Character Trophies (What am I doing wrong?)

Rezdayn · January 2020

So... Character trophies... Those little achievements with "low tier" dyes that most people ignore... I have some questions to ask about them. However before I ask those questions I want to explain my position.

I have played this game since beta and got 5,352 hours logged on my one and only character. I have only ever had 1 character since beta and zero alts. In this time I have achieved every dye apart from these trophy dyes and a few of the alliance rank dyes. I have earned every housing achievement item except for the last alliance rank achievement housing items and completed all my goals apart from finishing off the trophy dyes and unlocking the last of the alliance rank dyes. These goals included finishing things like emperor and getting in my opinion the hardest skin in the game vCR+3, finishing every dungeon and trial on vet, finishing all zones so the map is completely whited out etc etc. I am not explaining these things to boast but to firmly get the point across that not only have I played a lot but I have used that time to achieve goals and play the actual game. However it would be important to note at this point that I have also spent a fair chunk of time afk purchasing things in zone to resell etc.

So... This is how many of the trophy achievements I have completed in all that time...

And this is how many I have left to go...

At this point I must be doing something wrong to have achieved so little of these achievements while playing this game and achieving everything I said above... I would have assumed that after 6 years and 5,352 hours (minus afk, merchanting etc) I would have achieved these achievements.

Never the less I have also tried to farm for these achievements. I have killed so many Daedroth... for the final "Oblivion Shard Gatherer" trophy... so... many... daedroth... and I have given up... At this point I am either doing something wrong or I am bugged. I have always known I am unlucky however this is insane... As an example... people have recorded results on fishing and how long master angler takes. It averages around 8-10K casts to get one master angler achievement however it took me close to 20K. I get it... sometimes you are unlucky... However I cant farm for these trophies anymore... My logic behind this is as follows... I have only obtained half of them after 6 years and 5300 hours while passively playing this game and achieving so much. I then spent a very long time farming them and gained zero drops for any trophy. The goal has no end in sight and could possibly take thousands of hours since I have only achieved half of them in 5300 hours.

So I cant do it. You win ESO. I cant waste that much time. The majority of the rest of the things I achieved gave me enjoyment or a sense of achievement but these would just break my brain.

Now I cant find any motivation to log in (I have not quit so dont lock this thread under the false pretense that it is a quitting thread...). I dont want to do the long grind of getting to the top rank in pvp until I have those trophy dyes out the way but cant do the trophies. I know some people will leave a comment saying "getting the top rank in pvp will take longer" but at least you can consecutively work towards that goal and earn AP at a fairly steady rate. These trophies dont have a steady completion and clearly I am either doing something wrong, bugged or the rate is so low I cant commit to doing them.

So my questions...

1) Am I missing something?
2) Do like dungeon mobs drop the trophy more commonly than zone mobs?
3) Any tips at all?

Anyways if you got this far... thanks for reading and I look forward to learning more about trophies and or not really logging in again until the next zone is released due to my goals feeling impossible to achieve...

Hope you are having a great day all and peace.

Mr_Walker · January 2020

I hear you on those "collector" achievements.

I get MMORPGs must have some grind, but there's grind, and then there's "I'd sooner pull out my fingernails with pliers than ever bother with that again".

nudel · January 2020

The sad truth is you missed most of your opportunities to get them in the normal course of play because you played at launch.

These monster trophy achievements were bugged and not dropping at all (presumably left out of the loot tables) for the first 9 months of the game's life. Then for an additional 6 months after they were in fact dropping, you had to use them from your inventory (think filleting fish) in order to get the achievement credit. Craftbags didn't exist so most people vendored or destroyed these trinkets immediately, incorrectly assuming they'd gotten achievement credit.

So basically the first 15 months you played this game, you could not really get progress towards these achievements as you do now. Only now, having completed your questing, you have to actually farm for each drop rather than acquiring it naturally.

I feel your pain as I'm in the same position. It's very common that I'll loot a monster trophy on a new alt that my main still doesn't have due to having leveled my main when they weren't dropping.

LadyNalcarya · January 2020

Same here.
You're not doing anything wrong, drop rate is just absurd.

nudel wrote: »

The sad truth is you missed most of your opportunities to get them in the normal course of play because you played at launch.

At least back in the days you had to double click the item to add it to the achievement and they were bankable iirc. So you could technically take them from alts.

VaranisArano · January 2020

You aren't doing anything wrong. Those achievements really just require the will to grind and grind and keep grinding.

Several times I've run the atronachs at Willowgrove while grinding exp with a friend and gotten multiple copies of everything except the one I need.

16BitForestCat · January 2020

The below is from a post offsite by my guildmaster:

What most players may not know (it's not exactly advertised) is that the loot that drops for you is not completely random. When you log in to a character, you're assigned a loot table. If you log out and back in again on that character, or switch characters, you get a different loot table. Before I realized the loot table thing back around September, I spent four and a half years working on these stupid collector achieves and only got two or three done by pure chance, farming for hours in vain.

Now, I pay attention to the loot I'm getting during normal gameplay. If I see I've gotten a monster collectible on that log-in, I drop everything and start farming monsters for the remaining collectibles I'm missing! In just a few months, I've gone from "barely any" monster collectible achieves done to "all but a couple" done.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to tell if you're on a monster collectible loot table without just getting the relevant drop in your inventory. I've noticed that when I'm on a monster table, I seem to get a lot more Rekutas, Kutas, and purple gear drops before I notice a collectible, but that's not scientific and could be coincidence? Just keep checking your drops to see if you're already getting monster stuff.

I HAVE noticed that there seems to be a bit of a cooldown on such things. I normally get one monster collectible per 60-90 minutes of monster farming once I notice I'm on a monster table. Once I got lucky and got two collectibles in two different zones within ten minutes of each other, but that was a one-time thing in many hours of farming.

I don't have proof of this, but getting other blue or higher drops may affect your collectible drops because of that cooldown. So I ignore all chests and harvest nodes and ONLY kill the monsters that drop the collectible I need, ignoring all other monsters if I can. It would suck if you got that monster collectible drop from a Spider Daedra if you already have it, when you NEEDED a different drop from a nearby Banekin instead.

This works for other stuff too, not just collectibles. It's great for farming gear. Want a Sharpened Inferno staff? See if you're already getting a bunch of Inferno staves as drops in your inventory! I don't know if this will work with, say, things like Maelstrom drops, but it probably can't hurt to go to the arena when you're already getting regular versions of what you were hoping for from a special drop.

And this next part is not scientific research, but I've also had better luck with Crown crates using this method. I tend to save up free crates and open them when I'm on a collectible loot table. When I get tired of farming monster collectibles and notice I haven't gotten one (or a high-tier drop like a purple) in an hour or so, I'll stop and open crates. Last time I did this, I finally got the dang coveted Senche of Scarlet Regret mount within the first ten crates I opened.

Even by keeping an eye on your loot drop tables, it's still going to take a long time to get what you want. First you have to be on a good drop table, then you have to get the right kind of drops to let you KNOW you're on the right table. And Divines help you if your game crashes when you're on a good loot table, because you'll most likely be on a different table when you log back in. You will want to BURN THE WORLD.

Good luck to you!

AlnilamE · January 2020

Well, the Flawless Tailfeather became a joke in my guild. I got it on the "wrong" character twice and accumulated a large amount of Rubedo Leather before I got it.

I'm amazed you have the Atronach Element collector, because that one still elludes me.

I have bookmarked this thread for reference:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/129559/collectible-achievement-guide-spoiler-alert/p1

I wish you luck!

FierceSam · January 2020

Hey Rezdayn

I feel your pain. One thing I could suggest to provide the log in motivation would be to find someone(s) who are also looking to do these and do them as a social thing, an hour or so mooching around together and killing the appropriate things for a specific achievement. That way it’s fun but doesn’t become all you’re doing.

Good luck and have fun

redlink1979 · January 2020

@Rezdayn You're missing the same as I am regarding this: good rng.

I've killed so many of those creatures with my main char and got only a few from each type... The ratio drop always was and remains ridiculous.

daemonios · January 2020

I got the full collector achievement back in 2016, and I can say from experience that the drop rate right now seems an order of magnitude better than back then at least. Not only that, as others have pointed out trophies had a complicated history with bugs and usability.

In addition, prior to One Tamriel you could only ever loot enemies that were within a few levels of your own level, meaning you couldn't simply farm trophies anywhere you wanted. Some trophies only dropped in one or two zones, such as jackals which only existed in Alik'r before being in introduced in Craglorn much later, so if you leveled past Alik'r you were stranded on that character.

About 3 years ago I took some time off and when I came back in 2018 I felt as if trophies were dropping left and right. I must have collected enough in one year of much lighter play to get the achievement all over again. It truly doesn't compare. Or I just have weirdly consistent RNG for trophy drops, but any spikes should flatten out over time if it's truly an issue with RNG.

Rezdayn · January 2020

Thank you everyone for your replies. I have read every single one and appreciate the feedback. I will continue to read any replies left on this thread.

Thanks

Katahdin · January 2020

@Rezdayn

I finished it last year in a few weeks.
I did it by focusing one at a time and farming the thing that drops it until I got it.

Most dropped within a 2 or 3 sessions of farming spending 2 or 3 hours if farming each session. Good luck