Tempering Alloys

Integral1900 · October 2016

For me the rewards from blacksmith writs are the main source, I kept a diary of the drops and out of every ten alloy, eight came from writ rewards, it's a dam good job as well given the otherwise pathetic rewards, I used to sell them but now I just hold onto them, after all there is simply no point if you're going to have to buy it back again later anyway.

wellerrocks · October 2016

I have done 4 writs and gotten 2 so far, not so bad but quite a long winded process, still, no moaning if I am getting some.

Synfaer · October 2016

The return rates for gold mats have not changed since before OT
I have refined close to 20k raw materials and its pretty close to 5% return, one gold mat every 20 refines (200 raw material).
Returns from writs are still the same @ about 30%, or 1 gold mat every about every 3 writs.
Hirelings are the same, at about 2% return for 3/3 hireling (4% for clothing as mats are doubled in mails).

Suter1972 · November 2016

Lava_Croft wrote: »

I just want to make a note about the current state of Tempering Alloy prices in guild stores:

Utter nonsense.

I got one in a writ last night and had a look for prices in guild stores. Only one of my 5 guilds had any and it was up for 39K gold!!

I couldn't justify that so put it on at 19K, even then thinking I would be lucky to sell it.

Literally 5 minutes later up pops the mail saying it had been sold.

I assume they are extremely rare at the minute!

aldriq · November 2016

Suter1972 wrote: »

I assume they are extremely rare at the minute!

My guess is that a lot of people are busy golding many of the new One Tamriel dropped sets. More of a spike in demand than a drop in supply.

Bouldercleave · November 2016

Suter1972 wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

I just want to make a note about the current state of Tempering Alloy prices in guild stores:

Utter nonsense.

I got one in a writ last night and had a look for prices in guild stores. Only one of my 5 guilds had any and it was up for 39K gold!!

I couldn't justify that so put it on at 19K, even then thinking I would be lucky to sell it.

Literally 5 minutes later up pops the mail saying it had been sold.

I assume they are extremely rare at the minute!

They usually range 9-10k on PC NA. I would farm and writ until my nuts fell off before I paid 39k for one alloy. That better be a stack of 4 or 5...

failkiwib16_ESO · November 2016

Nestor wrote: »

wellerrocks wrote: »

I'm spending countless hours trying, and not getting anything! How can i find lower level things if it all scales now?

Roll a Mule character and have them farm. Basically, now you have to build a character to farm the mats you want. I have removed the material passive from all my non crafting characters even those who have maxed out crafting. This way half the mats I get are of a different level.

Just to let you know, it was more than a year before i made a full set of gear in Gold. Also, Purple Armor is just fine, its the Gold Weapons you want to have. The difference between full Purple and Full Gold Armor (including Enchants) is about 500 of an Attribute (depending on how many Infused Pieces you run) and 5 to 10 points of a bonus boost. You can see exactly how much by queing the item up and looking at the before and after stats. It's not very much. In fact, it is a depressingly small difference.

In other words, if your getting killed in Purple gear, making it Gold is not going to make things better for you.

^while what he said is true, I would suggest that if you reach cp160 then turn your weapons gold before anything, it really makes a huge difference compared to turning armor to gold. It will not make you a winner, but it will make a significant difference in your output.

To stay on topic, I buy lots of raw materials and sometimes I don't get any tempers out of refining 800+ mats, but I refine like 10+ materials at a time... my results are a steady 1 gold out of 200-300 materials.

Edziu · November 2016

Qbiken wrote: »

There´s a 1/200 droprate in case you didn´t know.

last time when refining 800ore got only 2 alloys, where is this 1/200 drop rate?
refinining over 5k raw wood, so I should get 25+ rosins, got maybe 16

failkiwib16_ESO · November 2016

@Edziu you don't see the drop rate at refining up to 1k, it's the more you refine the more steady a number of tempers per amount of ore you get.

For example if I refine 1000 ore I can get:

I can get 8/1000 ore
I can get 1/1000 ore
I can get 0/1000 ore

The numbers jump a lot because the amount I refine is small, but when I refine 10,000 ore I get 1/200-1/300 which is much more steady. In between the 10,000 refinement I see periods where I get like 4/100 and sometimes 0/800.

I don't bother to stop the process like @Nestor does (commented on first page of this thread), to yield better results... because I buy the raw materials and only refine when I have huge stacks of everything, and even with addons it can take me over an hour to refine everything.

Nestor · November 2016

@failkiwib16_ESO

With large sample sizes, my method would probably not make a difference in the long run. However, most of us are not going to drop 6 figures of gold on Raw Mats to have a decon session like you do.

My idea or hypothesis for the method is based on the "stickiness" of Random Number Generators. Look at the following

97
40
76
82
62
73
100
90
12
91
69
6
90
52
81
46
26
87
47
85
11
0
79
59
78
29
96
66
34
40
40
15
71
76
61
58
76
10
45
95
53
55
46
41
92
63
62
39
93
88
56
4
86
9
18
33
0
6

Which is an output from a spreadsheet using the Random Number function. There is some grouping of the values towards a favorable level, in this case a higher value, and the same with a lower value, or less of a chance. But, very little mixing of bad then good then bad again. In other words, there is a trend where for a short time, there are mostly favorables, and for a time there are mostly unfavorables.

There are two ways a random number can be generated for a process like refining, on activation of the station, or for each refining operation. My method tries to minimize the bad values for either method ZOS uses. Either its I get a better value for the series of operations if sucks now and I come back, or I land in a better RNG value range for the calculations for the next group of refines. To this end, I even stop refining once I get a Gold Temper as too many times I have gotten a gold early on, then blown the rest of the stack and not gotten any.

SpAEkus · November 2016

I only refine what my 7 Hirelings deliver so my stacks are pretty small on some raws (still have them at various passive levels).

So far even since 1T I can get as high as +5 on one Gold temper and zero on others in the same week. I'm still averaging enough including Hireling deliveries to be able to sell 1 each Alloy/Wax/Rosin across all 5 guilds and buy Raffle Tickets every week.

I haven't tried any start/stop techniques as the numbers are so small and the average has been pretty static.

Edziu · November 2016

@failkiwib16_ESO

yeah....because common player will refining more that 1k raw material at same time

I refine 1-2k or more raw materias from time to time and I had never more than 5 alloys from 1k ore (in all time maybe refined 10k or more raw ore and trust me....I have never seen good drops for alloy), had 5k raw rubedo leather, got less than 15 waxes, 5k raw wood, no more that 15 rosins

failkiwib16_ESO · November 2016

@Nestor what you say all makes sense, and my eyes scream that they recognize a pattern when I refine, however I can't pinpoint what or how complicated the pattern is >.<

When I get those bad phases while I refine, I just let my addon continue to refine, since I refine so much it's really not worth stopping the addon ...thats 600-1k materials wasted in some cases.

I have to admit though, that before I installed addons I used to refine like you do, and I yielded much better results from refinement. It really helped me to cut those negative phases off when I refined (I didn't buy raw mats back then).

helediron · November 2016

Nestor wrote: »

@failkiwib16_ESO

With large sample sizes, my method would probably not make a difference in the long run. However, most of us are not going to drop 6 figures of gold on Raw Mats to have a decon session like you do.
...
Which is an output from a spreadsheet using the Random Number function. There is some grouping of the values towards a favorable level, in this case a higher value, and the same with a lower value, or less of a chance. But, very little mixing of bad then good then bad again. In other words, there is a trend where for a short time, there are mostly favorables, and for a time there are mostly unfavorables.

There are two ways a random number can be generated for a process like refining, on activation of the station, or for each refining operation. My method tries to minimize the bad values for either method ZOS uses. Either its I get a better value for the series of operations if sucks now and I come back, or I land in a better RNG value range for the calculations for the next group of refines. To this end, I even stop refining once I get a Gold Temper as too many times I have gotten a gold early on, then blown the rest of the stack and not gotten any.

This is fool's errand. What actually happens is that you ignore failed refines until you get one. When others start counting from zero, this bumping re-re-re-restarts until you can start counting from one. Of course the results look better then. But if you would add all the refines together and document them, you will eventually see the same droprate as everybody else.

Figuring out patterns from RNG or even PRNG is hopeless task. I kindly remind about a scene in some Harry Potter where he was looking into a mirror that showed what he desired. You might find glimpses of patterns you hope to , but they are not really there.

Bryanonymous · November 2016

Yea, I hate RNG so much. Sometimes I get 5%, sometimes I don't. Pisses me off, but nothing I can do. Refined 3k ore yesterday, and was on track to make the average 5%, after 2k done I got number 11, then over 900 ore got none. Hate that crap.