Feasibility of completing the Opal style pages (spoiler: it's extremely grindy)

TheFM · January 2020

code65536 wrote: »

If you are a completionist, there are a total of 28 style pages to collect
4 mask styles, requiring a rough average of around 4 runs per mask drop

4 shoulder styles, costing a minimum of 100 keys (to purchase four of the 25-key grabbag coffers) from the Undaunted merchant

20 weapon styles, of which you are guaranteed only 1 per day

Of those 28 styles, you can earn enough tickets during the event to buy only 3 using tickets. If you had saved at least 10 tickets from previous events, you can buy 5. Leaving at least 23 style pages to be acquired through conventional means.
Masks: This grind isn't too bad. The drop rate is reasonable.

Shoulders: To get the shoulders without using tickets, if you didn't have a pre-existing stash of keys, you'd need to do all three pledges on vet HM on 3.3 characters every day of the event to get the 100 keys needed. Or, if you don't do HM for the DLC dungeons, then you need to do the full suite of pledges on 4 characters every day of the event.

Weapons: You can get only one guaranteed drop per day, for a total of five. What's the drop rate from the blue boxes? I have an addon that logs what I've been getting out of these boxes, and out of 118 boxes across both NA and EU, I've gotten 6 weapon pages. So it's approximately 1-in-20, though this is a very small sample size. That means that, in order to get the other 15 pages out of blue boxes, I'd need to run about 300 dungeons, or 60 dungeons per day.

Practically speaking, there is simply no way anyone can complete these styles without some sort of external sourcing. E.g., buying or otherwise obtaining pages from players who are not collecting them or turning to ticket purchases.

So this brings up the next question: What's the plan for the next Undaunted Event?

Are you going to have the exact same four Opal styles next time, so people can continue to collect them? If so, it would make this grind more tolerable, but then if we're always using these four, then what about all the other monster styles out there?

Are you going to replace them with four different monster styles? Or add other monster styles in addition to these four (and thus potentially diluting their drops)? This would make the event different each year and cover more styles, but then this insane grindiness of the Opal style is made worse by there being no chances or reduced chances of people getting missed pages in the future.

One would think this is turning into s Korean mmo with all the rng grinding lately

Coatmagic · January 2020

As an aside, fairly certain ZoS lost a few potential 'customers' on these style page things,
due to some of us being OCD enough to not care to collect a thing we have no proper list to check off xD

Elsonso · January 2020

VaranisArano wrote: »

Working as intended.

That external sourcing:
A. buy event tickets for crowns
B. have someone gift you event tickets for gold
C. buy style pages for lots of gold.
Is exactly what ZOS wants. You can grind, grind, grind. Or you can pay with your preferred currency.

(Incidentally, this is the event that put the nail in the coffin of my urge to "collect 'em all." Because I'm not going to buy/gift event tickets and I'm not going to grind, grind, grind. Events should be reasonable.)

I am OK with the "grind" if I can collect them over time while doing something else, without having to actually grind it. If I have to purposely go out and do a specific thing to collect some special do-dad, especially if I have to discard duplicates, and that is all I am accomplishing, then I tend to drop the idea of collecting that stuff.

I figure that they will drop the Opal style sheets from the list of rewards long before I complete them. That is sad, especially when the full motif will return as a Crown Crate item that I will never see.

Acrolas · January 2020

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Coatmagic wrote: »

As an aside, fairly certain ZoS lost a few potential 'customers' on these style page things,
due to some of us being OCD enough to not care to collect a thing we have no proper list to check off xD

How? Everything at the Impresario is a color-locked variant of items that have already been available. If you have the original versions, there's very little to collect unless you like the idea of representing both Ilambris-Zaven and Ilambris-Athor. The original Arms Pack sword dual wielded with the Opal sword is a fun combination.

Also, the Impresario is your checklist. Even if you don't want to consume pages, you can still compare what you have versus what she has. Each weapon set has a shield, staff, bow, 1H weapon, and 2H weapon. Only the 1H weapons and 2H weapons vary in types.

1H:
Engine Dagger, Bloodspawn Mace, Ilambris Sword, Troll Axe

2H:
Engine Sword, Bloodspawn Axe, Ilambris Axe, Troll Axe

Across five days, you have the resources to obtain or trade for one complete weapon set. Although if you didn't pick up the original Arms Packs, you're probably leaning toward learning your favorite five out of the entire lot. So to address the thread at large, I don't anticipate that many people hunting for every Opal page. Just the styles you intend to immediately use and that don't compete with Packs you've already purchased or helms/shoulders you already found.

Dusk_Coven · January 2020

If Undaunted follows the style of other events such as Witches and New Life, the same pages will be available next round, plus possibly new pages.

I think there are "so many" because they needed to spread it out over 4 dungeons. Imagine if there were one style line related to only one dungeon. Everyone's doing the same dungeon over and over -- they'd be bored so much faster.

So, unless you plan to be elsewhere next year (or possibly later this year?), there's plenty of time to get them. And now that we know they can be bought with keys, there's a year of pledges to stock up on keys.

If you rush and grind now, next Undaunted you're just gonna be complaining you have nothing to do / nothing to buy except a handful of new stuff -- sort of like how New Life 2019 was for some people who'd already finished up all the old stuff from New Life 2018.