Where is the ink?

wolfie1.0. · June 20

112

Aurielle wrote: »

EF321 wrote: »

If you are after ink only, Craglorn is a bad place to farm it, because of how scarce resource nodes are there.

You’re missing the point. I ended my hour of farming with more Potent/Fortified Nirncrux than Luminous Ink, even after I increased the potential drop pool for ink relative to nirn by harvesting runestones and select alchemy reagents in the last thirty minutes in addition to the sources that drop nirncrux.

Also, if that’s how much ink I get after an hour of dedicated crafting node farming… you see how people who are casually harvesting crafting nodes between quest points or while doing dailies are struggling to obtain ink, yes?

It's still not a large sample size but I see your point.

LukosCreyden · June 20

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

LukosCreyden wrote: »

Would love to experiment with Scribing some more. A shame I cannot do that because ink doesn't drop from anywhere despite hours of farming nodes and mobs.
I got one.
I need three to make a spell.
Yeah, think I will wait until it is fixed.

You should be getting about 8 an hour from nodes, try a starter zone.

I actually was. Bleakrock. Nice and quiet, all the nodes I could ever want.

I can handle the skills being suboptimal (I am actually using Wield Soul, Soul Burst and Contingency for aesthetics as well as function), but I hate not being able to experiment because the ink drop rate is so abysmal. This was a terrible decision. The ENTIRE system is built around experimenting but you cannot do that.

Aurielle · June 20

LukosCreyden wrote: »

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

LukosCreyden wrote: »

Would love to experiment with Scribing some more. A shame I cannot do that because ink doesn't drop from anywhere despite hours of farming nodes and mobs.
I got one.
I need three to make a spell.
Yeah, think I will wait until it is fixed.

You should be getting about 8 an hour from nodes, try a starter zone.

I actually was. Bleakrock. Nice and quiet, all the nodes I could ever want.

I can handle the skills being suboptimal (I am actually using Wield Soul, Soul Burst and Contingency for aesthetics as well as function), but I hate not being able to experiment because the ink drop rate is so abysmal. This was a terrible decision. The ENTIRE system is built around experimenting but you cannot do that.

Agreed. I shake my head a little when I see "go to starter zones" listed as a solution to this drop rate. Even when I farm in starter zones on an optimized farming build during off-peak hours with no one else around, I'm lucky to see four ink -- if that -- after a tedious hour of my least favourite kind of "gameplay." As you say, this is a system that encourages experimentation. Hard to experiment much when the ink just isn't there...

There seems to be a wild amount of variety in different players' success when it comes to ink drops. It would be nice to have more transparency from the devs on how RNG works in ESO, particularly in relation to ink. Is character ID part of the calculation, @ZOS_Kevin? If so, there may be a bug in the system, similar to Turbine's monster aggro bug in Asheron's Call. Some of us are consistently having poor luck with ink drops while others appear to be consistently having good luck. It doesn't add up. There are people who have already passively earned the 50 ink achievement simply by playing the game and picking up random nodes here and there, while others of us who are actively farming ink for hours and just generally playing the game are still 20-30 ink shy of the achievement.

Julia_Nix · June 20

Aurielle wrote: »

The results of a very boring hour spent harvesting crafting nodes in Craglorn.

After 30 minutes of exclusively harvesting items that drop nirncrux, I had 1 potent nirn and zero ink:

I wondered, hmm, what happens if I throw some alchemy and enchanting nodes into the mix? During the next fifteen minutes, I experienced a small streak of luck, and got two ink drops that were doubled by Plentiful Harvest. But I also got three fortified nirns from two separate nodes during that time...

And then, by the end of one hour, I finished with:

2 Potent Nirncrux (2 nodes)
4 Fortified Nirncrux (3 nodes)
2 Kuta (1 node)
4 Luminous Ink (2 nodes)

So for me, at least, harvesting Luminous Ink is rarer than harvesting Nirncrux, even after increasing the possible drop pool for the ink relative to the nirn. Just... LOL.

After an hour that I would have rather spent in Cyrodiil or running dungeons, I can craft two nirn weapons, four nirn armour pieces, two gold glyphs, and one scribed skill.

What addon you use to have this loot summery?

Aurielle · June 20

Julia_Nix wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

The results of a very boring hour spent harvesting crafting nodes in Craglorn.

After 30 minutes of exclusively harvesting items that drop nirncrux, I had 1 potent nirn and zero ink:

I wondered, hmm, what happens if I throw some alchemy and enchanting nodes into the mix? During the next fifteen minutes, I experienced a small streak of luck, and got two ink drops that were doubled by Plentiful Harvest. But I also got three fortified nirns from two separate nodes during that time...

And then, by the end of one hour, I finished with:

2 Potent Nirncrux (2 nodes)
4 Fortified Nirncrux (3 nodes)
2 Kuta (1 node)
4 Luminous Ink (2 nodes)

So for me, at least, harvesting Luminous Ink is rarer than harvesting Nirncrux, even after increasing the possible drop pool for the ink relative to the nirn. Just... LOL.

After an hour that I would have rather spent in Cyrodiil or running dungeons, I can craft two nirn weapons, four nirn armour pieces, two gold glyphs, and one scribed skill.

What addon you use to have this loot summery?

https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info2553-ESOFarm-Buddy.html

Julia_Nix · June 20

Aurielle wrote: »

Julia_Nix wrote: »

Aurielle wrote: »

The results of a very boring hour spent harvesting crafting nodes in Craglorn.

After 30 minutes of exclusively harvesting items that drop nirncrux, I had 1 potent nirn and zero ink:

I wondered, hmm, what happens if I throw some alchemy and enchanting nodes into the mix? During the next fifteen minutes, I experienced a small streak of luck, and got two ink drops that were doubled by Plentiful Harvest. But I also got three fortified nirns from two separate nodes during that time...

And then, by the end of one hour, I finished with:

2 Potent Nirncrux (2 nodes)
4 Fortified Nirncrux (3 nodes)
2 Kuta (1 node)
4 Luminous Ink (2 nodes)

So for me, at least, harvesting Luminous Ink is rarer than harvesting Nirncrux, even after increasing the possible drop pool for the ink relative to the nirn. Just... LOL.

After an hour that I would have rather spent in Cyrodiil or running dungeons, I can craft two nirn weapons, four nirn armour pieces, two gold glyphs, and one scribed skill.

What addon you use to have this loot summery?

https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info2553-ESOFarm-Buddy.html

Thank you

Grendalism · June 20

Agreed.

Drop rate of ink is much, much worse than:
- the shrine of Dibella antiquity lead
- The Tribute heavily played cards fragments
- Velothri shrouds

**PLEASE FIX THIS**

What’s the point of have a scribing system if the ink drop rate doesn’t match the needs of the players to scribe?

At launch, whilst players are ‘investigating’ the scribed skills, the ink should be more bountiful. But it isn’t.

You don’t even have it inside the pay wall (I.e. crown store, utility, jar of 20 inks, 500 crowns)

anadandy · June 20

I finally got my first "in the wild" ink drop, from a mirror voriplasm thing in overland. Now I have 13! Whoop whoop!

Necrotech_Master · June 20

Aurielle wrote: »

LukosCreyden wrote: »

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

LukosCreyden wrote: »

Would love to experiment with Scribing some more. A shame I cannot do that because ink doesn't drop from anywhere despite hours of farming nodes and mobs.
I got one.
I need three to make a spell.
Yeah, think I will wait until it is fixed.

You should be getting about 8 an hour from nodes, try a starter zone.

I actually was. Bleakrock. Nice and quiet, all the nodes I could ever want.

I can handle the skills being suboptimal (I am actually using Wield Soul, Soul Burst and Contingency for aesthetics as well as function), but I hate not being able to experiment because the ink drop rate is so abysmal. This was a terrible decision. The ENTIRE system is built around experimenting but you cannot do that.

Agreed. I shake my head a little when I see "go to starter zones" listed as a solution to this drop rate. Even when I farm in starter zones on an optimized farming build during off-peak hours with no one else around, I'm lucky to see four ink -- if that -- after a tedious hour of my least favourite kind of "gameplay." As you say, this is a system that encourages experimentation. Hard to experiment much when the ink just isn't there...

There seems to be a wild amount of variety in different players' success when it comes to ink drops. It would be nice to have more transparency from the devs on how RNG works in ESO, particularly in relation to ink. Is character ID part of the calculation, ZOS_Kevin? If so, there may be a bug in the system, similar to Turbine's monster aggro bug in Asheron's Call. Some of us are consistently having poor luck with ink drops while others appear to be consistently having good luck. It doesn't add up. There are people who have already passively earned the 50 ink achievement simply by playing the game and picking up random nodes here and there, while others of us who are actively farming ink for hours and just generally playing the game are still 20-30 ink shy of the achievement.

yeah, i tried farming in a starter zone the other day to kill some time (about 45 min), 0 ink

i decided that was boring so i went and farmed public dungeons for 2 hours to get the collectible items (i completed the entire echo of the abolisher collectible from west weald in this time frame, and i got 0 ink again)

i went to another public dungeon i still needed collectible drops for and got several that i needed, and this time 1 ink drop

so all in all i spent about 4 hours that day between harvesting and public dungeon mob farming with only 1 ink drop

right now im "lucky" if i see even 1 single ink drop a day (this drop is sometimes a double drop due to plentiful), but this is still ridiculous

im still under 30 inks earned through looting at this point, the only reason i actually finished scribing all of the skills at least once is because someone in one of my guilds has no interest in the system and gave me the 7 inks i needed to finish at least that lol

and after finishing the class mastery script scrap chase, im basically deciding im completely done with the scribing system until the ink drop rate is increased (ill keep learning scripts on my alts of course but thats about it)

Elsonso · June 20

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i still expect to see a scribing station available for our houses at some point though

Inevitable… 5000 Crowns or 2000+ in-game writ vouchers…

Necrotech_Master · June 20

Elsonso wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i still expect to see a scribing station available for our houses at some point though

Inevitable… 5000 Crowns or 2000+ in-game writ vouchers…

i imagine it would be priced similar to the transmute station (1250 vouchers)

DoofusMax · June 20

My thoughts on ink drop rates mostly fit into a few categories: what is, what should be (that's loaded), and how far apart those two are.

"What is" should be pretty non-controversial; it's just data. I opened my craft bag the other night and looked: 38 inks (12 of which came from the character who did the Scholarium quest line). I haven't used any (I think the one script you have to make in the tutorial costs zero inks), so 26 over the course of a couple of weeks, mostly from node harvests, and everyone keeps Plentiful Harvest slotted. That translates into about 1 or so per hour of playing and I'm not generally standing around chatting or waiting for a queue to pop. If I'm not knocking out daily crafting writs, I'm out in the zones doing something (skulking in various dark corners waiting for heat and/or bounty to decay counts as "something").

I remember getting a couple of inks from enemies (trash mobs), maybe a couple from a container somewhere (could be misremembering, but I vaguely recall a "that's odd" running through my head at the time), and the rest from nodes, but my characters also harvest a lot more than they loot, so the number of opportunities is heavily weighted toward nodes. It should have been a bit more since I've been running multiple dailies daily for script drops and bosses didn't drop inks until the recent patch. So, yes, very low drop rates on an inks-per-hour basis.

I'm of mixed mind on the "what should be" end of things. Do I really need a bag full of inks? Probably not. I'm more of a set-it-and-forget-it kind of player and don't yet see much need to be scribing and rescribing skills (in much the same way that I don't have build slots on the armory station - I respec if/when I need to but otherwise work with what's there). Some players probably do change builds a few times per session, but I'm not among them. I also don't sell stuff from the craft bag very often, so I do not see the low drop rate as costing me bunches of gold. What gets sold is usually the stuff in excess of the stack or so I try to keep for personal use, but personal use just isn't placing any demands on my stocks for now. Inks are just something which could be useful somewhere down the line, kind of in the way that style or trait mats are useful in the future. Players aren't wrong for thinking the drop rate should be higher or lower (or even "Why did they stick this scribing stuff into the game in the first place?"), but I'm not seeing the drop rate as being exceptionally problematic at this time, other than the (now fixed) boss drops.

KV_Tootn · June 21

loll after 2 weeks i finaly got one ink...... So enjoying scrybing

msetten · June 21

Is Ink actually dropping in some of the bags that you can buy in the Infinite Archive? Could be added there. Or maybe even as an item to buy with archival fortunes. And that would even be logical given you are in an archive and the Tho'at drops some much ink around.

crappyjazz1964 · June 21

I have found 5 ink after the initial 12 (or whatever the number was) of doing the quests.

2 from a random backpack on the side of the road in Weald.
1 from a Water Hyacinth in Weald.
1 from an Imperial Archer in Cyrodiil (Cheyindal)
1 from a water skin in Greenshade

So random and now I'm checking everything in every freaking delve/dungeon/overland and it's slowing me down big time lol

I wish they had made ink craftable, maybe requiring three ingredients that you would have to farm like for potions. Have three different kinds or colours of ink to match the three types of scripts.

I don't understand adding something like this to the game but making it practically impossible to get the one thing you need to actually use it. How would one ever get to try out the supposed thousands of combinations with a drop rate so rare?

BahometZ · June 21

Massive fail, and complete lack of foresight.
I simply cannot afford to experiment with a system that necessitates experimentation.
Turns an 8/10 system into a 3/10.

Nathrai · June 21

Update on the mob drops - yes it was an outlier. Power-farmed Public Dungeons for 3 hours to hunt down a bug, not a single ink in sight.

CP5 · June 22

I had just finished a duo archive run, 6:3:1, and I got 2 ink from urns, and 0 from any other sources (namely the chest which I would assume would drop ink).

Paramedicus · June 22

This week endevours task is to farm 100 nodes, so I decided to do an experiment to see what it would feel like to farm ink. It took me ~1h to get 100 nodes. I don't know how bad this time is - I don't usually farm. I was just listening to some podcast while chillin and running around the land to find them nodes. Naturally, I got 0 inks because the drop rate is so low.

I'm pretty sure I'll never farm nodes for ink again.

XSTRONG · June 22

Paramedicus wrote: »

This week endevours task is to farm 100 nodes, so I decided to do an experiment to see what it would feel like to farm ink. It took me ~1h to get 100 nodes. I don't know how bad this time is - I don't usually farm. I was just listening to some podcast while chillin and running around the land to find them nodes. Naturally, I got 0 inks because the drop rate is so low.

I'm pretty sure I'll never farm nodes for ink again.

I farm 100 nodes in 10 mins but I can understand that if you farm 100 nodes in 1 hour you will never do it again

XSTRONG · June 22

Lugaldu wrote: »

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

Oh has this thread died? Has ink suddenly become more available? What am I missing?

It's just no fun trying out a new system that you paid a lot of money for if you can't try the new system, unless you have no other real life commitments and can devote yourself to grinding 24/7 to experiment with the new system...

The place i farm i get around 1 Ink every 10 min of farming nodes, and yes I still have a full time job with life commitments and I dont farm 24/7

Jaraal · June 22

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

Oh has this thread died? Has ink suddenly become more available? What am I missing?

Well there are almost 400 pages of Luminous Ink listings on PC/NA TTC, most of them multi-ink listings.... so yes, I would say ink is becoming more available. That is more than twice the listings as compared to last week.

ZOS_Hadeostry · June 22

Greetings,

After removing some unnecessary back and forth from this thread, we would like everyone to keep posts on the subject at hand, civil, and constructive.

If there may be any questions in regards to the rules, please feel free to review them here

Casdha · June 23

So I tried farming these today using my old upper Craglorn routes and including the 12 you get at the start I hit 40 when I quit. I actually got about 2 to one ratio on getting Nirn stones (both types total). The drop rate seems fine to me (maybe 3 hours total) Eventually they will flood the market and they will nerf the crap out of any benefits this system has and it will just be like Nirncrux all over again. I also did one lap around Khenarthi's Roost and got 4. (note: I do have the double node thing slotted)

My thoughts, this is nowhere near as bad as Jewelry Crafting was in the beginning. 1000s of nodes just to get 80 grains to make 8 gold mats to make one gold item. Also, players would not pick up the Blacksmithing nodes so eventually there would be no Jewelry nodes unless you picked all of the blacksmithing nodes up first to refresh a few of them to jewelry type.

When I started playing again this year (after skipping a year) I gotta say I was a bit miffed when I saw they did away with the grains and the thought of how many thousands of mats I could have had if I had never used them before they changed it.

And there is no comparison to the original Enchanting skill line and the rune nodes. one rune per node and it was the luck of the draw why type of rune it was and if you lucked up and found an aspect node, odds were slim you would get a Kuta.

MidniteOwl1913 · June 23

Casdha wrote: »

So I tried farming these today using my old upper Craglorn routes and including the 12 you get at the start I hit 40 when I quit. I actually got about 2 to one ratio on getting Nirn stones (both types total). The drop rate seems fine to me (maybe 3 hours total) Eventually they will flood the market and they will nerf the crap out of any benefits this system has and it will just be like Nirncrux all over again. I also did one lap around Khenarthi's Roost and got 4. (note: I do have the double node thing slotted)

My thoughts, this is nowhere near as bad as Jewelry Crafting was in the beginning. 1000s of nodes just to get 80 grains to make 8 gold mats to make one gold item. Also, players would not pick up the Blacksmithing nodes so eventually there would be no Jewelry nodes unless you picked all of the blacksmithing nodes up first to refresh a few of them to jewelry type.

When I started playing again this year (after skipping a year) I gotta say I was a bit miffed when I saw they did away with the grains and the thought of how many thousands of mats I could have had if I had never used them before they changed it.

And there is no comparison to the original Enchanting skill line and the rune nodes. one rune per node and it was the luck of the draw why type of rune it was and if you lucked up and found an aspect node, odds were slim you would get a Kuta.

I did my rounds and got 2 kuta, no ink...

Casdha · June 23

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

Casdha wrote: »

So I tried farming these today using my old upper Craglorn routes and including the 12 you get at the start I hit 40 when I quit. I actually got about 2 to one ratio on getting Nirn stones (both types total). The drop rate seems fine to me (maybe 3 hours total) Eventually they will flood the market and they will nerf the crap out of any benefits this system has and it will just be like Nirncrux all over again. I also did one lap around Khenarthi's Roost and got 4. (note: I do have the double node thing slotted)

My thoughts, this is nowhere near as bad as Jewelry Crafting was in the beginning. 1000s of nodes just to get 80 grains to make 8 gold mats to make one gold item. Also, players would not pick up the Blacksmithing nodes so eventually there would be no Jewelry nodes unless you picked all of the blacksmithing nodes up first to refresh a few of them to jewelry type.

When I started playing again this year (after skipping a year) I gotta say I was a bit miffed when I saw they did away with the grains and the thought of how many thousands of mats I could have had if I had never used them before they changed it.

And there is no comparison to the original Enchanting skill line and the rune nodes. one rune per node and it was the luck of the draw why type of rune it was and if you lucked up and found an aspect node, odds were slim you would get a Kuta.

I did my rounds and got 2 kuta, no ink...

It may just be my imagination but it seems that there is a drop limit before they dry up, I would leave for a while when they quit dropping and come back later. I swear it seams like the active nodes are in different instances as not all nodes were refreshing and each time I came back I'd get different nodes that would refresh the next time and others would not. It feels like each of these instances let a few drop and would dry up so I'd go away and come back and things would change again and I'd get a few more.

Necrotech_Master · June 24

Casdha wrote: »

So I tried farming these today using my old upper Craglorn routes and including the 12 you get at the start I hit 40 when I quit. I actually got about 2 to one ratio on getting Nirn stones (both types total). The drop rate seems fine to me (maybe 3 hours total) Eventually they will flood the market and they will nerf the crap out of any benefits this system has and it will just be like Nirncrux all over again. I also did one lap around Khenarthi's Roost and got 4. (note: I do have the double node thing slotted)

My thoughts, this is nowhere near as bad as Jewelry Crafting was in the beginning. 1000s of nodes just to get 80 grains to make 8 gold mats to make one gold item. Also, players would not pick up the Blacksmithing nodes so eventually there would be no Jewelry nodes unless you picked all of the blacksmithing nodes up first to refresh a few of them to jewelry type.

When I started playing again this year (after skipping a year) I gotta say I was a bit miffed when I saw they did away with the grains and the thought of how many thousands of mats I could have had if I had never used them before they changed it.

And there is no comparison to the original Enchanting skill line and the rune nodes. one rune per node and it was the luck of the draw why type of rune it was and if you lucked up and found an aspect node, odds were slim you would get a Kuta.

the RNG seems very spotty, some people seem to have a much higher rate of ink drop than others

as of yesterday ive only gotten 30 ink, 12 of which were from the quest, so 18 ink over the 3 weeks since it released on pc

my avg still stands at about 1 drop of ink per day

if the market ever gets flooded with ink, its because people are unwilling to use the system

and its doubtful they will nerf anything in scribing as a lot of it is borderline underpowered (its more useful to supports than dps, the only thing they have done with scribing is fix a scaling bug with menders bond which was obviously a bugfix and not a nerf)

kookie · June 24

Drop rate feels broken for me since last patch. I could get at least 3-5 per day from nodes before patch, I've only had 1 from a node and 1 from a boss drop after.

sarahthes · June 24

I got 19 ink on Saturday and 11 yesterday during ~ 2.5 and 2 hour farming runs, respectively. I also got 3 from mobs while running dungeons to farm skill points over several hours.

Uazole2 · June 24

Unless you are an achievement junkie, who absolutely must complete everything to get those points, each character really only needs 6 inks. Once all scripts have been unlocked, you only need 2 grimoires, one each for each weapon type that your build always uses, and 3 inks for each. This assumes that you don't scribe anything until you learn every script (except the master skill script). Any toon that has the same weapon type on both bars can get away with using only 3!