I was just in Stone Falls, for Caldwells Silver, and found a Kuta near Ft Virak in a Rune Container. Surprised me so much I had to log out and post here.

Now, if I can just find that dang General I need to find....

just got 1 today, yes they still come. Hirelings act differently for every player tho. My miner has not given me a single tempering alloy for weeks now.

I received one from my hireling last night

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

I thought you were only referring to improvement mats. Yes, it is true that you only get materials that you can use. However, there is no skill that you invest in that can affect the hireling drop rate for rare tempers/aspect runes. If you can get them from the hireling, you can get them, but you can't influence their drop rate.

As to why they don't include that in the pop-up, I'd have to guess that it's because it's self-evident. Your hireling won't send you items you can't actually use for crafting.

Well, I guess we more or less agree then:

You can only get the rare tempers/aspect runes which you can use (But the whole problem is that this fact is not informed and it is not self-evident to a new player IMO). In regard to blacksmithing, cloth and woodworking you can use the tempers at any level. You therefore have a chance at these right away without any supporting skills.

- Enchanting are however different, first of all there are 2 other skills which effects outcome besides the hireling: Both the "Potency improvement" which determines potency runes and "Aspect improvement" which determines aspect runes. Use of the aspect runes are not chance-based, like the tempers, but absolutely requires the "Aspect improvement"skill. Hence this difference which are not intuitive apparent and self-evident.

- IMO, adding a line to the hireling description explaining the potential rewards in better detail, and that you can only gain what you may use, will be a great help to many new players. And how can more information ever be a bad thing?

- The real confusion however, and probably reason for this thread, arises from the bugs in the hireling rewards from invested points in "Aspect improvement" - The aspect gain seem to be 1 tier ahead of level and for the 4/4 skill, no Kuta gain seem possible. See other thread for details.

Sadae wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Hireling results are not affected by anything except the amount of points you put in to the hireling.

That's the way they SHOULD work, but multiple threads on this topic are showing otherwise.

There used to be a bug in the game whereas your hireling brought Potency runes that were one level above what your "Potency Improvement" level was at, and then when you maxed it out at 9/9 you got nothing. That got fixed some time ago so that hirelings brought runes at your level instead of one above.

There seems to be a similar issue with "Aspect Improvement" in that your hireling can bring aspect runes one quality level above what you're at, and that you get gold Kutas at 3/4, but not at 4/4.

We are still trying to sort this out, and other factors appear to be able to affect things as well. But there's little doubt "Aspect Improvement" is a key factor.

No, there's plenty of doubt. I've gotten a few Kutas both before and after the patch from my hireling. It's rare, because it's a yellow item. But I get them.

So you're having bad luck. Stop trying to make up bugs in order to explain that.

Sadae wrote: »

There seems to be a similar issue with "Aspect Improvement" in that your hireling can bring aspect runes one quality level above what you're at, and that you get gold Kutas at 3/4, but not at 4/4.

I agree that aspect improvement affects the hireling's performance, but I don't think this bug you're talking about exists with aspect runes.

I've gotten kutas with 4/4 aspect improvement.

I have another char who was at 0/4 aspect improvement for about a month. He had level 32 hirelings during that month, but didn't get any aspect rune as far as I could recall. Recently, I upgraded his aspect improvement to 3/4 and he has gotten up to Rekuta. He has not yet received Kutas, but my 4/4 received a Kuta last week.

For the equipment crafting, I do recall that there were some quirks in the past, like getting materials much higher than your material level. This occurred very rarely, and I haven't seen this happen in a long time.

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Sadae wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Hireling results are not affected by anything except the amount of points you put in to the hireling.

That's the way they SHOULD work, but multiple threads on this topic are showing otherwise.

There used to be a bug in the game whereas your hireling brought Potency runes that were one level above what your "Potency Improvement" level was at, and then when you maxed it out at 9/9 you got nothing. That got fixed some time ago so that hirelings brought runes at your level instead of one above.

There seems to be a similar issue with "Aspect Improvement" in that your hireling can bring aspect runes one quality level above what you're at, and that you get gold Kutas at 3/4, but not at 4/4.

We are still trying to sort this out, and other factors appear to be able to affect things as well. But there's little doubt "Aspect Improvement" is a key factor.

No, there's plenty of doubt. I've gotten a few Kutas both before and after the patch from my hireling. It's rare, because it's a yellow item. But I get them.

So you're having bad luck. Stop trying to make up bugs in order to explain that.

From 20 in a month and a half with one hireling to 0 in two months with three hirelings is more than bad luck, if not bugged it is the worst string of luck I have ever had in a game with RNG. It just seems a little odd that many people are talking about the same string of luck during the same time period with the same single resource. Especially since there has not been a week I didn't get the rare yellow mats multiple times in all the other crafting professions.

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

kitsinni wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Sadae wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Hireling results are not affected by anything except the amount of points you put in to the hireling.

That's the way they SHOULD work, but multiple threads on this topic are showing otherwise.

There used to be a bug in the game whereas your hireling brought Potency runes that were one level above what your "Potency Improvement" level was at, and then when you maxed it out at 9/9 you got nothing. That got fixed some time ago so that hirelings brought runes at your level instead of one above.

There seems to be a similar issue with "Aspect Improvement" in that your hireling can bring aspect runes one quality level above what you're at, and that you get gold Kutas at 3/4, but not at 4/4.

We are still trying to sort this out, and other factors appear to be able to affect things as well. But there's little doubt "Aspect Improvement" is a key factor.

No, there's plenty of doubt. I've gotten a few Kutas both before and after the patch from my hireling. It's rare, because it's a yellow item. But I get them.

So you're having bad luck. Stop trying to make up bugs in order to explain that.

From 20 in a month and a half with one hireling to 0 in two months with three hirelings is more than bad luck, if not bugged it is the worst string of luck I have ever had in a game with RNG. It just seems a little odd that many people are talking about the same string of luck during the same time period with the same single resource. Especially since there has not been a week I didn't get the rare yellow mats multiple times in all the other crafting professions.

There are 700,000 people playing with you. Odds are, if you post about bad luck, more than a few people will have had similar experiences. It's like going to Vegas and assuming the dealer is cheating because everyone at the bar lost money at blackjack.

Until you show me that you have further access to the code than I do I will take your expertise with a grain of salt. You have exactly the same amount of proof that a bug isn't affecting certain people as anyone does that it is. Everything you posted about RNG is exactly why you can't know if it is bugged for certain people or not. There have already been multiple examples of bugs that certain people have and the person next to them doesn't. I don't have proof it is a bug and I'm not stating for a fact it is, just bring the situation to light so ZOS can look at the code if they think something is up.

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

There are 700,000 people playing with you. Odds are, if you post about bad luck, more than a few people will have had similar experiences.

700,000 may as well be 2. For the kind of odds we'd be talking about here there isn't number in the English language big enough to generate even a 0.1% chance of this happening.

This isn't some lame issue about somebody getting more of something than somebody else. A chunk of the population getting regular deliveries of Kutas while another chuck get none at all over the course of months, or suddenly gets none after certain changes can be nothing other than a problem in the code. It would appear that certain skills are affecting the results that shouldn't be, and that Hireling and Improvement skills aren't the only factors involved as they should be.

Ok got a second Kuta today. This is as close to a 100% confirmation you can get that aspect extraction affects Kuta rate from hirelings without having access to the code...

I havent gotten a single Kuta in over a month as well.

It happened today.

Third kuta in a week after putting 3 points in aspect extraction. After 3 months of getting none. Had 4/4 aspect improvement the whole time