Question about Medium Armor crafting materials

Halke · September 2014

I know that once you are above the level of the mob you can go back and farm the leather drops (with a couple broken exceptions), however when I ran around Craglorn last I was getting Superb Hide and not Shadow Hide. Is this intended to happen? The same thing occurs in the v8 zone (though there it makes more sense since they are v8 mobs) but I find nodes of Nightwood and Void Bloom all over the place. If I fight v9 mobs outside of Craglorn, will they drop the Shadow Hide that I need? I want to be able to make my armor as soon as I level, not halfway through to v10. Also, have the devs said anything about the difficulty in getting mats for medium armor versus the other two?

Sasky · September 2014

Killing higher-level mobs will drop your current highest usable mat. So you could go around killing V12 mudcrabs as a V1, but they'd still drop the V1 material. It is rather sad how ineffective it is to get medium armor mats. Even ignoring that level issue, you get probably 1 shadowhide on average per mob kill. Per cloth or metal node you get an average of 2-3, you don't have to kill anything, and you can prep ahead of time. Ahead of level your (only) bet is hirelings, and even those split between light and medium. That or buy it.

Isibis · September 2014

The leather drops in craglorn are leveled to your character, just as they are in cyrodiil. I don't really know of a good way around it,since my only source of shadowhide so far have been hirelings. However you could probably just buy a stack of refined mat for 1-2k and save yourself the trouble.

Halke · September 2014

Was this intended to be how medium armor drops work or does anyone know?