
smh ZOS.

I see things that would affect scribing in this:

During the Zeal of Zenithar event, the following changes are in effect for everyone

Wayshrine travel costs are reduced by 75%.
Repair costs on vendors are reduced by 50%.
Crafting inspiration gained from all sources is increased by 100%.
Vendor prices across Tamriel are reduced by 10%.

The Vendors include

Vendors that sell items for Gold (Golden Vendor, Luxury Vendor
Vendors that sell items for Alliance Points
Vendors that sell items for Tel Var Stones
Houses that you're able to purchase for Gold. (list of all houses)

What else do you want from an event circulated around the God of Commerce?

LaintalAy

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

There are thousands of ink listed on traders on PC NA.

It's not that rare (I farm it daily for an hour here or there), and the price will drop.

explicitly farming for it and getting it through normal gameplay are 2 different things

ink is far too rare of a drop for me to be useable, and im not paying 100k+ gold per unit of ink

how much of that ink is probably from people just rerunning the questline, which is currently the only guaranteed method to get ink?

They're already below 80K. In a week they'll be even lower.

All 80 that I've listed for sale have been from node farming or mobs (I think a total of like 6 from enemies?). I held back a small amount from the quest for personal use.

thats still an absurd cost, i fully believe that the reason the price is dropping is because people are either rerunning the questline and selling all of the freebie inks, or they have given up on the system entirely and just selling it to "cash in" while others want to play with the new system

if your trying to play solo and working on only your own gains without buying it, the drop rate is still too low if it requires hard grinding of material nodes

ill harvest nodes here and there, but i dont enjoy full on node grinding, its not how i want to spend my time in game

i certainly kill enemies far more often than harvesting nodes, but the drop rate from enemies is virtually nonexistent (and yes i know the boss drops are bugged)

literally the only people who have said they have any amounts of ink have been grinding harvesting nodes, as you said your doing it for like at least an hour a day

yesterday for example, my play session was spent 2 hours gathering my sales, doing all 3 west weald dailies (with some harvesting mixed in), doing all 3 guild dailies (again with mixed harvesting), then i did 3 BGs

0 ink from any of the nodes i harvested, 0 ink from any kills doing 6 daily quests, and obviously, BGs dont give any ink whatsoever either

the ink drop rate is extremely poor right now, and based on all the threads im not the only one dealing with this

I'm not disagreeing with any of your points.

ill harvest nodes here and there, but i dont enjoy full on node grinding, its not how i want to spend my time in game

This is a choice that you make and it's entirely valid.

Other players do the grind, just for the purpose of selling them. Another valid choice.

The only reason that anything actually sells for ridiculous prices is that other players are willing to pay these ridiculous prices to avoid the grind. Yet another, valid play style choice. When they stop paying the ridiculous prices, the overall pricing falls. This is pure capitalism.

What the 'grinders' prove, however, is that there is no real problem with the drop rate. Reasonable volumes can be obtained with intense harvesting.

From a personal perspective, I find that the current price of Perfect Roe is outrageous. I can remember when it was under 10K. But I hate fishing; and for whatever reason, my drop rate is abysmal when compared to others. So I pay the price that other players set and that other players apparently agree with.

Nathrai

LaintalAy wrote: »

But I hate fishing; and for whatever reason, my drop rate is abysmal when compared to others.

But ... doesn't this directly contradict your statement about there being nothing wrong with drop rates?

That's exactly what's happening to a lot of people with inks - abysmal drop rates compared to others (who take advantage of that fact by selling ink at insidious prices).

Raising drop rates (thus dropping prices for inks) would help, as would taking account IDs out of the RNG in order to more evenly distribute the inks. But the way it is right now, I for one will never be able to enjoy the scribing system, and not for lack of trying.

Quackery

I get them randomly from either nodes or killing trash. Never have I spent any time actually farming for it, it just drops when it wants to.

MidniteOwl1913

Why on earth would account ID have anything to do with RNG? That just sounds weird...

LaintalAy

Nathrai wrote: »

LaintalAy wrote: »

But I hate fishing; and for whatever reason, my drop rate is abysmal when compared to others.

But ... doesn't this directly contradict your statement about there being nothing wrong with drop rates?

That's exactly what's happening to a lot of people with inks - abysmal drop rates compared to others (who take advantage of that fact by selling ink at insidious prices).

Raising drop rates (thus dropping prices for inks) would help, as would taking account IDs out of the RNG in order to more evenly distribute the inks. But the way it is right now, I for one will never be able to enjoy the scribing system, and not for lack of trying.

It looks that way. No, it doesn't. If some players are getting the drops, then the problem isn't with the overall rate.

As I've said elsewhere, my drop rate with Dust is brilliant compared to others.

The only answer that I can provide is that we see 'drop rate' and 'rng' as being different to what they really are. I've been pondering the Dust issue for 8 years. I've never seen anyone say that they 'farm' it. Where would you start? it can and does drop from anything.

My own view is that RNG is based on your overall game play behaviour, in that various boxes need to be 'ticked' before the drop CAN take place, then the chance is applied. All just guessing on my part. You seem to know more about it than me.

But, some players are having no problem, so the drop rate is OK for them...

Erickson9610

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

Why on earth would account ID have anything to do with RNG? That just sounds weird...

There are examples in other games where the player's internal ID is used for the random number generator. It's not as bizarre as it sounds — in particular, it could be used for making each player's experience unique from one another, rather than relying on the system time, which would produce identical results if two or more players were to perform the exact same actions beginning at the exact same time under the exact same conditions.

Aurielle

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

Why on earth would account ID have anything to do with RNG? That just sounds weird...

Account ID has been used in other games with random systems. Very famous example is Asheron’s Call, where a coding bug in a supposedly random system meant that some players were more likely to be targeted by monsters than others based on their account ID. https://asheron.fandom.com/wiki/Wi_Flag

Nathrai

Using account IDs (or other arbitrary numbers) in RNG is a fairly common practice - the thing is, there is no such thing as "random" in programming.

You have to calculate RNG outcomes based on something - usually the current time stamp. And, in order to make sure no two players get the same outcome when using the same timestamp, other numbers (like account ID, character name, current coordinates - choose your poison) are added to the calculation.

Usually, that shouldn't have an impact on the chances itself, but something in the code DOES affect the outcome in ESO.

The larger the sample size, the more normalized the results should become. People CONSTANTLY having "good luck" or "bad luck" hints at a bug in the RNG. And (of course assuming people are correctly reporting their success rates here) the numbers we're getting here on inks are conspicuously consistent at being outliers in either direction.

davelbier

EdjeSwift wrote: »

davelbier wrote: »

zeal of zenithar event announced, check rewards....nothing for scribing at all?
smh ZOS.

I see things that would affect scribing in this:

During the Zeal of Zenithar event, the following changes are in effect for everyone

Wayshrine travel costs are reduced by 75%.
Repair costs on vendors are reduced by 50%.
Crafting inspiration gained from all sources is increased by 100%.
Vendor prices across Tamriel are reduced by 10%.

The Vendors include

Vendors that sell items for Gold (Golden Vendor, Luxury Vendor
Vendors that sell items for Alliance Points
Vendors that sell items for Tel Var Stones
Houses that you're able to purchase for Gold. (list of all houses)

What else do you want from an event circulated around the God of Commerce?

drops of scripts or ink -- since ink is basically treated like a currency for scribing
edit: or a crafting material in my craft bag apparently. just super weird IMO to release a new thing people want to use, but exclude it from the following event.

Aurielle

Nathrai wrote: »

Using account IDs (or other arbitrary numbers) in RNG is a fairly common practice - the thing is, there is no such thing as "random" in programming.

You have to calculate RNG outcomes based on something - usually the current time stamp. And, in order to make sure no two players get the same outcome when using the same timestamp, other numbers (like account ID, character name, current coordinates - choose your poison) are added to the calculation.

Usually, that shouldn't have an impact on the chances itself, but something in the code DOES affect the outcome in ESO.

The larger the sample size, the more normalized the results should become. People CONSTANTLY having "good luck" or "bad luck" hints at a bug in the RNG. And (of course assuming people are correctly reporting their success rates here) the numbers we're getting here on inks are conspicuously consistent at being outliers in either direction.

Yup. I was actually just saying in another thread, one of my characters seems to have better luck with lead drops than my main. I’ve farmed for leads on my main for hours to no avail, only to swap to my alt and get the lead in 3-5 tries — sometimes even the first try. I hadn’t really even thought about it until this thread…

Maybe I’ll try using this “luckier” alt for ink. I’ll do exactly what I’ve been doing on my main (that is, grabbing nodes between quest objectives, not actively farming nodes for hours in starter zones). If I end up getting considerably more ink on that alt, then there could likely be a case made for something being borked with the way the game does RNG.

Oznog666

There's a rumor that inks drops better when there is NO companion with you. But I didn't notice any difference so far. Anybody heard about this rumor?

Nathrai

Aurielle wrote: »

If I end up getting considerably more ink on that alt, then there could likely be a case made for something being borked with the way the game does RNG.

I've had a couple of RNGs feel like they differ between alts, but most of the time the problem seems to be connected to the account itself.

So far I've not had any more luck on other characters, but I have to admit I've mainly used 3 of them in the past two weeks. Maybe I'll try some mat farming later on characters I use less often. Good thing I've equipped ALL of them with the harvesting buffs XD

Nathrai

Oznog666 wrote: »

There's a rumor that inks drops better when there is NO companion with you. But I didn't notice any difference so far. Anybody heard about this rumor?

I think I don't have a companion on my crafting char, so at least for me it doesn't seem to corelate with companions.

EdjeSwift

Oznog666 wrote: »

There's a rumor that inks drops better when there is NO companion with you. But I didn't notice any difference so far. Anybody heard about this rumor?

That was me saying that, and I literally called it copium.

If you didn't know, copium is what many call it when we use a belief not rooted in reality to cope with our poor luck/decisions. A term by merging coping with an opiate. It's a mental exercise to make you feel better about your misfortune. There is no empirical evidence to this or any of the other "issues" people have come up with to explain their less than ideal drop rates.