Data on Leads from Treasure Maps: dig up unwanted Leads immediately, or hold?

MoonPile · January 23

For example, if you're trying to get the Well from Telvanni Peninsula and Apocrypha maps, should you hold all of the other drops, or scry and dig them up immediately?

The question is how the drops are "curated" by the code. In my own experience, and I've seen one other person confirm: when I tried to hold all of the other leads (fossils, etc.) to prevent them from re-dropping in place of the Well, I went through a long run of maps with absolutely no leads. The other person who had this experience said the same, and to dig them up right away, even between maps. So that would mean there's some number of other leads you just have to get through before you can get another Well lead.

So I'm wondering if anyone else has collected their own data on this, to confirm or deny.

On that note: Filer Ool has Telvanni Peninsula maps this week.

MoonPile · January 23

Also, THIS coming out of a treasure map is infinitely disappointing. What did we do to deserve the ire of whoever's responsible for this?

spartaxoxo · January 23

I suspect but don't know for sure that the leads aren't curated. So, it rolls to see if you get a lead. And then which lead you get. If you already have that lead, it just gives you nothing. So, it's generally better to scry it when you get it, unless you don't want multiples of whatever that lead is.

Elsonso · January 23

If I get a lead I am not interested in, I just ignore it. After a few weeks, it will be gone.

Araneae6537 · January 23

Having fewer leads available to scry makes you more likely to get new ones — what that scale is continuous or has particular cut-off points, I do not know. I have also read numerous places that it is not possible to “force” the lead you want from a source by hanging onto others (you will just get nothing if one of the leads you have unlocked is “rolled”).

I really do not like all these leads being in treasure chests!

If it was any chest, even overland, with a better chance from the map ones would be better…

Those windows are quite nice at least! But frustrating when not what you’re looking for, I know!

MoonPile · January 23

Araneae6537 wrote: »

Having fewer leads available to scry makes you more likely to get new ones — what that scale is continuous or has particular cut-off points, I do not know. I have also read numerous places that it is not possible to “force” the lead you want from a source by hanging onto others (you will just get nothing if one of the leads you have unlocked is “rolled”).

I really do not like all these leads being in treasure chests! If it was any chest, even overland, with a better chance from the map ones would be better…

Those windows are quite nice at least! But frustrating when not what you’re looking for, I know!

This is exactly the answer I'm looking for, thanks! Specifically the forcing part.

The windows are annoying because they're the "cheapest" lead (drops frequently from any and every source) being included in loot tables from the most expensive source with multi-layer RNG. It's just rude that something so common should take the drop-slot of an item that's taking folks tens of millions of gold to even have a chance at.

ssewallb14_ESO · January 23

Only anecdotal, but ever since I started digging leads immediately I've been getting leads at a considerably higher rate, especially the zone furnishings. I went from only having a few of them since Greymoor came out to nearly all of them in a few months.

spartaxoxo · January 23

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

Only anecdotal, but ever since I started digging leads immediately I've been getting leads at a considerably higher rate, especially the zone furnishings. I went from only having a few of them since Greymoor came out to nearly all of them in a few months.

That matches with my experience, which I started noticing with IA. There seems to be a cap on how many you can carry at once. I don't think you need to scry everything immediately, but it's good to clear stuff out every now and then if you're farming something in particular.

ssewallb14_ESO · January 23

spartaxoxo wrote: »

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

Only anecdotal, but ever since I started digging leads immediately I've been getting leads at a considerably higher rate, especially the zone furnishings. I went from only having a few of them since Greymoor came out to nearly all of them in a few months.

That matches with my experience, which I started noticing with IA. There seems to be a cap on how many you can carry at once. I don't think you need to scry everything immediately, but it's good to clear stuff out every now and then if you're farming something in particular.

I also started looking into it after farming IA. Multiple people including myself were getting all of the gold and purple leads exactly once, even after digging some of them. That seems incredibly unlikely to happen just by chance.

BetweenMidgets · January 24

Dig them up. It has no effect on what will drop for you.

I bought 300 maps and documented my drops, because like you, I was curious.

How I thought it would work: I could get the leads and just hold them, and then it would be removed from the RNG list and I would receive a different lead that I may desire more. (I wanted 3 of each so I could but the items outright from the vendor.)

Reality: It appears that the leads list is not curated. What I mean is this appears to be the process by which you can obtain a lead (though I am going to break this apart pretty granularly but potentially some of these steps are all in one. This will work for us for illustration purposes, though).
FIRST, you dig up your map.
SECOND, you get your RNG roll. Did you RNG bless you with a lead? If yes, the third step is visible.
THIRD, it rolls to see what lead you get. If you already have that lead in your list you will simply not see a lead at all.

I went 42 maps without getting a lead, when I had the "easy" leads just chilling in my queue.

I absolutely know this is not what you wanted to hear, it really sucks.

It is COMPLETELY possible I am wrong, and maybe in those 42 maps the chance rate was just SO LOW that it never procced in that time. I doubt it, but I'm open to being wrong, I would truly welcome it, really.

It legitimately makes my blood boil that they gate things behind multiple layers of RNG. Especially items like the Apocrypha Well, which takes 3 leads to make one of the furnishings and once that has been completed once, you STILL have to obtain 2 other wells in order to have the ability to purchase it outright from the achievement vendor. I personally had to make the decision it is not a system I am willing to engage with to pump their playtime for investors. It isn't much, but it is what I am able to do.

spartaxoxo · January 24

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

Only anecdotal, but ever since I started digging leads immediately I've been getting leads at a considerably higher rate, especially the zone furnishings. I went from only having a few of them since Greymoor came out to nearly all of them in a few months.

That matches with my experience, which I started noticing with IA. There seems to be a cap on how many you can carry at once. I don't think you need to scry everything immediately, but it's good to clear stuff out every now and then if you're farming something in particular.

I also started looking into it after farming IA. Multiple people including myself were getting all of the gold and purple leads exactly once, even after digging some of them. That seems incredibly unlikely to happen just by chance.

It seems pretty likely to me that there would be groups of people on either end of the luck spectrum, and most in the middle. As for myself, I have generally gotten the IA leads multiple times. I'll also add that the leads primarily drop from the side portals, marauders, and pilferer. So, if someone isn't bothering to focus on those, they'll have a lot harder time securing leads.

Ilumia · January 26

The IA leads are curated for the first drop, but after that it's rng, which sucks

MoonPile · January 27

BetweenMidgets wrote: »

Dig them up. It has no effect on what will drop for you.

I bought 300 maps and documented my drops, because like you, I was curious.

How I thought it would work: I could get the leads and just hold them, and then it would be removed from the RNG list and I would receive a different lead that I may desire more. (I wanted 3 of each so I could but the items outright from the vendor.)

Reality: It appears that the leads list is not curated. What I mean is this appears to be the process by which you can obtain a lead (though I am going to break this apart pretty granularly but potentially some of these steps are all in one. This will work for us for illustration purposes, though).
FIRST, you dig up your map.
SECOND, you get your RNG roll. Did you RNG bless you with a lead? If yes, the third step is visible.
THIRD, it rolls to see what lead you get. If you already have that lead in your list you will simply not see a lead at all.

I went 42 maps without getting a lead, when I had the "easy" leads just chilling in my queue.

I absolutely know this is not what you wanted to hear, it really sucks.

It is COMPLETELY possible I am wrong, and maybe in those 42 maps the chance rate was just SO LOW that it never procced in that time. I doubt it, but I'm open to being wrong, I would truly welcome it, really.

It legitimately makes my blood boil that they gate things behind multiple layers of RNG. Especially items like the Apocrypha Well, which takes 3 leads to make one of the furnishings and once that has been completed once, you STILL have to obtain 2 other wells in order to have the ability to purchase it outright from the achievement vendor. I personally had to make the decision it is not a system I am willing to engage with to pump their playtime for investors. It isn't much, but it is what I am able to do.

Thank you for doing this "experiment" and letting us know!

Hard agree: I quit buying the maps until they're either much cheaper or they fix the drops for real. Currently, this is garbage.

I was in Southern Elsweyr farming the dragons as usual and thinking about this. If the issue is to keep players returning, they made a great system there. There are still constantly people doing that route 5 years later because it's a very good farm: Good loot to sell regardless of which "clique" of player-type you're in, and pretty fun. (Fun is subjective of course but it's clearly popular enough to still draw a crowd.) I wish they would create more evergreen repeatables like this instead of trying to force it with RNG.

Djennku · January 27

I've farmed and completed the entire codex. From my experience, I found that if you hold onto leads, the one you are looking for is more likely to drop until it is guaranteed to be next. Lead drops are random, but if you do not dig up those unwanted leads, the loot pool is smaller for your next drop.

And yes, I found that holding onto leads was the best way to get what you're looking for, especially the second and third times around. My last 3 leads I needed were the last to drop, and only dropped because I didn't dig up the others.

It is certainly an effective and successful strategy to hold onto leads until you get the one you want. Again, RNG is RNG, and when it drops is completely random, and no matter what you do aside from keep farming is going to affect getting it, no matter what people make up in their minds to believe, with the exception of cooldowns on specific types of items, leads excluded.

RealLoveBVB · January 27

Djennku wrote: »

It is certainly an effective and successful strategy to hold onto leads until you get the one you want.

I can't confirm that. I am also close to finish the codex and did the experiment to hold on leads on an ancestral set.
If you found 3-5 leads, then you can notice, that leads from those treasure maps don't drop that often anymore- even had a streak of 14 maps without a lead.
When I decided to dig those leads up one by one, then I had a drop on average every 3 treasure maps.

If I would have dug up the 5 leads before I went for the 14 maps mentioned above, then I would have gotten leads again. Most likely ones I already have, but forcing leads didn't worked at all.

LadyLethalla · January 27

I can't finish the damn vanilla zone entries to get the 100,000 coin because I am missing one last Khenarthi lead (Ancestral High Elf helmets, I think) - the maps are almost non existent and I refuse to pay 20k gold for the ones listed on traders. I know that's relatively cheap for a chance at a map lead, but hey.

Virenic · January 27

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

Djennku wrote: »

It is certainly an effective and successful strategy to hold onto leads until you get the one you want.

I can't confirm that. I am also close to finish the codex and did the experiment to hold on leads on an ancestral set.
If you found 3-5 leads, then you can notice, that leads from those treasure maps don't drop that often anymore- even had a streak of 14 maps without a lead.
When I decided to dig those leads up one by one, then I had a drop on average every 3 treasure maps.

If I would have dug up the 5 leads before I went for the 14 maps mentioned above, then I would have gotten leads again. Most likely ones I already have, but forcing leads didn't worked at all.

It's possible that it's a bit of both, where it does overall increase the chance of the lead you want while also giving you less lead drops in general. I definitely wouldnt recommend holding leads when digging up motifs though, as duplicates can be sold to fund purchasing more maps and even give you a profit overall. It's really only the telvanni peninsula maps where the question of whether or not it's worthwhile to hold onto leads is relevant.

Elvenheart · January 27

One thing to consider, if holding onto leads did somehow force a different lead to appear, that would mean that the system would purposely have to incorporate a feature that looks at a player’s list of undug leads to see what you have every time you randomly get a lead,before it generates the lead for you that you end up getting. Personally, I just don’t think the developers would’ve gone to the trouble of working this feature in because there really is no reason for it except player convenience, so the completely random option makes more sense no matter what leads you already have.

ZOS_Hadeostry · January 27

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic, as it's asking the community for assistance.

Thank you for your understanding

RealLoveBVB · January 27

LadyLethalla wrote: »

I can't finish the damn vanilla zone entries to get the 100,000 coin because I am missing one last Khenarthi lead (Ancestral High Elf helmets, I think) - the maps are almost non existent and I refuse to pay 20k gold for the ones listed on traders. I know that's relatively cheap for a chance at a map lead, but hey.

You only need to dig up all green/blue and purple treasure leads from all zones to be able to get the coin lead. No RNG required on that one, just a bit of grinding.
Maybe you just missed a zone.

vsrs_au · January 27

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

LadyLethalla wrote: »

I can't finish the damn vanilla zone entries to get the 100,000 coin because I am missing one last Khenarthi lead (Ancestral High Elf helmets, I think) - the maps are almost non existent and I refuse to pay 20k gold for the ones listed on traders. I know that's relatively cheap for a chance at a map lead, but hey.

You only need to dig up all green/blue and purple treasure leads from all zones to be able to get the coin lead. No RNG required on that one, just a bit of grinding.
Maybe you just missed a zone.

No, you only need to excavate one of each difficulty in each zone, as this extract from UESP states:

Once you have dug up at least one of every Simple, Intermediate, and Advanced Antiquity lead treasures available in each zone (a total of 39 excavations) ...

I can confirm this, because I did exactly as stated above, and now the coin is in my bank (mainly for sentimental reasons, not because I may need the gold one day).

Ishtarknows · January 27

LadyLethalla wrote: »

I can't finish the damn vanilla zone entries to get the 100,000 coin because I am missing one last Khenarthi lead (Ancestral High Elf helmets, I think) - the maps are almost non existent and I refuse to pay 20k gold for the ones listed on traders. I know that's relatively cheap for a chance at a map lead, but hey.

You only need the green, blue, purple treasures (purple lead you get from digging the blue ) from each zone to get the coin, not everything.

RealLoveBVB · January 27

vsrs_au wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

LadyLethalla wrote: »

I can't finish the damn vanilla zone entries to get the 100,000 coin because I am missing one last Khenarthi lead (Ancestral High Elf helmets, I think) - the maps are almost non existent and I refuse to pay 20k gold for the ones listed on traders. I know that's relatively cheap for a chance at a map lead, but hey.

You only need to dig up all green/blue and purple treasure leads from all zones to be able to get the coin lead. No RNG required on that one, just a bit of grinding.
Maybe you just missed a zone.

No, you only need to excavate one of each difficulty in each zone, as this extract from UESP states:

Once you have dug up at least one of every Simple, Intermediate, and Advanced Antiquity lead treasures available in each zone (a total of 39 excavations) ...

I can confirm this, because I did exactly as stated above, and now the coin is in my bank (mainly for sentimental reasons, not because I may need the gold one day).

Thanks for clarifying, but it's exactly what I said:P

zaria · January 27

LadyLethalla wrote: »

I can't finish the damn vanilla zone entries to get the 100,000 coin because I am missing one last Khenarthi lead (Ancestral High Elf helmets, I think) - the maps are almost non existent and I refuse to pay 20k gold for the ones listed on traders. I know that's relatively cheap for a chance at a map lead, but hey.

As other has said you does not need to dig up lead you find by doing stuff.
All zones has an green, blue and purple treasure loot lead who unlock then digging the previous one and you can has the skill and used skillpoints to scry for blue or purple.
So if you dig up an blue treasure and did not get an purple treasure lead you done it.
Or faster go to quests->antiquities and look trough the zones. Eyevea is an zone who is not dlc an likely the one you miss.
The purple treasure is an one time thing for the account.

If some new read this. then reaching scrying 7, do not go for purple treasure leads, go to hollow city and farm flowers and dig up void anomalies as getting getting from scrying 5 to 7 is an very long grind.

vsrs_au · January 28

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

vsrs_au wrote: »

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

LadyLethalla wrote: »

I can't finish the damn vanilla zone entries to get the 100,000 coin because I am missing one last Khenarthi lead (Ancestral High Elf helmets, I think) - the maps are almost non existent and I refuse to pay 20k gold for the ones listed on traders. I know that's relatively cheap for a chance at a map lead, but hey.

You only need to dig up all green/blue and purple treasure leads from all zones to be able to get the coin lead. No RNG required on that one, just a bit of grinding.
Maybe you just missed a zone.

No, you only need to excavate one of each difficulty in each zone, as this extract from UESP states:

Once you have dug up at least one of every Simple, Intermediate, and Advanced Antiquity lead treasures available in each zone (a total of 39 excavations) ...

I can confirm this, because I did exactly as stated above, and now the coin is in my bank (mainly for sentimental reasons, not because I may need the gold one day).

Thanks for clarifying, but it's exactly what I said:P

With respect, no it isn't. You said we had to excavate all leads from all zones, but we don't, we only need to excavate one each of the 3 levels of leads per zone.

NeuroticPixels · January 28

BetweenMidgets wrote: »

It legitimately makes my blood boil that they gate things behind multiple layers of RNG.

I would be okay with the RNG if the devs would give players the data. What chance you have at this step, what chance at that step, what could hinder your progress, etc. I despise the guessing game and not having official/concrete evidence.