Card Upgrade Clues not dropping? or have gotten much rarer? Novice or Expert NPC Count?

Veinblood1965 · August 2022

At first after High Isle released on PS4 I got a clue about every ten or so games I played. This last week after about thirty games not one clue has dropped. Anyone else noticing this?

I've played expert games against the NPC's and Rubicite level games against other players averaging about 10 a day, some days more and nada.

Along with that question am I correct that Tribute Rewards are the ONLY way to complete a deck and acquire the Card Connoisseur achievement?

Does playing novice or expert NPC's or players make a difference in clue drops or is it just random from them all? I have been playing expert and the ranked player games.

Thank you.

Skvysh · August 2022

Card clues can drop from any coffer (both victory and defeat). There's enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that the higher the rarity of the coffer - the better the odds of it dropping a clue (which is what one would expect).

There are no cooldowns, no limits, no nothing on how many clues you can drop in a day - the more coffers you open, the better the odds of eventually getting one.

If you're aiming to complete the collection as fast as possible - Proficient NPCs with the patron rush strat is the best approach. They don't have access to Orgnum deck (but have Red Eagle, Ansei and Rahjin), and their patron usage is more limited than Expert AI, giving you easy ~2 min wins once the right patrons are in play.

Veinblood1965 · August 2022

Skvysh wrote: »

Card clues can drop from any coffer (both victory and defeat). There's enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that the higher the rarity of the coffer - the better the odds of it dropping a clue (which is what one would expect).

There are no cooldowns, no limits, no nothing on how many clues you can drop in a day - the more coffers you open, the better the odds of eventually getting one.

If you're aiming to complete the collection as fast as possible - Proficient NPCs with the patron rush strat is the best approach. They don't have access to Orgnum deck (but have Red Eagle, Ansei and Rahjin), and their patron usage is more limited than Expert AI, giving you easy ~2 min wins once the right patrons are in play.

Thank you Skvysh that was helpful.

Do you or anyone know if you have to be actually playing the deck the clue you want in to get that clue? I haven't paid attention to that but am watching to see if I get clues from decks that are not in play.

Skvysh · August 2022

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

Do you or anyone know if you have to be actually playing the deck the clue you want in to get that clue? I haven't paid attention to that but am watching to see if I get clues from decks that are not in play.

Nope, it doesn't matter what decks are in play - the coffers are in no way tied to the game you're playing. The clues you get are random, with the only possible exception that you can get the same clue twice as long as you haven't found the previous copy yet (i.e. it might be tied to eidetic memory or some hidden system that keeps track of which clues you have already followed through on that particular char).

Lugaldu · August 2022

I also have the impression that the clues are less frequent, I played about 50 games yesterday and today and didn't get a single clue from the boxes. Disappointing and annoying especially since I'm only missing 3 card upgrades.

Necrotech_Master · August 2022

ive heard the clue drop chance is roughly 1 in 10 boxes

sometimes i have a dry spell though where i can go 20-40 boxes before getting 1

in terms of the boxes, the "win" box is the same from npcs regardless if you win against a novice or an expert (expert gives more "xp" if your trying to rank up tribute)

Skvysh · August 2022

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

ive heard the clue drop chance is roughly 1 in 10 boxes

Definitely not 1 in 10. Early UESP data showed a rate of about 1 in 40, but it's worth keeping in mind that only like 4 people were logging their entire runs and the data doesn't take into account boxes opened after all the clues were collected.

Personal experience showed a rate of about 1 in 20, whereas other people in my circles have had a bit more terrible luck with it. I think it's safe to say it's somewhere closer in the range of 1/30 or even 1/40, though of course - it's still a random roll and some people will always see better or worse odds, regardless of what the true numbers are.

Necrotech_Master · August 2022

Skvysh wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

ive heard the clue drop chance is roughly 1 in 10 boxes

Definitely not 1 in 10. Early UESP data showed a rate of about 1 in 40, but it's worth keeping in mind that only like 4 people were logging their entire runs and the data doesn't take into account boxes opened after all the clues were collected.

Personal experience showed a rate of about 1 in 20, whereas other people in my circles have had a bit more terrible luck with it. I think it's safe to say it's somewhere closer in the range of 1/30 or even 1/40, though of course - it's still a random roll and some people will always see better or worse odds, regardless of what the true numbers are.

yeah, rng still gonna rng lol

Veinblood1965 · August 2022

Just an update. I've played probably about seventy ToT games against NPC's since this post and have had one clue drop, that's it. I cannot believe the RNG is so bad on these clues. When High Isle first came out clues where dropping all over the place until I got down to about 5 or 6 clues being needed to complete the achievement Card Connoisseur.

If clue dropping was totally RNG based then the drop rate would have been fairly steady instead of decreasing the fewer clues that are left. Has anyone else experienced this where at first clues dropped left and right then the drop rate slowed? Last night I played for a few hours and had about twenty wins and not one clue. It's getting to the point where I am just about to give up and giving serious thought to spending my money on another game.

jaws343 · August 2022

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

Just an update. I've played probably about seventy ToT games against NPC's since this post and have had one clue drop, that's it. I cannot believe the RNG is so bad on these clues. When High Isle first came out clues where dropping all over the place until I got down to about 5 or 6 clues being needed to complete the achievement Card Connoisseur.

If clue dropping was totally RNG based then the drop rate would have been fairly steady instead of decreasing the fewer clues that are left. Has anyone else experienced this where at first clues dropped left and right then the drop rate slowed? Last night I played for a few hours and had about twenty wins and not one clue. It's getting to the point where I am just about to give up and giving serious thought to spending my money on another game.

It took me two weeks to drop the final clue I needed. And the clue that drop prior to that two weeks dropped from one of the purple boxes that you get for the PVP daily, and the clue that dropped after two weeks also dropped from the purple PVP box. In that two weeks, I opened around 300 boxes from NPC games that did not drop a clue. And the purple box I opened last night that dropped the clue was the first one I opened in that two week dry period.

Necrotech_Master · August 2022

jaws343 wrote: »

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

Just an update. I've played probably about seventy ToT games against NPC's since this post and have had one clue drop, that's it. I cannot believe the RNG is so bad on these clues. When High Isle first came out clues where dropping all over the place until I got down to about 5 or 6 clues being needed to complete the achievement Card Connoisseur.

If clue dropping was totally RNG based then the drop rate would have been fairly steady instead of decreasing the fewer clues that are left. Has anyone else experienced this where at first clues dropped left and right then the drop rate slowed? Last night I played for a few hours and had about twenty wins and not one clue. It's getting to the point where I am just about to give up and giving serious thought to spending my money on another game.

It took me two weeks to drop the final clue I needed. And the clue that drop prior to that two weeks dropped from one of the purple boxes that you get for the PVP daily, and the clue that dropped after two weeks also dropped from the purple PVP box. In that two weeks, I opened around 300 boxes from NPC games that did not drop a clue. And the purple box I opened last night that dropped the clue was the first one I opened in that two week dry period.

based on this kind of experience, while it may seem that you cannot get duplicate clues, it doesnt seem to remove clues you already have gotten from the drop pool

so it rolls one you have gotten before, it just doesnt give it to you possibly

i think im down to about 6 clues remaining that drop randomly now

Peacatcher · August 2022

In case this is of use/interest. I got my final 2 clues within a couple of days this week by only completing the NPC daily quests and getting green reward bags (on console so still under the 'old' reward structure).

DinoZavr · August 2022

we already had the relevant thread here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/612254/card-clues-drop-rate

for my experience the clues drop rate is like 1:30 from "victory" coffers and purple clues had higher chances to drop from blue and purple containers, rather than the green ones.

Veinblood1965 · August 2022

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

Just an update. I've played probably about seventy ToT games against NPC's since this post and have had one clue drop, that's it. I cannot believe the RNG is so bad on these clues. When High Isle first came out clues where dropping all over the place until I got down to about 5 or 6 clues being needed to complete the achievement Card Connoisseur.

If clue dropping was totally RNG based then the drop rate would have been fairly steady instead of decreasing the fewer clues that are left. Has anyone else experienced this where at first clues dropped left and right then the drop rate slowed? Last night I played for a few hours and had about twenty wins and not one clue. It's getting to the point where I am just about to give up and giving serious thought to spending my money on another game.

This may be the issue. I got one the other night from an NPC game it's the only one in a while. I think I have three left. I have to say this is the most annoying achievement so far. Of course I don't HAVE to do it but at this point it's a battle between myself and RNG and I refuse to loose.

BahometZ · August 2022

I haven't seen a clue in over a week, after going through upwards of 30 coffers a day. Still 5 clues away. This is awful. Just glad I'm not alone in getting screwed by RNG. Will try the proficient patron rush strat. That's a hot tip.

Sin_Arcain · August 2022

Over the weekend I got three new clues (None during the week). I didn't count how many games I played, but I think it was over 20. All ranked.

Veinblood1965 · September 2022

I managed to get my last two clues this weekend. Got them from playing against novice NPC's.

SilverBride · September 2022

I wonder if a player's ToT level has anything to do with it. Maybe certain cards only drop once you've reached a certain level.

Barrenjer · September 2022

It seemed like for a while I would get a clue every day from one of the reward containers from the daily npc quest when you used to get 6 (3 from the matches and 3 from finishing the quest. I know that’s not how it works any more.) I have 2 clues left and the last time I got one was August 10. I play the npc quest almost every day, and sometimes the pvp quest.