The Zircon Bottleneck

GimpyPorcupine · November 2018

I'm currently sitting on 8 Chromium platings, have multiple jewelry master writs worth more than 400 vouchers, but only have 2 Zircon platings and 5 Zircon grains. That is after going through all of my Jeweler surveys to harvest the nodes, and have received about 5 more surveys since then. The drop rate for grains when refining seems to be around 7.5%, so I might be able to get the five needed zircon grains out of the platinum I would harvest from the surveys I have, if RNGzus favors me.

Unlike some others, I'm not completely opposed to the "grains"system, and I do think that golding-out jewelry should have some grind to it. But the bottleneck to create or improve jewelry should be purple-to-gold, not blue-to-purple.

Some have suggested adding a hireling to fix this, but I think a better fix would be if the jewelry reward box had a high chance to give a zircon grain. e.g. a 25% chance of containing a chromium grain, a 50% chance of containing a zircon grain, and a 25% chance of having neither.

El_Borracho · November 2018

It would be nice to have a better chance at getting them from nodes. At this point, fortified nirncrux is abundant compared to plating mats.

Taleof2Cities · November 2018

There is plenty of Zircon to be had in the 3-trait weapon set coffers in the Cyrodiil capturable towns (purchased with AP)

For example, the Eagle Eye coffers in Bruma have a 67% jewelry drop rate ... since the set only drops rings, necklace, and bow.

Even when you get the bow, you can still decon that for a chance at mastic and some refined wood.

With enough AP, you can level up jewelry crafting 1-50 in about an hour ... on purple coffers alone. That’s what I did on my crafting main the day the Summerset patch dropped.

You don’t PvP?

Maybe it’s time to start.

Purple jewelry is also an end of campaign reward for a top tier Leaderboard finish.

Even my Level 18 Health Tank just finished the Vivec campaign with a purple jewelry reward coffer. She runs crafted Willow’s Path jewelry ... so the Level 18 set pieces go to to decon.

Before asking for handouts or a change in the RNG drop rate, think outside the box about other obtainable ways in-game.

erliesc · November 2018

I've got one more research thing to go through...probably a month's worth of waiting...then I will tackle the absurd rarity and prices for the things needed to do the master writs.

So you get jewelry crafting so far...then you hit the brick wall of affordibiilty? I've got the game gold...it's just that there is little motivation to spend it on jewelry crafting for little reward. Costs much to upgrade anything...same to do a writ....

Another bottleneck with furniture crafting....Mundane Rune is so expensive that you can't make much in the way of furniture due to the rarity and the cost.... People are collecting MR then selling it at very high prices....most the the other stuff needed for furniture crafting is finally decling in price a bit...MR is still HEADING UP......

MAKE MORE AVAILABLE!

Starlock · November 2018

This issue wouldn't be a thing if either of these were true: (1) grains were not a thing, (2) deconstructing yielded platings, not grains.

Imagine if when you deconstructed purple blacksmithing armors you got 1/10th of a grain solvent. We'd have the exact same issue with upgrading given the relative rarity of purple gear in the game.

SirAndy · November 2018

GimpyPorcupine wrote: »

The Zircon Bottleneck

I take it you don't decon purple jewelry you get from running dungeons, trials and/or dolmens?

Zircon drops quite frequently when deconning purples ...

Jaimeh · November 2018

I understand where the OP is coming from: daily writs only drop gold grains, so our options for getting purple grains are either from decon'ing jewels, or refining raw materials, but numbers are still low, especially for people without multiple crafters and hence surveys. Getting gold grains as rewards from writs is great, but if we don't have any purple ones, we're stuck on the intermediary step in improvement. Also, so far all the jewellery master writs I've gotten require epic quality; I haven't bothered with any of them, the price of zircon plaitings outweighs the price of vouchers, so I'd rather sell them directly if I have them, than complete the writ. Even after the revision to the number of upgrade materials, I don't think jewellery crafting is used so much to craft, but mostly to transmute/improve, which is a pity given how much anticipated a feature it was.

tmbrinks · November 2018

Zircon is also rarer because it is used (relatively) more than the others. When they changed from 2-3-4-8 for upgrade to 1-2-3-4. Zircon only got a 25% reduction in cost (while the others were 50%-33%-50% respectively)

redspecter23 · November 2018

I've found a good source of Zircon grains in quick vet dungeons with many bosses. Fungal Grotto 1 has I think 3 bosses that have unique jewelry as drops as well as a chance off the end boss and 2 potential chests. With a full group dedicated to running it fast, it's about 10 minutes per run if you include reforming and load screens between runs. It's especially useful on days where it's the pledge. City of Ash 1 is also a good candidate, more so if you are farming burning spellweave.

GimpyPorcupine · November 2018

@Taleof2Cities , yes, I PVP, and I bought Eagle Eye coffers on day 1 of the Summerset drop to get JC to 50. But at 6k AP each, and because of the chance of getting the bow, and because of the chance of not getting the grain when deconning, you're looking at about 100k AP per plating. Still seems pretty expensive.

@SirAndy , I do decon purple jewelry from vet dungeons, but running a vet dungeon to MAYBE get 1 grain is incredibly inefficient. The PVP option is better, in my opinion.

Those are both options, but either way, Zircon is still a huge bottleneck. From the JC writ coffers, doing writs on all 15 toons daily, I get 4-5 chromium grains and 1-2 zircon grains per day when you account for the average drops from refining the surveys. Getting less than half the zircon when it only takes a quarter less is unbalanced.

GimpyPorcupine · November 2018

And yes, deconning should yield platings and not grains.

Crafts_Many_Boxes · November 2018

At the start of summerset I actually went around to every trader I could find and bought up any cheap purple jewelry that was decon-able. I got like 7 or 8 plating's worth for maybe 60 or 70k. It seems like everyone else caught up in JC or caught on though, because now in traders you can only find exemplary stuff in epic quality for cheap.

I also do dailies on 6 toons most days, and I currently have about 150 chromium. If you only count survey yields (I don't farm much) I think I've maybe gotten 3 or 4 platings' worth of zircon, since the expansion dropped.

We didn't have this sort of bottleneck with other professions because of 1) Hirelings and 2) armor / weapons drop far more frequently than jewelry. A single dungeon run can net you 7 or 8 purple armor / weapon reagents, but with bad RNG you won't get a single zircon.

GimpyPorcupine · November 2018

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

At the start of summerset I actually went around to every trader I could find and bought up any cheap purple jewelry that was decon-able. I got like 7 or 8 plating's worth for maybe 60 or 70k. It seems like everyone else caught up in JC or caught on though, because now in traders you can only find exemplary stuff in epic quality for cheap.

I also do dailies on 6 toons most days, and I currently have about 150 chromium. If you only count survey yields (I don't farm much) I think I've maybe gotten 3 or 4 platings' worth of zircon, since the expansion dropped.

We didn't have this sort of bottleneck with other professions because of 1) Hirelings and 2) armor / weapons drop far more frequently than jewelry. A single dungeon run can net you 7 or 8 purple armor / weapon reagents, but with bad RNG you won't get a single zircon.

And that single zircon is a grain, which is a tenth of a plating. Again, the answer is for deconning to yield platings.

SirAndy · November 2018

GimpyPorcupine wrote: »

@SirAndy , I do decon purple jewelry from vet dungeons, but running a vet dungeon to MAYBE get 1 grain is incredibly inefficient. The PVP option is better, in my opinion.

I wasn't suggesting you run vet dungeons to specifically farm Zircon. However, if you run dungeons etc. anyways, this is a good source for purple Jewelry to deconstruct.

For example, i recently spent several weekends farming 2 vet dungeons for specific gear and in the process ended up with a mountain of purple Jewelry i didn't need.

The "bottleneck" really only exists for players that neither PvP or run vet dungeons and simply rely on writs to get their mats.

phileunderx2 · November 2018

I just went to Bruma and bought 600k AP worth of Eagle Eye coffers got 36 zircon grains from deconning. Not too bad imo if you have the AP to burn.

Ertosi · November 2018

It is interesting though any time I refine large quantities of platinum, I'm consistently getting a bit more Chromium grains than Zircon. The percentage chance for each to drop seems very different than comparing the purple to gold ratios for refining any of the other top-tier mats.

FrancisCrawford · November 2018

Ertosi wrote: »

It is interesting though any time I refine large quantities of platinum, I'm consistently getting a bit more Chromium grains than Zircon. The percentage chance for each to drop seems very different than comparing the purple to gold ratios for refining any of the other top-tier mats.

That's the kind of weirdness that ZoS tends to -- eventually!! -- fix.

Grimm13 · November 2018

With the current grain system if ZOS would make a change to the Decon of Jewelry pieces to give a full upgrade plating instead of a single grain. Then we would see less of a bottle neck of Zircon and an increase in current Jewelry prices as they would be more desirable to Decon.

Wreuntzylla · November 2018

phileunderx2 wrote: »

I just went to Bruma and bought 600k AP worth of Eagle Eye coffers got 36 zircon grains from deconning. Not too bad imo if you have the AP to burn.

Do the hub quests still give a container? Many of the hubs can be completed in 30min, sometimes faster (Chey), and I always get a bunch of purple rings when farming dailies during an event (anniversary event mostly). And it doesn't cost you AP, it gives it to you.

It's the only way I know to get purple jewelry in solo questing.

Broyston · November 2018

Ertosi wrote: »

It is interesting though any time I refine large quantities of platinum, I'm consistently getting a bit more Chromium grains than Zircon. The percentage chance for each to drop seems very different than comparing the purple to gold ratios for refining any of the other top-tier mats.

Same here, and of course you get only chromium grains from the daily crafting writ boxes, so like the OP I am finding myself with more gold than purple upgrade materials. Whilst I agree with some of the posters above that de-conning purple jewellery is the way to go, and purple jewellery is obviously much more common than gold jewellery is still doesn't seem like it is balanced, the lesser material should be naturally more prevalent (through refining or you know, one of those hirelings that jewellery crafting doesn't have).

eso_nya · November 2018

Purples do exist and there r several methods obtaining them, that wasnt the question. The rate u gain them r abyssmal.

If u pick a zone where theres no zergs rushing the dolmens, u can close one all 5 mins (including loadscreens and traveltimes). Thats 12 dolmens/hour. If u r really lucky, u get 3 purple rings out of that. And if u r even more lucky, u get 2 purple grains from those. Thats 15 hours of dolmengrinding for one masterwrit.

No idea how expensive the pvp boxes r (and yes, crafters do love farming lowbies for materials so much *sarcasm*). I guess on the average no-event 50k~100k ap/hour u aint that much faster.

devcomment (rare so it isnt to easy to upgrade highend raiding gear) seems not to account for ppl who r trying to do masterwrits. Upgrading highend raiding gear really is supereasy (craft green food -> sell to npc -> buy from guildtrader) as u only need to upgrade once, and dont require a constant supply of mats.

Edit: Some more numbers.
With today i have gotten a total of 63 jc writs. they require 1890 purple grains to complete. trying to farm out the mats for them is beyond unrealistic.

Feanor · November 2018

Seeing that dropped Gear is still more powerful in most cases and the ease of upgrading and crafting outside the jewelry profession the whole system simply makes no sense to me. It’s tedious and a huge turn off.

xaraan · November 2018

Only thing I disagree with OP on is the 'not opposed to grains system' - this system would only be ok IMO if they never change sets to make them worthless like they constantly to in updates. Nothing wrong with a little extra work to get something you want, but then a month later to have that thing taken from you after the work isn't a good game system IMO.

msetten · December 2018

In my opinion, zircon grains should also be part of the rewards of daily crafting writs. If you don’t get a chromium grain, you get a zircon grain. That would solve this issue.

mnemoniclights · December 2018

xaraan wrote: »

Only thing I disagree with OP on is the 'not opposed to grains system' - this system would only be ok IMO if they never change sets to make them worthless like they constantly to in updates. Nothing wrong with a little extra work to get something you want, but then a month later to have that thing taken from you after the work isn't a good game system IMO.

But that can be a major point about why the current system is bad, no? Balancing isn't the issue, the issue is you're spending a ton of time and gold getting zircon but in the end the only payoff is jewelry writs, you never feel safe upgrading jewels because they can be changed in patches or you just can't seem to get enough that they're worth a damn.

At this point I would rather have the system be like the other crafting skills. Just give us a resource gatherer and make it easier. I don't think it's a good idea for this system because ZoS thinks "Well what if someone improves their jewels found in a normal?! It makes vet meaningless!!!" which like

No no it doesn't.

Taleof2Cities · December 2018

mnemoniclights wrote: »

Only thing I I don't think it's a good idea for this system because ZoS thinks "Well what if someone improves their jewels found in a normal?! It makes vet meaningless!!!" which like

No no it doesn't.

That’s not ZOS’s argument, however.

ZOS doesn’t want the jewelry crafting system to be a substitute for players running challenging content that earns the purple or gold jewelry rewards.

That’s different from devaluing Vet content ... which is your argument.

I’ve said it in another thread, so I’ll say it again here:

Most players aren’t running difficult or end game content ... where that subtle difference between blue, purple, and gold matters.

firedrgn · December 2018

Couple of problems here that im sure have been said before. Writs are not worth doing. It take 150k gold just to get a ring to purple from blue. So we need a little better rate for this reason as well. Or more writs per voucher. The highest epic i have seen is 104.