Why is medium armor crafting punished?

eNumbra · September 2014

Trying to get scraps for new medium armor is a chore - hide scraps will only be dropped according to your maximum wearable level or according to the level of the creature, which ever is lower.

So, you can take a level 10 to Craglorn and farm Vet 9+ cloth and ore nodes all day long; but if you were to somehow kill any of the creatures there, the best scraps they would drop would be Rawhide. This means that one cannot as effectively farm as they play in anticipation of the next level crossover for medium armor. The player must then actively farm on a higher level character or be forced to wade through creatures in lower leveled armor.

Then there is the fact that dropped scraps are RNG based and only ever 1 or 2 from creatures that drop them. Sometimes you'll get junk hides, sometimes you'll get nothing - this never happens with ore nodes and rarely happens (if someone leaves the fish bait) on cloth nodes.

So why does zenimax hate medium armor?

Stratti · September 2014

Didnt you know your supposed to be in a stick and dress????

You need to read the patch notes

Soloeus · September 2014

Bah.

I get hides easy all the time. In the V9, V10 and Craglorn Zones they come really easy. Whats the problem?

eNumbra · September 2014

Soloeus wrote: »

Bah.

I get hides easy all the time. In the V9, V10 and Craglorn Zones they come really easy. Whats the problem?

The problem is exactly as I said: primarily transition from one mat to the next.
You cannot get drops that you cannot wear- this Less of an issue in Vet levels because the differences between each vet level is pretty negligible, but is a much bigger problem for characters below 50. You cannot craft in anticipation of material rollover without actively farming for the intended character with another higher level character.

Cloth and Metal wearers can farm as they go at any level, orichalcum, dwemer, ebony, cotton, spidersilk... All of these show up for and are farmable by characters well below their usable levels.

Soloeus · September 2014

You can still buy them.

eNumbra · September 2014

Soloeus wrote: »

You can still buy them.

So being forced to buy them is okay?
Medium crafting is heavily disadvantaged over all others.

Gillysan · September 2014

Hirelings will send you mats based on your craft level. I'm in 3 big trade guilds. Look for the ones with active leadership and kick inactive players.

Circuitous · September 2014

I was unaware that higher-level animals only dropped scraps of your level, that sucks. Was it always this way, or was this changed when they fixed scraps not dropping from 1.3?

eNumbra · September 2014

Gillysan wrote: »

Hirelings will send you mats based on your craft level.

The highest you can craft and never lower, if you're crafting for another character this is not helpful. They also only ever send 5 at a time at the most, even low level Jacks would require 2 shipments.

Why is everyone here so dismissive of an obvious inequality in the crafting system?

Soloeus · September 2014

eNumbra wrote: »

Soloeus wrote: »

You can still buy them.

So being forced to buy them is okay?
Medium crafting is heavily disadvantaged over all others.

Why not? People who buy things have more access than people who don't.

I am just playing devil's advocate here. I feel the situation is fine. I never have or had an issue with Hides. It works fine for me. You can get stuff your own level, whats the problem.

Want higher level mats? Gain a few levels.
Takes what, half an hour to an hour?

Think of it as a time sink.

Now, if you are complaining that level 10's can just port into Coldharbour and Craglorn, then we agree. I wish those, like vet zones, were level locked or quest locked and that no teleport trick could get you there without meeting requirements.

eNumbra · September 2014

Soloeus wrote: »

Why not? People who buy things have more access than people who don't.

There is a tremendous difference between choosing to buy something for ease of access and being forced to buy something because you lack the same opportunity as other crafters.

I am just playing devil's advocate here. I feel the situation is fine. I never have or had an issue with Hides. It works fine for me. You can get stuff your own level, whats the problem.

the problem: you can't farm hides above your level. You can farm cloth, metal and wood above your level.

Want higher level mats? Gain a few levels.
Takes what, half an hour to an hour?

why?
Why should someone be forced to get to the next level just to farm the mats for new armor when heavy and light users don't have to? You can have light and heavy armor, weapons and shield all ready at material roll overs BUT NOT hides.

Think of it as a time sink.

A time sink that ONLY affects medium armor.

Now, if you are complaining that level 10's can just port into Coldharbour and Craglorn, then we agree. I wish those, like vet zones, were level locked or quest locked and that no teleport trick could get you there without meeting requirements.

are you even reading these posts or are you keying in on one or two words to reply to?

Wolfshead · September 2014

eNumbra wrote: »

Soloeus wrote: »

Bah.

I get hides easy all the time. In the V9, V10 and Craglorn Zones they come really easy. Whats the problem?

The problem is exactly as I said: primarily transition from one mat to the next.
You cannot get drops that you cannot wear- this Less of an issue in Vet levels because the differences between each vet level is pretty negligible, but is a much bigger problem for characters below 50. You cannot craft in anticipation of material rollover without actively farming for the intended character with another higher level character.

Cloth and Metal wearers can farm as they go at any level, orichalcum, dwemer, ebony, cotton, spidersilk... All of these show up for and are farmable by characters well below their usable levels.

But why would go to Craglorn Zones with low lvl char that is below 50 it don't make any sense and if you answer you want to go there farming to earn money why not use your high lvl char.

I have never understand the point that put low lvl char in high lvl zones just for farming for it is easy to go farm there with high lvl char.

ShimmeringSword · September 2014

I think that it's fair because in order to farm cloth and ore you have to actively go to find them. While farming hides only requires an AOE and a location. I mean yeah it sucks that you can't prepare for the next tier of armor but it still takes just as long to gather material for full sets of heavy and light armor. Lastly the difference between materials (rawhide, hide, etc.) isn't bad enough for you to warrant an immediate upgrade.

Aevric · September 2014

Gillysan wrote: »

Hirelings will send you mats based on your craft level. I'm in 3 big trade guilds. Look for the ones with active leadership and kick inactive players.

Your entire reply is utter BS.
Relying on hirelings for ANY crafting material is a slap in the face (*cough* Provisioning *cough*).
Belonging to trade guilds is irrelevant. Most of the members of purely trade guilds are greedy #$%^ who only joined them to sell items through npc guild vendors at inflated prices, since they couldn't scam anyone with their %^&* spam on zone chat.

PBpsy · September 2014

Because ZOS has a team of at least 10 people that is payed to just come out with stuff the stamina users will whine about( not that they actually need them). It's the Stamina Whine Generation Department. You guys are really lucky I am not working there.

poodlemasterb16_ESO · September 2014

I pretty well quit farming many things since we got the Guild Vendors. I can but 100 lots of pretty near anything for under 1000g with a bit of comparative shopping. At that point it's not worth my while as I can make 3000g+ an hour these days.

Sharee · September 2014

When i hit level 16 with my templar, I made him an armor set that i thought would last a while. A blue mix of full seducer with rest magnus, and warlock jewelry.

What i did not expect was that i could still solo content easily in the same armo 20 levels later, while being level 36, in Bangkorai, a level 40 zone.

Morale of the story, don't obsess over the level of your armor. If the mobs you are fighting drop low level leather scraps, just wait till you gain a level or two and make the new armor when they start dropping what you need.

Welka · September 2014

Nonsense, lesser mobs drop lesser tier of leather. I'm V14 and I keep vending them cause they just use bag space.

MiyaTheUnbroken · September 2014

I'm with the OP. I see the imbalance, and it's not fair, but there are ways around it, for instance farming gold instead of mats so you can buy them. No, we should not have to do this, but there are so many other, larger problems that this doesn't seem like that big of a deal. There's a lot of other stuff that I'd like to see fixed first, especially when each fix seems to have a significant chance of breaking everything it comes into contact with.

Rune_Relic · September 2014

I know what the OP means...especially approaching 40-50. You make that armour to last a few levels...but it just isn't cutting it as the levels rise. So you hunt around for that level 50 hide....but there is no monsters around in the level 50 zone that drop level 50 hide. Even though you can pick up level 50 metal and fiber everywhere with all the nodes.

There are some areas where the beasts are lower level than the nodes in the same area. I bugged this a while ago. Along with the hireling sending light armour mats all the time and no hide.

I pretty much just sucked it up and got on with it. Life was hard for a few levels.

Origin · September 2014

This is true and must be a bug. With a VR7 in Craglorn, killing VR11 animals gets you superb hides while is was shadowhide before the patch. I just test it.

poodlemasterb16_ESO · September 2014

Rune_Relic wrote: »

I know what the OP means...especially approaching 40-50. You make that armour to last a few levels...but it just isn't cutting it as the levels rise. So you hunt around for that level 50 hide....but there is no monsters around in the level 50 zone that drop level 50 hide. Even though you can pick up level 50 metal and fiber everywhere with all the nodes.

There are some areas where the beasts are lower level than the nodes in the same area. I bugged this a while ago. Along with the hireling sending light armour mats all the time and no hide.

I pretty much just sucked it up and got on with it. Life was hard for a few levels.

Fell hide is available in Coldharbor. Not everywhere but there are areas that have the Clanfears and Netches dropping fell scraps.

It is rare.

Rune_Relic · September 2014

poodlemasterb16_ESO wrote: »

Rune_Relic wrote: »

I know what the OP means...especially approaching 40-50. You make that armour to last a few levels...but it just isn't cutting it as the levels rise. So you hunt around for that level 50 hide....but there is no monsters around in the level 50 zone that drop level 50 hide. Even though you can pick up level 50 metal and fiber everywhere with all the nodes.

There are some areas where the beasts are lower level than the nodes in the same area. I bugged this a while ago. Along with the hireling sending light armour mats all the time and no hide.

I pretty much just sucked it up and got on with it. Life was hard for a few levels.

Fell hide is available in Coldharbor. Not everywhere but there are areas that have the Clanfears and Netches dropping fell scraps.

It is rare.

Agreed. At the time though I was V1 on entering coldharbour. So I needed the level stuff before then. metal and fibre was fine....hide non existant.

jelliedsoup · September 2014

Go to your final level map and kill animals for hides. Crabs and water are good.

eNumbra · September 2014

Welka wrote: »

Nonsense, lesser mobs drop lesser tier of leather. I'm V14 and I keep vending them cause they just use bag space.

Nobody disputed that.

Soloeus · September 2014

To harvest, you have to get through the mobs first. Same with every other thing about higher zones. So, you want your level 20 to kill level 40 Mudcrabs for level 40 leather? Nonsense. Maybe mudcrab should be harder then.

You only have to kill easy monsters. Harvesting, you have no guaranteed spot to always find columbine only, ladies smock only, kuta only, kura, kude, rekuta only, namira's rot only. Crafting Tables are shared among the crafts and the spawn is what it is.

Leather has the advantage that you always have guaranteed spots no matter what, that respawn, give other loot and exp. An advantage, if you will, the other crafts don't have, so why are they being punished?

eNumbra · September 2014

Soloeus wrote: »

To harvest, you have to get through the mobs first. Same with every other thing about higher zones.

Oh please, the vast majority of nodes can be harvested without bothering mobs at all.

There's also a reason I didn't compare Armor crafting to Alch and Enchanting, they're different tiers of crafting. Medium should be on the same level as Light and Heavy and it isn't; your argument about guaranteed spots justifies the RNG on drops but nothing more. There is no reason a creature shouldn't drop hides less than its level.

Soloeus · September 2014

eNumbra wrote: »

Soloeus wrote: »

To harvest, you have to get through the mobs first. Same with every other thing about higher zones.

Oh please, the vast majority of nodes can be harvested without bothering mobs at all.

There's also a reason I didn't compare Armor crafting to Alch and Enchanting, they're different tiers of crafting. Medium should be on the same level as Light and Heavy and it isn't; your argument about guaranteed spots justifies the RNG on drops but nothing more. There is no reason a creature shouldn't drop hides less than its level.

All its drops are tiered to its level, hides, weapons, rings... Leathers come from drops of mobs which is why there are some occasional problems.

That is what it is. It is what it is, no point complaining about it. Medium Armor is not "punished" and you can still collect mats once you are at level.

Not a satisfactory answer to you, but your idea of having it work how you want it to work punishes light armor because light armor harvest nodes don't give loot + exp.

Just take the bad with the good, your alive. Starving babies in Africa. First World Problems, your fine. Okie dokie? Bye bye!!

poodlemasterb16_ESO · September 2014

Go buy it at a Guild Vendor. Prices are so good it's not really worth my time to farm anymore. I am VR7 and make gold at a fairly ridiculous rate, it's true.

freespirit · September 2014

There is often a crossover between level appropriate mats but I just cover it by making a set of blue armour at the highest point of the mat before......

By the time the mobs are giving me trouble I have more than enough of the next level mats.

Probitas · September 2014

The OP has a very valid point. Medium armor is the ONLY resource that is entirely based on RNG. Every other node taken has something of that level, and since they crushed the ability to decon higher level items to get mats, you can buy them, if you can afford it, or do without.

Personally, I think that if it can't be balanced out to where the RNG is applied evenly across all nodes, none of them should have it, and every animal slain should drop at least 1 leather material.

Call it QQ, call it whatever you like. If you take the time to kill 100 deer or cows or whatever, they ought to be dropping 100 pieces of leather in total. Minimum. The store is not a valid substitute for actual game play.