Is the drop rate of legendary quality crafting items from refining reduced?

Rexlupis · June 2019

From personal experience and having heard reports from various guild members in various large trade guilds, it seems like the drop rates of things like rosin, tempering alloy, dreugh wax and chromium grains have all been drastically reduced. We're talking about people refining 1,000+ raw materials and getting 2 or 3 legendary refining materials... Far less than what the drop rate used to be.

I didn't see anywhere in any of the patch notes that this was being changed, nor did I see anyone else talking about this in the forums so far... I apologize if there is already a thread about this floating around somewhere.

Is this intentional or is it another bug that will get fixed in a month or six?

Either way, I'm avoiding refining my materials for now until drop rates return to more reasonable levels...

mague · June 2019

Maybe bad RNG. For me it looks like it always was. Sometimes no hardener out of 250 ore and sometimes 3.

Rexlupis · June 2019

RNG is being normalized by the number of people it is occurring to and the large quantities being refined. We're talking about thousands of raw materials being refined as an aggregate. That should take away variance and produce a general percentage...

...And the experiences of myself and others has all been far less received than prior to the Elsweyr launch.

albesca · June 2019

I do my surveys on weekends, so I don't have really big numbers since last update, but refining gathered materials seemed to yield the usual mix of trait stones and improve materials

sudaki_eso · June 2019

No, cant really say its reduced. If i dont get at least one golden item out of 200 i stop refining my materials and come back another day. So last friday i had this case, refined 200 wood without getting a single golden item. Came back on saturday night and got 1 out of every 130 i refined (8 out of 1k raw mats). In other words, sometimes its bad sometimes really good.

Hymzir · June 2019

No.

It's RNG.

This very same question is asked every few months by someone who has hit a bad patch of RNG.

I've had such spells, only getting 1 gold temper out of a 1500 mats refined, but I've also had my moments of good fortune too. Few days ago, I went though a stack of 1200 rubedite, got 8 gold tempers out of the deal. The real kicker was that I got three gold tempers in a row. Only the second time I've ever seen that happen, and I've refined hundreds of thousands of mats. Couple of days later, I went through another 1200 rubedite and only got 5. Am still up by 1 from the point of view of averages.

And that's all it really is. The drop rate of gold mats has been established to be 5% by many people doing many tests, and by collating results form refining hundreds of thousands of mats. A sample size less than 25k will probably end up showing a deviation towards one direction or another.

And remember, in a player base counted in millions, there is bound to be those who have exceptionally good luck with this, and those who have exceptionally bad luck. Most will experience the 5% drop rate, but not all. That's RNG at work for you.

MartiniDaniels · June 2019

That's why I always refine/deconstruct jewelry in big packs, then results are pretty close to usual 4-5 gold tempers per 1000 of raw material and 1 grain for 2 rings.

xMovingTarget · June 2019

I got 10 dreugh wax from 600. doesnt seem to be that bad.

Nestor · June 2019

RNG is a fickle mistress. Over time the drop rate is the same, has been since the game launched. It Ebbs and Flows according to us own schedule and whims.

It helps to sacrifice 5 Chickens, 4 Rats, 3 Squirrels, 2 Cows and a Goat. In that specific order.

redlink1979 · June 2019

My "normal" ratio hasn't dropped. Just bad rng imo.

tmbrinks · June 2019

Have refined about 5,000 raw mats of each since Elsweyr, no noticed change in the drop rates for me.

Stats from refining last night

4,560 Rubedite Ore - 19 Tempering Alloys 0.41%
3,010 Raw Ancestor Silk - 14 Dreugh Wax 0.47%
3,120 Rubedo Hide Scraps - 18 Dreugh Wax 0.58%
4,620 Rough Ruby Ash - 26 Rosin 0.56%
2,660 Platinum Dust - 10 Chromium Grains 0.38%

Had some good luck on the Rubedo and Ruby Ash... bad luck on the Platinum and Ruedite Ore... This is still a small sample, but there is nothing here that would indicate to me that the drop rates have changed (either anecdotally, or me using my knowledge of statistics)

I have tracked all my refining for the last 6 months...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yQDUjYNQVsIFl0ktkbkSlfYPkzP6pgCOTMQ-qCuzfaI/edit

Cortimi · June 2019

Refined 690 ore last night, not a single Temp. I have also not got a Temp (or any gold mat) from a daily writ in over three weeks. Before, it was a rare day when I did NOT get a gold mat of at least some type. They have most definitely nerfed things on the sly.

sparafucilsarwb17_ESO · June 2019

from 900 wood I got 1 rosin, 1200 ore I got 2 tempers, 1000 ancestor silk got 1 dreugh wax and 800 leather got 0...(this was this morning)

Either really really bad luck or something changed.

Arunei · June 2019

It's literally just RNG. For those who don't know, RNG means Random Number Generator. The keyword here is 'random'. It's random whether the number generator will land within the percent value to drop any particular item while refining. The percent value is higher for certain things, and lower for others. There's been no change to these numbers, people are just having bad luck if they're getting less than they think they 'normally' get. If things had honestly been changed, I don't think we'd see people posting here that things seem the same or that they've been having good luck with refining.

So no, nothing's been changed. You're just experiencing RNG being a butt and nothing more.

phileunderx2 · June 2019

Seems fine to me. Sometimes you don't get much and others you get more than you should.

LadyNalcarya · June 2019

It's random, as usual.
I got 3 dreugh wax in a row the other day, but sometimes it takes 500 raw mats to get one.

Taleof2Cities · June 2019

Rexlupis wrote: »

...And the experiences of myself and others has all been far less received than prior to the Elsweyr launch.

RNG is RNG, @Rexlupis ...

I have not had any experience of unusual variances since Elsweyr dropped.

code65536 · June 2019

sparafucilsarwb17_ESO wrote: »

from 900 wood I got 1 rosin, 1200 ore I got 2 tempers, 1000 ancestor silk got 1 dreugh wax and 800 leather got 0...(this was this morning)

Either really really bad luck or something changed.

Cortimi wrote: »

Refined 690 ore last night, not a single Temp. I have also not got a Temp (or any gold mat) from a daily writ in over three weeks. Before, it was a rare day when I did NOT get a gold mat of at least some type. They have most definitely nerfed things on the sly.

Those are both really small sample sizes and drawing conclusions from them would be imprudent.

TequilaFire · June 2019

I have more trouble with purple (epic) than I do gold (legendary).

Kingslayer513 · June 2019

No, it's still the same RNG of 1 per 200 on average that it's always been.

I'm on pc and use the Auto Refine addon for mass refinement and statistics. 1k raw mats is still relatively low and you'll see some variability there. My global data for like 100k raw mats shows 0.5% legendary drop rate, as expected.

robs · June 2019

i was refining today around 2k of each material and did not get any blue,purple or golden mats, only from jewelry crafting nothing from the others... wonderimg if there is any bug.

cheemers · June 2019

I recently refined:

15k raw ruby ash - 64 rosin
14.6k raw rubedite - 75 alloy
9k silk + 7k rubedo leather - 77 wax

So the rates appear relatively close to 5% per refine or 1 every 200 mat, although I was a bit unlucky with the rosin (figures).

redlink1979 · June 2019

In my end it's not being as bad as players describing their experiences here, it seems pretty much similar ratio as before.
I will refine today, I will post my results later on.