It did not as of the second week of the PTS, and they made no mention of it in the changes they made with the last incremental, where they said they increased the drop rate from enemies and allowed Plentiful Harvest to proc on it.

I’ve done at least 50 surveys since then with no Ink, but I’m figuring it doesn’t drop from them. I’m testing other things with surveys and will post if I get Ink along the way.

code65536 wrote: »

Horny_Poney wrote: »

Since nirncrux does, I hope luminous ink does too.

Only Craglorn surveys can yield Nirncrux, and Nirncrux was added to the game with Craglorn, so when Nirncrux was added to the game, it dropped from the "new" surveys, not old ones that players may have hoarded.

When furnishing materials were added to the game, you could not get them from surveys. And that restriction remains in place, all these years later.

The rationale was that they did not want players who hoarded surveys to have an advantage, and it's the same reason why jewelry acquired pre-Summerset cannot be deconned.

These restrictions seems silly, now that it's been 7 years since furnishing mats were added and 6 years since jewelry crafting was added, since that original reasoning is now all but irrelevant.

In any case, I would be very surprised if they ever do add ink to surveys, for the reason they refused to add furnishing materials to surveys.

Thanks for the explanations here. I too would be surprised if they changed furnishing mats or Ink to drop from surveys.

That said, furnishing mats are decently common from non-survey nodes. An average of 25 furnishing mats per 100 pulls (or 37.5 with Plentiful Harvest maxed and slotted) means they are eminently farmable even though they don't drop from surveys.

But in over 1,000 non-survey resource nodes, Ink dropped only 6 times for me. If I'm understanding the math right (and I might not be - corrections welcome), the actual drop chance is probably not above 1%. ZOS adding it to the list of eligible mats for Plentiful Harvest helps a bit, but it will still be much, much rarer than furnishing mats. If I continued to get Ink 0.6% of the time, I'd get 9 Ink in 1000 pulls. (That's assuming PH correctly grants a second Ink 50% of the time I draw one - it definitely doesn't work properly on things like Pulverized Titanium and bait, so we'll have to see if they got this implementation right.) Even if the drop chance for Ink were as high as 1%, we'd still only get an average of 1.5 Ink per 100 non-survey nodes (with properly functioning PH).

That all is to say that I would see a reason for letting surveys drop Ink, since it's just so rare in general, whereas I don't see a particularly compelling reason to add furnishing mats to them, since those mats are already quite readily available from non-survey nodes.

As for people who have surveys hoarded, the demand for Ink should be highest when the chapter releases. It would give some people motivation to do their saved surveys while allowing all those players with Gold Road to get into the system with a slightly lower barrier of entry. There's already a very high cover charge in the form of the gold price for Grimoires. I worry that adding another imposing "playwall" in the form of farming this rare resource is going to significantly impede players' ability to experiment with those 4,000 possibilities ZOS advertised, or honestly even to create their initial set of skills in the first place, as we don't get enough Ink from quests to do even that.

virtus753 wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Horny_Poney wrote: »

Since nirncrux does, I hope luminous ink does too.

Only Craglorn surveys can yield Nirncrux, and Nirncrux was added to the game with Craglorn, so when Nirncrux was added to the game, it dropped from the "new" surveys, not old ones that players may have hoarded.

When furnishing materials were added to the game, you could not get them from surveys. And that restriction remains in place, all these years later.

The rationale was that they did not want players who hoarded surveys to have an advantage, and it's the same reason why jewelry acquired pre-Summerset cannot be deconned.

These restrictions seems silly, now that it's been 7 years since furnishing mats were added and 6 years since jewelry crafting was added, since that original reasoning is now all but irrelevant.

In any case, I would be very surprised if they ever do add ink to surveys, for the reason they refused to add furnishing materials to surveys.

Thanks for the explanations here. I too would be surprised if they changed furnishing mats or Ink to drop from surveys.

That said, furnishing mats are decently common from non-survey nodes. An average of 25 furnishing mats per 100 pulls (or 37.5 with Plentiful Harvest maxed and slotted) means they are eminently farmable even though they don't drop from surveys.

But in over 1,000 non-survey resource nodes, Ink dropped only 6 times for me. If I'm understanding the math right (and I might not be - corrections welcome), the actual drop chance is probably not above 1%. ZOS adding it to the list of eligible mats for Plentiful Harvest helps a bit, but it will still be much, much rarer than furnishing mats. If I continued to get Ink 0.6% of the time, I'd get 9 Ink in 1000 pulls. (That's assuming PH correctly grants a second Ink 50% of the time I draw one - it definitely doesn't work properly on things like Pulverized Titanium and bait, so we'll have to see if they got this implementation right.) Even if the drop chance for Ink were as high as 1%, we'd still only get an average of 1.5 Ink per 100 non-survey nodes (with properly functioning PH).

That all is to say that I would see a reason for letting surveys drop Ink, since it's just so rare in general, whereas I don't see a particularly compelling reason to add furnishing mats to them, since those mats are already quite readily available from non-survey nodes.

As for people who have surveys hoarded, the demand for Ink should be highest when the chapter releases. It would give some people motivation to do their saved surveys while allowing all those players with Gold Road to get into the system with a slightly lower barrier of entry. There's already a very high cover charge in the form of the gold price for Grimoires. I worry that adding another imposing "playwall" in the form of farming this rare resource is going to significantly impede players' ability to experiment with those 4,000 possibilities ZOS advertised, or honestly even to create their initial set of skills in the first place, as we don't get enough Ink from quests to do even that.

You say decently common but I almost never see them.

I'm trying to recover my heartwood supply for Moon-Sugar Meadow and I get maybe 8-10 out of 6 hours of farming.

I use plentiful harvest. I have a route I follow and I suck up all nodes along it. Wood is my most harvested resource. I get hundreds of them, but next to no heartwood.

For comparison, my mundane runes, regulus supplies are just fine. It's heartwood I'm having issues with.

I suspected heartwood stealers myself, but I'm in Europe and play on NA; so I'm online while all of NA is asleep. That's when I farm.

I'm usually in Deshaan.

Right now I'm questing in Alik'r and having better luck with the nodes I come across, but who knows.

I just hope the ink drop rates don't suck because I have no desire to spend thousands per on the market.

freespirit wrote: »

I have a question.....

Ink drops from mobs too, is it specific mobs or any mob that can drop loot?

If it is any mob that can drop loot, then has anyone tested farming base game four man dungeons?

I'm curious if that is a viable source, considering how many are so easy to solo!

In the most recent patch notes, the devs said they increased the drop rate of Ink from "basepop" monsters, without specifying particular locations for drops. That should mean that what we typically refer to as trash/adds will be able to drop Ink for anyone who has Sigil of the Luminary Indrik on their account (i.e. completed Wing of the Indrik on at least one character), but I've yet to find any info on the current drop rate or whether it varies by location or type of instance.

If there's no difference based on location or instance, one could theoretically farm public dungeons or Spellscar or Skyreach too. But how efficient it will be to farm Ink from enemies also depends on what the new drop rate is. They said only that they increased it, not what it used to be or what it is now. If it's still quite low, it might not be worth soloing dungeons for specifically.

It's also worth noting that Plentiful Harvest can proc on it now going forward, so players farming Ink will want to slot that whether they are farming mobs in a dungeon or farming resource nodes overland. PH does work on some other resources dropped by enemies, like leather scraps and poison solvents, so it's not unprecedented for it to work on mats from mobs, but I doubt a lot of dungeongoers are currently slotting it as a matter of course, since those mats aren't worth a ton. Ink could earn PH a place on the CP bar in dungeons and trials now.

freespirit wrote: »

Thank you for your answer!

I always have PH slotted so that's ok for me.

As far as farming ink goes, I was curious about mob drops because I despise farming nodes but can happily run dungeons back to back.

I still have set items missing from some base game dungeons on my main account and on my newest account, which is now capable of solo-ing them, I am missing many, many items and also the quests on some too.

So with the "kill two birds with one stone" mentality, dungeons seem a good option for me! 🙂

Sure, if you're already doing the dungeons, slot PH for the 50% chance of giving a second Ink on drop!

I may try again with the basepop farming now that they raised the chance. It was a bit disheartening to count all those bodies without an Ink, but I would like to know what the drop rate is like now.

Treeshka wrote: »

I did not test surveys but after completing the Scribing quest line. I did some farming in Spellscar in Craglorn and for twenty minutes got nothing.

It's a very low drop rate from non-survey resource nodes - so far mine's 0.6%. Maybe this is a 0.5% (1 in 200) drop chance, but it might be as high as 1% and I'm unlucky.

It's even lower from overland mobs: 2 in 1k kills (0.2%) for me. They also came very closely together, on the 572nd and 582nd kills.

Treeshka wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Treeshka wrote: »

I did not test surveys but after completing the Scribing quest line. I did some farming in Spellscar in Craglorn and for twenty minutes got nothing.

It's a very low drop rate from non-survey resource nodes - so far mine's 0.6%. Maybe this is a 0.5% (1 in 200) drop chance, but it might be as high as 1% and I'm unlucky.

It's even lower from overland mobs: 2 in 1k kills (0.2%) for me. They also came very closely together, on the 572nd and 582nd kills.

At this point creating a new character and rushing through Scribing quests seems more efficient way of farming. As far as i remember some quests gave me three inks.

Yes, some quests do award 3 Ink. There are only a few of them, but you could do them on each character you have. Then you could delete them and make new characters, but you'll only have 3 initial deletions and will get back one (up to that cap) every 24 hours from the last time you used one. That cooldown is there to at least hinder this sort of farming, even if it can't prevent it.