What's with all the wingless butterflies?

Arato · June 2016

Most alchemy nodes, you see it, you loot it, you get a reagent, sometimes two if you have the appropriate champion perk. With butterflies and torchbugs, they act like a node in that you aren't fighting them you're just looting them, but most of the time, you don't get an alchemy reagent out of it. There are so many wingless butterflies and torchbugs missing 1/3 of their body that I have to wonder what is up with Tamriel's ecosystem? Did we get in a nuclear war recently so all the insects are mutants?

phaneub17_ESO · June 2016

Now you know how people farming leather scraps feel.

Arato · June 2016

also, missed opportunity ZOS, there are frogs in game, we have little hopping frogs, poison making is now a thing.. humans have used frogs as a source of poison for darts and arrows for thousands of years.. and yet.. we don't utilize any frog parts for poison making?

Arato · June 2016

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Now you know how people farming leather scraps feel.

Leather's easy, animals that drop leather can be found in high concentrations in some areas like delves and public dungeons, aoe spam and loot lots of leather. You also get leather in the mail just about every day from hirelings x however many alts have those hirelings.

The butterflies and torchbugs are not found in concentrated areas, they're spread out here and there in the environment. You loot them like a node rather than fighting them so there's really no excuse that "in the fighting you destroyed the torchbug's thorax so it's unusable"

Beetle scuttle, scrib jelly, and spider eggs aren't an issue, you kill a lot of them in delves and such too.

It's butterflies and torchbugs that are a problem not having a 100% drop rate.

UrQuan · June 2016

You're not being careful enough when you grab them - you're crushing their wings and making them useless as an ingredient!

Epona222 · June 2016

You are crushing the wings in your clumsy attempts to grab them. Try selecting a smaller hand size in character creator.

Just kidding!

(On a more serious note, there is RNG at work here the same as it is for leather drops from mobs. Plant nodes work differently).

FortheloveofKrist · June 2016

The problem is all these jerk players going around grabbing the butterflies, taking the wings, and leaving the insect parts.

So when you show up, they are just wingless carcasses floating in the wind.

People need to learn some manners.

Arato · June 2016

UrQuan wrote: »

You're not being careful enough when you grab them - you're crushing their wings and making them useless as an ingredient!

but I can pick delicate flowers with having 100% success rate, sometimes 200% success rate.

Here I find 2 torchbugs as a pair, only one has a thorax.. are zos devs not knowing what a thorax is and thinking it's one sex's *** or something?

Oh, fleshflies, that's another one. though I don't remember looting fleshflies to get the few larvaes I have.

Epona222 · June 2016

You can also get fleshfly larvae from zombie mobs

Arato · June 2016

FortheloveofKrist wrote: »

The problem is all these jerk players going around grabbing the butterflies, taking the wings, and leaving the insect parts.

So when you show up, they are just wingless carcasses floating in the wind.

People need to learn some manners.

That's definitely not the issue as otherwise both torchbugs would be missing their thorax rather than 1 having one and the other not having one. It just to me seems like it's a 50% drop rate for Torchbugs and probably about a 25% drop rate for butterfly wings.

butterflies should have you know, wings. Naturally they'd have 2 but I can be okay with 1 per butterfly.

Epona222 · June 2016

Just in case anyone is unaware how plant spawns work - the only way it is different is that the type of plant that has spawned in the node changes the appearance of the node. That's it. There are 3 types of plant nodes, 1 spawns waterside plants, 1 spawns grassland plants, and 1 spawns funghi that grow in the shade. If they gave all the grassland nodes the appearance of bugloss, you would find the same disparity in looting, because sometimes you would loot what looked like a bugloss and get a ladies smock.

Arato · June 2016

Epona222 wrote: »

Just in case anyone is unaware how plant spawns work - the only way it is different is that the type of plant that has spawned in the node changes the appearance of the node. That's it. There are 3 types of plant nodes, 1 spawns waterside plants, 1 spawns grassland plants, and 1 spawns funghi that grow in the shade. If they gave all the grassland nodes the appearance of bugloss, you would find the same disparity in looting, because sometimes you would loot what looked like a bugloss and get a ladies smock.

I figured it was something along that lines, because certain plants can only spawn in certain locations.

FortheloveofKrist · June 2016

Arato wrote: »

FortheloveofKrist wrote: »

The problem is all these jerk players going around grabbing the butterflies, taking the wings, and leaving the insect parts.

So when you show up, they are just wingless carcasses floating in the wind.

People need to learn some manners.

That's definitely not the issue as otherwise both torchbugs would be missing their thorax rather than 1 having one and the other not having one. It just to me seems like it's a 50% drop rate for Torchbugs and probably about a 25% drop rate for butterfly wings.

butterflies should have you know, wings. Naturally they'd have 2 but I can be okay with 1 per butterfly.

I think you may have missed the winky face.

Arato · June 2016

FortheloveofKrist wrote: »

Arato wrote: »

FortheloveofKrist wrote: »

The problem is all these jerk players going around grabbing the butterflies, taking the wings, and leaving the insect parts.

So when you show up, they are just wingless carcasses floating in the wind.

People need to learn some manners.

That's definitely not the issue as otherwise both torchbugs would be missing their thorax rather than 1 having one and the other not having one. It just to me seems like it's a 50% drop rate for Torchbugs and probably about a 25% drop rate for butterfly wings.

butterflies should have you know, wings. Naturally they'd have 2 but I can be okay with 1 per butterfly.

I think you may have missed the winky face.

Well, i was just in another thread where someone seriously thought that was an issue with the runestones, someone stealing the potency rune and leaving the other 2

Elsonso · June 2016

Epona222 wrote: »

If they gave all the grassland nodes the appearance of bugloss, you would find the same disparity in looting, because sometimes you would loot what looked like a bugloss and get a ladies smock.

The game is only two years old. Give them time.

Arato wrote: »

Most alchemy nodes, you see it, you loot it, you get a reagent, sometimes two if you have the appropriate champion perk. With butterflies and torchbugs, they act like a node in that you aren't fighting them you're just looting them, but most of the time, you don't get an alchemy reagent out of it. There are so many wingless butterflies and torchbugs missing 1/3 of their body that I have to wonder what is up with Tamriel's ecosystem? Did we get in a nuclear war recently so all the insects are mutants?

This is what happens when "gameplay" and "reality" are not in sync. Someone decided that butterfly wings and torch bug thorax were desirable as crafting reagents, but did not want to the drop rate too high. Thus is born wingless butterflies and bugs without a thorax. Limits on drops for gameplay design reasons trump everything else, and they never stop to think that they are doing something silly like this and make changes in the design. Or, if they do they don't care.

This is why Blizzard has players killing 30 wolves to get 10 ears, or 50 rats to get 10 tails, in WoW. Seems to be a disease among game designers.

MissBizz · June 2016

Feel free to send me all the wonderful fishing bait your getting

MissBizz · June 2016

MissBizz wrote: »

Feel free to send me all the wonderful fishing bait your getting

OMG! I have the answer!!!!

Sometimes when you catch the butterfly you may tear/crush the wings making them unusable for your purposes and they are then just some unidentified insect part.

phaneub17_ESO · June 2016

It's like when you open an avocado, not every one is always the right one, sometimes its soft on the inside other times its rock hard, and on occasion it's like a warzone occurred from within.

Aetherderius · June 2016

I just go with the Finding Nemo thing.

You need a pair of wings for 1 reagent. The wingless butterflies just have a 'lucky wing' so to speak, and are therefore not viable for alchemy.

DaveMoeDee · June 2016

Your character is clumsy. Fat fingers.

FortheloveofKrist · June 2016

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

It's like when you open an avocado, not every one is always the right one, sometimes its soft on the inside other times its rock hard, and on occasion it's like a warzone occurred from within.

Gotta learn when to open your fruit. All avocados are good if you open them at the right time.

Epona222 · June 2016

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

It's like when you open an avocado, not every one is always the right one, sometimes its soft on the inside other times its rock hard, and on occasion it's like a warzone occurred from within.

That's a superb analogy tbh, I am in the UK and making guacamole can be a bit of a trial due to finding avocados at the right level of ripeness, as they are all imported unripe, but by the time they reach the shops some will be riper than others (many still like bullets, others to the point of being mushy), some will be bruised etc.

Whatzituyah · June 2016

How can they even fly if they don't have wings?

Acrolas · June 2016

This is a weird thread.

The white quality insect parts are just a mash. Little bit of everything thrown in. Fish aren't that picky.
The green quality reagents are specific intact parts separate from that mash.

It's not about a lack of or extra parts. It's about the quality of the sample.

Animal_Mother · June 2016

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Now you know how people farming leather scraps feel.

Every mudcrab is a potential scrap.

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

Your character is clumsy. Fat fingers.

Who cares if my character has fat fingers? The butterfly wings will still get grounded up and mixed with other ingredients - who cares if they are a little damaged. Now flesh fly larva? That you have to keep in one piece.

KhajiitiLizard · June 2016

ZOS ran out of Red Bull.

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO · June 2016

Epona222 wrote: »

You are crushing the wings in your clumsy attempts to grab them. Try selecting a smaller hand size in character creator.

I'm betting a certain U.S. presidential contender would be PERFECTLY suited to butterfly harvesting.

Both physically and temperamentally...

KhajiitiLizard · June 2016

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

Epona222 wrote: »

You are crushing the wings in your clumsy attempts to grab them. Try selecting a smaller hand size in character creator.

I'm betting a certain U.S. presidential contender would be PERFECTLY suited to butterfly harvesting.

Both physically and temperamentally...

No he'd have someone else do it. Not pay them, and then fire them.

SantieClaws · June 2016

Mmm hiccup.

Khajiit is so sorry for eating all the delicious butterfly wings.

The doritos of Elsweyr we call them. This one cannot resit their crunch.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

olsborg · June 2016

You kill a spider youre pretty much guaranteed to find spider sacks or whatsitcalled, if you harvest a butterfly you find wings in 1 out of 10. Dunno why, but its kinda annoying

Arato · June 2016

FYI I'm harvesting with a lithe Wood Elf nightblade assassin, they're quite dextrous I'd think