Where is the ink?

IrisDupree · July 2

EF321 wrote: »

Six drops from just few hundred of nodes is pretty lucky. Hundred of nodes is 7-8 minutes of farming.
People spend hours doing irrelevant activities and then complain that they got little ink. Would they fish for roe like this as well? "I caught one fish from every hole I saw while on my way to do other tasks and only got one roe in whole week".

Where are you farming that you get hundreds of nodes in 7-8 minutes?

Woozywyvern · July 3

Orbital78 wrote: »

We have a double node drop coming up, I'm sure they will be falling in your lap if you give a little effort. I know when Craglorn is effected I got quite a lot more nirncrux. I assume ink will be similar. TBH I don't understand how people can be having that many issues, unless they are trying to AoE farm. I think I am up to nearly 300/500 now and basically have no use for inks.

3 days of playing, apporx 7 hours a day is not enough effort to get a singhle ink drop?

EF321 · July 3

IrisDupree wrote: »

EF321 wrote: »

Six drops from just few hundred of nodes is pretty lucky. Hundred of nodes is 7-8 minutes of farming.
People spend hours doing irrelevant activities and then complain that they got little ink. Would they fish for roe like this as well? "I caught one fish from every hole I saw while on my way to do other tasks and only got one roe in whole week".

Where are you farming that you get hundreds of nodes in 7-8 minutes?

One hundred, not multiple hundreds in 7-8 minutes

Some zones where you can find good routes are any starter island (but can be too crowded during prime time these days), Wrothgar, Hew's Bane, Telvanni Peninsula, Amenos. Sharing exact spots publicly is how you kill a spot, so find what works for you there

Make sure it's looping (full circle or from wayshrine to wayshrine) and long enough for nodes to respawn when you are back to where you started, learn it so you know exactly where to go next.

There's plenty of decent routes where you can be getting this much, IF you are just farming, without any side missions like collecting skyshards or books, surveys, looting chests, getting nirncrux, killing specific mobs for trophies or antiquities, etc etc. Just farm, don't skip any nodes even if it's main content is low value. Get some speed (Wild hunt + CPs is enough for me), change location if someone else is farming same spot (I'd rather go to 8th best place than share best one with another player).

Casdha · July 3

EF321 wrote: »

IrisDupree wrote: »

EF321 wrote: »

Six drops from just few hundred of nodes is pretty lucky. Hundred of nodes is 7-8 minutes of farming.
People spend hours doing irrelevant activities and then complain that they got little ink. Would they fish for roe like this as well? "I caught one fish from every hole I saw while on my way to do other tasks and only got one roe in whole week".

Where are you farming that you get hundreds of nodes in 7-8 minutes?

One hundred, not multiple hundreds in 7-8 minutes

Some zones where you can find good routes are any starter island (but can be too crowded during prime time these days), Wrothgar, Hew's Bane, Telvanni Peninsula, Amenos. Sharing exact spots publicly is how you kill a spot, so find what works for you there Make sure it's looping (full circle or from wayshrine to wayshrine) and long enough for nodes to respawn when you are back to where you started, learn it so you know exactly where to go next.

There's plenty of decent routes where you can be getting this much, IF you are just farming, without any side missions like collecting skyshards or books, surveys, looting chests, getting nirncrux, killing specific mobs for trophies or antiquities, etc etc. Just farm, don't skip any nodes even if it's main content is low value. Get some speed (Wild hunt + CPs is enough for me), change location if someone else is farming same spot (I'd rather go to 8th best place than share best one with another player).

Rather than going someplace else entirely, I tend to make my loops about 30 minutes in length, that way if I start running on empty nodes (someone else is farming) I can cut across and get in front of them if there are a bunch or wait a few minutes and let them get far enough ahead of me for respawn if there are only a few.

FYI I only got 5 last night in an hour and ten minutes. but I was getting plenty of other goodies I wanted.

Necrotech_Master · July 8

after playing normally for the past week (mix of dailies, archive runs, dungeons, trials), i went 6 whole days without a single ink drop, and happened to get 2 ink drops tonight during a few trial runs

up to a whole 35 ink since gold road released almost 6 weeks ago now

its ridiculous that ink is so rare, im basically just ignoring the system now until i get enough ink piled up i feel like i can do something with it

Thysbe · July 8

Nodes might have been looted before, especially if you are in high frequented farming areas like starter zones, but they are still there because people loot only the ink and high value items like Heartwood.

Going in a loop, a bit off the beaten track, where you can loot your own respawn might help to get a higher success rate.

Orbital78 · July 8

Yes, I have noticed many ghost nodes in Craglorn due to overcrowding and cherry picking. If you're going over the area in a rotation repeatedly you shouldn't be having that many issues. I have been trying to keep my guild traders stocked with some cheap inks as I can for those that are having issues. I have also for whatever reason had a lot of luck in low population zones in the mornings, sometimes getting streaks of 12-20+ in 30mins to a 1.5hrs.

Coerfroid · July 8

An issue not directly related to ink drop frequency came to mind:
Class script scraps. Having been busy with completing the Gold Road story (and also re-doing the Necrom story on the same tomm, because Awa turned out not to work as promised), I had neither time nor motivation to heavily grind these.
Doing master crafting writs and one random dungeon yields two per day, which means I will thankfully have completed the grind in one more week.
What then? the scraps are account bound (not tradeable) and worth a meager 100 gold at vendors. Certainly not what they feel worth while trapped in the timegate collecting them.
So, imagine you could exchange extra scraps for ink at the scribing vendor in the scriptorium. With an exchange rate of 1:1, a somewht player could easily double their daily ink yield, while still being far behind the average bot.

AvalonRanger · July 8

We can't get ink effectively, then new scribing skill line is meaningless.

Jaraal · July 8

Coerfroid wrote: »

An issue not directly related to ink drop frequency came to mind:
Class script scraps. Having been busy with completing the Gold Road story (and also re-doing the Necrom story on the same tomm, because Awa turned out not to work as promised), I had neither time nor motivation to heavily grind these.
Doing master crafting writs and one random dungeon yields two per day, which means I will thankfully have completed the grind in one more week.
What then? the scraps are account bound (not tradeable) and worth a meager 100 gold at vendors. Certainly not what they feel worth while trapped in the timegate collecting them.
So, imagine you could exchange extra scraps for ink at the scribing vendor in the scriptorium. With an exchange rate of 1:1, a somewht player could easily double their daily ink yield, while still being far behind the average bot.

I got 4 per day in one scroll rucksack in Cyrodiil, and one for master writs. So I got it done in 10 days just doing those two things.

Aurielle · July 8

Orbital78 wrote: »

Yes, I have noticed many ghost nodes in Craglorn due to overcrowding and cherry picking. If you're going over the area in a rotation repeatedly you shouldn't be having that many issues. I have been trying to keep my guild traders stocked with some cheap inks as I can for those that are having issues. I have also for whatever reason had a lot of luck in low population zones in the mornings, sometimes getting streaks of 12-20+ in 30mins to a 1.5hrs.

The RNG disparity between players is pretty depressing at this point. I haven't seen 20+ ink in a single WEEK, let alone a thirty minute to 1.5h farm session. Case in point: I spent an hour farming ink in Betnikh last night while in the queue for Cyrodiil and I got a whopping two (2) ink. Here's my Ink Amasser achievement progress (again, after farming daily since Gold Road launched).

Aurielle · July 8

Coerfroid wrote: »

An issue not directly related to ink drop frequency came to mind:
Class script scraps. Having been busy with completing the Gold Road story (and also re-doing the Necrom story on the same tomm, because Awa turned out not to work as promised), I had neither time nor motivation to heavily grind these.
Doing master crafting writs and one random dungeon yields two per day, which means I will thankfully have completed the grind in one more week.
What then? the scraps are account bound (not tradeable) and worth a meager 100 gold at vendors. Certainly not what they feel worth while trapped in the timegate collecting them.
So, imagine you could exchange extra scraps for ink at the scribing vendor in the scriptorium. With an exchange rate of 1:1, a somewht player could easily double their daily ink yield, while still being far behind the average bot.

You don't get any more class script scraps once you have the achievement.

Necrotech_Master · July 8

Coerfroid wrote: »

An issue not directly related to ink drop frequency came to mind:
Class script scraps. Having been busy with completing the Gold Road story (and also re-doing the Necrom story on the same tomm, because Awa turned out not to work as promised), I had neither time nor motivation to heavily grind these.
Doing master crafting writs and one random dungeon yields two per day, which means I will thankfully have completed the grind in one more week.
What then? the scraps are account bound (not tradeable) and worth a meager 100 gold at vendors. Certainly not what they feel worth while trapped in the timegate collecting them.
So, imagine you could exchange extra scraps for ink at the scribing vendor in the scriptorium. With an exchange rate of 1:1, a somewht player could easily double their daily ink yield, while still being far behind the average bot.

stuff like epilogues tying multiple chapters together has always had to be done on a single character, as its related to the quest progress, not achievements

Necrotech_Master · July 8

Aurielle wrote: »

Orbital78 wrote: »

Yes, I have noticed many ghost nodes in Craglorn due to overcrowding and cherry picking. If you're going over the area in a rotation repeatedly you shouldn't be having that many issues. I have been trying to keep my guild traders stocked with some cheap inks as I can for those that are having issues. I have also for whatever reason had a lot of luck in low population zones in the mornings, sometimes getting streaks of 12-20+ in 30mins to a 1.5hrs.

The RNG disparity between players is pretty depressing at this point. I haven't seen 20+ ink in a single WEEK, let alone a thirty minute to 1.5h farm session. Case in point: I spent an hour farming ink in Betnikh last night while in the queue for Cyrodiil and I got a whopping two (2) ink. Here's my Ink Amasser achievement progress (again, after farming daily since Gold Road launched).

this, i went last week back to what i would consider my normal playstyle, im not farming nodes like a bot, just occasional harvesting between quest locations while doing things i want such as farming for leads, running dungeons/trials/archive

ive gotten 0 ink from archive and i did at least 2 runs to arc 4 and a couple other runs through arc 1 because i didnt have as much time, i ran vet lucent citadel 4 times between sat and sun, and got a grand total of 2 ink drops (one on each run on sunday)

we are 6 weeks out on gold road release and im still only at 35 ink, 12 of which was from the original questline run, im down to maybe an avg of half an ink per day (since we cant actually get half an ink, im getting an ink every other day instead of 1 per day)

there is absolutely 0 reason we should have to farm nodes like a bot just to get ink, as farming enemies is extremely inefficient, and running the storyline again is not enjoyable

and again, before anyone mentions it, buying ink does not increment the achievement, and yes i have tried node farming, and i get little or no ink from doing that, so little in fact that i have deemed it a waste of my time

CGPsaint · July 9

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

there is absolutely 0 reason we should have to farm nodes like a bot just to get ink, as farming enemies is extremely inefficient, and running the storyline again is not enjoyable

Agree with this 100%. The problem with farming enemies (such as in a public dungeon, or zombie farming) is that you have to slow your roll or else enemies stop dropping loot, which definitely hampers your chances at getting Ink drops. We should not have to replace our normal game play with dedicated node farming in order to use one of the major features of this update. I just hit 51 ink collected today with 15ish ink coming from the storyline on 1 character and the start of a 2nd, and the majority of the rest coming from resource nodes. Ink drops from kills and/or containers seem to be very few, and far between.

MidniteOwl1913 · July 10

Yeah, I continue to get 1 ink for an hour of intense farming if I'm lucky. Sometimes it's only 1 for 2 hours. (when the plentiful harvest kicks in it can be 2 per hour).

Not enough ink in any way shape or form. And yes if I don't farm I don't see any inks. And from the ZOS responses I see this will not change and is working as intended.

I just don't get it.

BlueRaven · July 10

I had a bad feeling that the ludicrous ink rarity had something to do with the crown store.

DenverRalphy · July 10

The claim that Ink is being added to crown crates seems to be completely made up. I've found no actual evidence to the claim anywhere. Such conjecture needs to be quelled immediately.Nor is there any evidence that Ink will be added to daily login rewards. The only references to either claim are other players wishing or suggesting it, but zero actual statements from anybody even remotely connected to Zos.

If anybody can prove otherwise, by all means please link to the evidence. Otherwise this conjecture needs to come to a a complete stop.

BlueRaven · July 10

DenverRalphy wrote: »

The claim that Ink is being added to crown crates seems to be completely made up. I've found no actual evidence to the claim anywhere. Such conjecture needs to be quelled immediately.Nor is there any evidence that Ink will be added to daily login rewards. The only references to either claim are other players wishing or suggesting it, but zero actual statements from anybody even remotely connected to Zos.

If anybody can prove otherwise, by all means please link to the evidence. Otherwise this conjecture needs to come to a a complete stop.

We cannot send a link here on the forums because those types of links are forbidden.

DenverRalphy · July 10

BlueRaven wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

The claim that Ink is being added to crown crates seems to be completely made up. I've found no actual evidence to the claim anywhere. Such conjecture needs to be quelled immediately.Nor is there any evidence that Ink will be added to daily login rewards. The only references to either claim are other players wishing or suggesting it, but zero actual statements from anybody even remotely connected to Zos.

If anybody can prove otherwise, by all means please link to the evidence. Otherwise this conjecture needs to come to a a complete stop.

We cannot send a link here on the forums because those types of links are forbidden.

Links to official Zos/ESO sources are forbidden? I'm gonna call Shenanigans on that one.

ZOS_Lunar · July 10

Just to clear up any confusion, Jess commented on this yesterday.

Hey all, we'd like to remind you that we do not condone or advise datamining. As a general rule, we don't comment on datamining because ESO is huge game, we are constantly working on things and moving things around behind the scenes, and just because something shows up in the data is no indication of when or how we will use it. That said, we will occasionally make exceptions and this is one of them.

As we've noted before, we agree that the availability of Luminous Ink is lower than we'd like, and we are actively looking into ways we can improve that. Ensuring Luminous Ink drops off of boss monsters was one such step - this is live on PC and going out for console servers in tomorrow's incremental patch. What you see in this thread is another step. We are preparing to add Luminous Ink as a Daily Login Reward (not to the Crown Store) at some point in the future; keep an eye out for our usual Daily Login Rewards info each month.

DenverRalphy · July 10

ZOS_Lunar wrote: »

Just to clear up any confusion, Jess commented on this yesterday.

Hey all, we'd like to remind you that we do not condone or advise datamining. As a general rule, we don't comment on datamining because ESO is huge game, we are constantly working on things and moving things around behind the scenes, and just because something shows up in the data is no indication of when or how we will use it. That said, we will occasionally make exceptions and this is one of them.

As we've noted before, we agree that the availability of Luminous Ink is lower than we'd like, and we are actively looking into ways we can improve that. Ensuring Luminous Ink drops off of boss monsters was one such step - this is live on PC and going out for console servers in tomorrow's incremental patch. What you see in this thread is another step. We are preparing to add Luminous Ink as a Daily Login Reward (not to the Crown Store) at some point in the future; keep an eye out for our usual Daily Login Rewards info each month.

Thank you.

So definiitely not a Crown sale (which includes crates) items.

Jaraal · July 10

ZOS_Lunar wrote: »

Just to clear up any confusion,

So this is verification that there will be two types of non-combinable (not stacking) inks? Bound and tradable?

Necrotech_Master · July 10

Jaraal wrote: »

ZOS_Lunar wrote: »

Just to clear up any confusion,

So this is verification that there will be two types of non-combinable (not stacking) inks? Bound and tradable?

when they give us material tempers from daily login, we dont get "bound" dreugh wax for example, so i would not assume they are making the ink from daily login bound either

Elsonso · July 10

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

ZOS_Lunar wrote: »

Just to clear up any confusion,

So this is verification that there will be two types of non-combinable (not stacking) inks? Bound and tradable?

when they give us material tempers from daily login, we dont get "bound" dreugh wax for example, so i would not assume they are making the ink from daily login bound either

We’ll see.. Ink is not dreugh wax.

Necrotech_Master · July 10

Elsonso wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

ZOS_Lunar wrote: »

Just to clear up any confusion,

So this is verification that there will be two types of non-combinable (not stacking) inks? Bound and tradable?

when they give us material tempers from daily login, we dont get "bound" dreugh wax for example, so i would not assume they are making the ink from daily login bound either

We’ll see.. Ink is not dreugh wax.

i still see no reason why they would make a bound version, theres no precedent for it: dreugh wax, tempering alloy, rosin all are given as unbound and also materials, ink is considered a crafting material, and goes into the craft bag, so it should be treated the same

i do still see the quantities being given by daily logins to be abysmally small though (1 unit of ink from a daily login day for example)

Orbital78 · July 10

How many ink do you need? Maybe there will be more useful combinations in U43, but you really don't need more than the 12 from the quest. If you do just harvest some. I seem to find more off mobs in dungeons and trials if that is more your style.

Jaraal · July 10

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

ZOS_Lunar wrote: »

Just to clear up any confusion,

So this is verification that there will be two types of non-combinable (not stacking) inks? Bound and tradable?

when they give us material tempers from daily login, we dont get "bound" dreugh wax for example, so i would not assume they are making the ink from daily login bound either

We’ll see.. Ink is not dreugh wax.

i still see no reason why they would make a bound version, theres no precedent for it: dreugh wax, tempering alloy, rosin all are given as unbound and also materials, ink is considered a crafting material, and goes into the craft bag, so it should be treated the same

i do still see the quantities being given by daily logins to be abysmally small though (1 unit of ink from a daily login day for example)

Also, since people who don't own Gold Road can't get ink (without buying it.... but what would they need it for if they can't scribe?), what are the other players going to get as a daily reward? Is this the start of rewards customized to your level of payment?

EdjeSwift · July 10

Orbital78 wrote: »

How many ink do you need? Maybe there will be more useful combinations in U43, but you really don't need more than the 12 from the quest. If you do just harvest some. I seem to find more off mobs in dungeons and trials if that is more your style.

Achievement hunters need a minimum of 30 for their needs but beyond that I concur the need isn't that great. People were initially pushing the "nearly 4000" combinations narrative that they needed thousands of ink, but the fact of the matter is once you've crafted one and tested out the cast time/animation timing you can figure out how to tweak it beyond that within a few more adjustments and nothing is too OP as to be necessary and meta in the current iteration.

Necrotech_Master · July 10

Orbital78 wrote: »

How many ink do you need? Maybe there will be more useful combinations in U43, but you really don't need more than the 12 from the quest. If you do just harvest some. I seem to find more off mobs in dungeons and trials if that is more your style.

well lets see, you need at least 33 ink to scribe all of the skills at least once for one achievement, and 500 to get the achievement for getting ink as drops

ink does not drop for me in any useful amounts, ive done harvesting multiple days for 30-60 minutes and maybe gotten 1 ink, this is extremely unenjoyable to do for me and with that rate is far too low to bother with

ive tried playing normally doing mostly dungeons, trials and archive, and i got 2 ink drops in 6 days, so also, is not a really good method to get ink

discounting the 12 from the quest ive gotten 23 ink as drops in the 5.5 weeks since gold road release, the drop rate is insanely bad, its so bad theres no way to experiment with the system, even though i have about 10 inks sitting around i dont even want to scribe anything because i dont know if the result will work as i expect, and rescribing means using more valuable ink i dont have, not to mention if i wanted to do this my 10 alts