Inconsistent Antiquity drop rates

ChaoticWings3 · August 15

I don't really like making discussions like this but considering I was listening to elder scrolls lore and just doing some casual lead farming since I just wanted to zone out for a bit and relax to lore while I got my leads....but after a couple hours of no drops while doing the same tasks that should lead to a drop I am kind of baffled by this.

I'll start off by saying that I understand that some drops are meant to be fairly grindy. I went into spindleclutch I and got the lead drop for bloodlord's embrace 1st time. Meanwhile, since I was gathering my 3rd bloodlord's embrace for codex lore, it took me 7 runs of crypt of hearts I for that particular drop. Again, not that annoying, frustrating but understandable. Honestly I didn't care too much because it was during the double gold event so I was getting plenty of gold in the process.

The issue I'm experiencing is for drops that should be dropping fairly normally within a half hour or so but kind of refuse to drop. This is mostly coming from Betnikh with the painted wardrum and the ayleid lightwell. I think I did about 5 laps around the island killing every enemy that moved, harvesting every node, opening every chest, and grabbing every psjic portal and neither one of these leads dropped. I don't know why. Meanwhile in Khenarthi's roost a few days prior I got two leads of the cat's eye prism while casually trying to get it. Took only 45 minutes or so between drops which is fairly normal in my opinion. I'm not sure about other leads since I'm focusing on leads in areas I have fully completed the quests in and have the sets in to get that full zone completion feeling but it defiantly feels inconsistent for the drop rates.

It defiantly feels like there is an issue with the lead drops in Betnikh and my occurrence isn't the first in that area as I found other topics that had similar experiences in the past few years.

I feel like a broken record by saying this (from other topics I mean) but maybe increasing the drop rate for leads either as a whole or giving a slight increase when farming them. For example, world bosses when a failed lead drops, increase the chance by 5%, for enemy drops, every 100 enemies, increase the drop rate by 5%. Maybe only do the rate increases for those that haven't gotten the full codex entries yet? I don't know. Like I said this is really only occurring in Benikh for me and not anywhere else from what I've seen but since we don't know how the lead systems drop rate is exactly we can only speculate how it operates and speculate how to make it better.

El_Borracho · August 15

I told myself that I was not going to rant about the awful psijic portal lead for Dov-Rha Sabatons again, so I won't.

But I am with you, to a degree. Leads from trials should be a 50/50 drop rate, if not 100%. Its not just a dungeon or an arena, its something you need 12 people to accomplish, for the most part, even on normal.

Leads from weird dungeon side bosses, like the Esoteric Greaves, should be similarly high. I would like to see the same for leads from dungeon bosses, as I have given up on the Twitching Eyeball lead from ICP for Mora's Whispers. And of course leads out of 4 person arenas.

Other than group play, and the lead that shall not be named, the only solo content leads that bug me are the treasure map chest leads. Its RNG (get the map) on top of RNG (chest has the lead) which is a problem.

Necrotech_Master · August 15

i would agree it seems inconsistent, mostly between individual leads

like the void crystal anomaly in coldharbour is extremely common, to the point its a meme, even though its a yellow lead

and other leads are abyssmal at times, especially if going for the 2nd or 3rd copy of a lead

ChaoticWings3 · August 16

El_Borracho wrote: »

I told myself that I was not going to rant about the awful psijic portal lead for Dov-Rha Sabatons again, so I won't.

But I am with you, to a degree. Leads from trials should be a 50/50 drop rate, if not 100%. Its not just a dungeon or an arena, its something you need 12 people to accomplish, for the most part, even on normal.

Leads from weird dungeon side bosses, like the Esoteric Greaves, should be similarly high. I would like to see the same for leads from dungeon bosses, as I have given up on the Twitching Eyeball lead from ICP for Mora's Whispers. And of course leads out of 4 person arenas.

Other than group play, and the lead that shall not be named, the only solo content leads that bug me are the treasure map chest leads. Its RNG (get the map) on top of RNG (chest has the lead) which is a problem.

I am coming back to the game after being away for 6 months and came back around the time the anniversary events were starting so I haven't been paying attention to everything going on. I have to say though THERE ARE LEADS IN 12 PLAYER TRIALS!!!!!!?????? WHAT!? WHY!? AHHHH!!!

Anyway after experiencing an existential crisis at that piece of information I kind of remembered something from the rng topic that seemed like an interesting solution. Making leads as a useable, tradeable item, rather than immediately being placed into the scryable leads. I think code wise it would be tricky since it kind of goes outside the bounds of the system already established. However I think it would be the healthiest change to the system since it gives other players that don't mind grinding hard to get items for trade something to do. If I keep getting like my 300th void crystal lead I could sell it rather than turn it into my giant storm atronach I'm building out of them. It would also cut down on the long grinds that a lot players didn't really want to do. Grinding gold is easier for me so I have purchased about 95% of all the motifs I currently have on my character. Honestly it could lead to something good......but I also think the rng elements really do need to be adjust a bit more in benefit to the player.....especially in those trials. (WHYYYYYYY!?)

Necrotech_Master · August 16

ChaoticWings3 wrote: »

El_Borracho wrote: »

I told myself that I was not going to rant about the awful psijic portal lead for Dov-Rha Sabatons again, so I won't.

But I am with you, to a degree. Leads from trials should be a 50/50 drop rate, if not 100%. Its not just a dungeon or an arena, its something you need 12 people to accomplish, for the most part, even on normal.

Leads from weird dungeon side bosses, like the Esoteric Greaves, should be similarly high. I would like to see the same for leads from dungeon bosses, as I have given up on the Twitching Eyeball lead from ICP for Mora's Whispers. And of course leads out of 4 person arenas.

Other than group play, and the lead that shall not be named, the only solo content leads that bug me are the treasure map chest leads. Its RNG (get the map) on top of RNG (chest has the lead) which is a problem.

I am coming back to the game after being away for 6 months and came back around the time the anniversary events were starting so I haven't been paying attention to everything going on. I have to say though THERE ARE LEADS IN 12 PLAYER TRIALS!!!!!!?????? WHAT!? WHY!? AHHHH!!!

Anyway after experiencing an existential crisis at that piece of information I kind of remembered something from the rng topic that seemed like an interesting solution. Making leads as a useable, tradeable item, rather than immediately being placed into the scryable leads. I think code wise it would be tricky since it kind of goes outside the bounds of the system already established. However I think it would be the healthiest change to the system since it gives other players that don't mind grinding hard to get items for trade something to do. If I keep getting like my 300th void crystal lead I could sell it rather than turn it into my giant storm atronach I'm building out of them. It would also cut down on the long grinds that a lot players didn't really want to do. Grinding gold is easier for me so I have purchased about 95% of all the motifs I currently have on my character. Honestly it could lead to something good......but I also think the rng elements really do need to be adjust a bit more in benefit to the player.....especially in those trials. (WHYYYYYYY!?)

there has been leads in trials since antiquity system first released

the first lead available in trials was the altar of celestial convergence, which is dropped from any of the 3 craglorn trials

to date i think there are at least 4 leads which are from trials now:

altar of celestial convergence (aetherian archive, sanctum ophidia, hel ra citadel)
sea elf galleon helm (dreadsail reef)
one of the leads for the dov-rha sabaton mythic (sunspire)
the lead for the rourken steamguards (halls of fabrication)

none of them are particularly difficult on normal, and from what ive heard the drop for the lead from halls of fabrication is darn near 100% on the first drop

malistorr · August 16

Trying to get the torc leads to drop in IA is hopeless. I've earned about 100k IA currency and haven't had a single lead drop. IA is a horribly boring and repetitive grind so ZOS forcing people to do this for weeks for 1-item really pisses people off.

Djennku · August 17

It took me over 400 kills for my second lad from the side bosses in Graven Deep. RNG can be annoying, but you are guaranteed to get an item if you continue to farm for it. Took me awhile to get all of the Torc of the Ayleid King codex, but I got it.

A trick with antiquities is to hold into any and all leads you get excluding the ones you need so the ones you need are next to drop. Another trick is to dig up all but ONE of the leads to multipart antiquities you do not need, so they cannot drop again.

Another thing you can do, and this is speciffically for codex completionists, is to not dig up your third lead for codex enteies you need until you have aquired all leads from the specific zone/loot table you are after.

In places like IA where there's quite a few multipart antiquities and a large loot table, these tricks really helped me get the leads I was looking for faster by keeping unwanted leads out of the loot table.

katanagirl1 · August 17

malistorr wrote: »

Trying to get the torc leads to drop in IA is hopeless. I've earned about 100k IA currency and haven't had a single lead drop. IA is a horribly boring and repetitive grind so ZOS forcing people to do this for weeks for 1-item really pisses people off.

Leads in IA need to also be included in all chests, not just the ones in the side areas and Tho’at.

Gabriel_H · August 17

60+ kills on Timbershade - no lead.
16 SS runs (48 dragons) - no lead.

My level of annoyance - infinite. Really not helping my OCD (not a joke).

Gabriel_H · August 17

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Leads in IA need to also be included in all chests, not just the ones in the side areas and Tho’at.

PW and Marauders also drop leads. Just to add.

Gabriel_H · August 17

I'd like to see a revision of lore entries too. At present getting a mythic means you can transmute but there are still 2 lore entries for each part, and some furnishings can be bought after 1 lore entry or after 3. The latter is typically single lead items, but there a few multi-part items that do this.

As such, having non-multi part items* be 3 lore entries, and multi-part items having only 1 lore entry would be more consistent, and remove needless farming for lore entries.

*with the exception of leads from treasure maps

ChaoticWings3 · August 17

Gabriel_H wrote: »

I'd like to see a revision of lore entries too. At present getting a mythic means you can transmute but there are still 2 lore entries for each part, and some furnishings can be bought after 1 lore entry or after 3. The latter is typically single lead items, but there a few multi-part items that do this.

As such, having non-multi part items* be 3 lore entries, and multi-part items having only 1 lore entry would be more consistent, and remove needless farming for lore entries.

*with the exception of leads from treasure maps

I honestly couldn't agree more. Its part of my OCD with the system since I kind of want to complete the codex. However I have to find the same pieces that the antiquarian circle have all seen like 3 days ago and for some reason send me new information when I sent them the exact same thing to them. Considering how the codex entries are written you can honestly argue that they all saw the object but decided not to continue the conversation until I came across the same thing again. Its like if one of this topics goes dead for 5 months and someone decided to jump in to the conversation that is probably not relevant anymore.

Codex entries should just be unlocked after finding the first antiquity. I mean we don't have to farm the motif page leads 3 times so everyone of the the antiquarian circle can marvel at the book. It is thankfully a one done codex entry. I just wish they would drop more often because I have to have a mailbox full of treasure maps because these items are still not stackable.

Gabriel_H · August 17

ChaoticWings3 wrote: »

I honestly couldn't agree more. Its part of my OCD with the system since I kind of want to complete the codex.

It's part of my actual OCD - I MUST complete the codex.

Grendalism · August 17

From my experience, the drop rates of Levi’s usually ~25% (I.e. a drop every four kills), but that is obviously affected by RNG.

Additionally, consider where it drops from and how many people are fighting the thing you need to kill.

If it’s an arena or dungeon, and you’ve got 4 people, then each player has the 25% drop chance (that doesn’t mean a guaranteed drop between all 4), so in reality this gives ~1/16 chance of the drop per kill(your 1/4 is multiplied by the group members). Then add RNG on top!

…so any leas from a trial has a 1/4 drop chance split over 12 people…so you are then looking at a 1/48 chance.

Allegedly, other factors play a part - when did you last get a gold lead drop? (As there may be a cool down) and how many active purple or gold leads do you already have? (If you have 6+ then this may decrease your drop % until you scry/dig these up to clear out your active lead list).

Gabriel_H · August 17

Grendalism wrote: »

Allegedly, other factors play a part - when did you last get a gold lead drop? (As there may be a cool down) and how many active purple or gold leads do you already have? (If you have 6+ then this may decrease your drop % until you scry/dig these up to clear out your active lead list).

Having farmed a lot of antiquity leads I have seen no evidence that supports this. I have hopped all over the map and got 4 gold leads within 1 kill sometimes, other times it has taken a dozen plus kills to get the same lead on another iteration.

Same goes for un-dug leads, having collected all leads for a multi-part has sometimes taken me 10 minutes, sometimes 4 hours.

Edit: The anecdotal evidence is being driven by confirmation bias in my opinion.

ChaoticWings3 · August 17

Gabriel_H wrote: »

ChaoticWings3 wrote: »

I honestly couldn't agree more. Its part of my OCD with the system since I kind of want to complete the codex.

It's part of my actual OCD - I MUST complete the codex.

I think when the antiquity system first released I kind of enjoyed finding the little nuggets of lore and some of those furniture items are some of my favorites in the game that rival a lot of the expensive crown store furnishings. I even grinded out some of the first mythic items thinking "Oh, so each piece gets a lore entry. That's interesting.

). But then I discovered that there were missing entries for all the stuff I collected including the mythic items. I then realized I would have to do the same grind 2 more times to collect all the lore....yes I know I can look up the text online but if I have to take myself out of the game to read something my immersion breaks and makes me come to the game less. I decided to ignore it at this time since I was doing end game stuff with guilds.

Fast forward to now. I got tired of my warden, I realized I skipped so many lore books and didn't read a single one, I missed out on talking to some npcs, I regretted some of the story decisions I made (I always got the skill book from Sherogorath for one....now there are so many skill points to collect that I just want to have a good ending for that quest line now). So now I am a crazy lore guy that wants to read everything and these codex entries are going to be the bane of my existence if there isn't an adjustment to the system.

Grendalism wrote: »

From my experience, the drop rates of Levi’s usually ~25% (I.e. a drop every four kills), but that is obviously affected by RNG.

Additionally, consider where it drops from and how many people are fighting the thing you need to kill.

If it’s an arena or dungeon, and you’ve got 4 people, then each player has the 25% drop chance (that doesn’t mean a guaranteed drop between all 4), so in reality this gives ~1/16 chance of the drop per kill(your 1/4 is multiplied by the group members). Then add RNG on top!

…so any leas from a trial has a 1/4 drop chance split over 12 people…so you are then looking at a 1/48 chance.

Allegedly, other factors play a part - when did you last get a gold lead drop? (As there may be a cool down) and how many active purple or gold leads do you already have? (If you have 6+ then this may decrease your drop % until you scry/dig these up to clear out your active lead list).

Going back to why I started this topic. I went back to Betnikh and got the painted war drum within 5 minutes and another one within 2. Yet the ayleid well I only got one within 2 hours. I will guarantee you the only leads I have right now are a third copy of the painted drum and I haven't dug it up yet because mod kills can potentially drop the well. I really wish I knew the overall chances of getting some of these things because the furniture items have sometimes been tougher to get than some of the mythic item parts. Since you can literally buy the furniture later there really shouldn't be any major rng for repeated copies of a purchasable item for codex entries. I can't sell the war drums for 80,000 gold.....even if I realllllllyyyy wanted to so I can at least make up for the loss of time it takes to get some of these.

Gabriel_H · August 17

I will just add in ZOS' defence that they are better than most at implementing a curation system, there are just some glaring holes that need filling in. Antiquity leads fall into this as it is part of the same RNG system, and as I have said elsewhere there is a way to implement a capped RNG system which would improve drop rates, but my biggest gripe with leads remains the lore entry inconsistency.

Oh and FYI: Timbershade lead dropped on my 82nd kill.

ChaoticWings3 · August 17

Gabriel_H wrote: »

I will just add in ZOS' defence that they are better than most at implementing a curation system, there are just some glaring holes that need filling in. Antiquity leads fall into this as it is part of the same RNG system, and as I have said elsewhere there is a way to implement a capped RNG system which would improve drop rates, but my biggest gripe with leads remains the lore entry inconsistency.

Oh and FYI: Timbershade lead dropped on my 82nd kill.

Its part of the reason I'm still playing the game. I am very happy they are implementing the monster shoulder curation. That was by far the worse thing to do for the end game content especially in the early days when we couldn't change the trait of the piece. Got to love it as a tank when you get impenetrable with the heavy shoulder piece you need for your build without any other way to get the correct trait other than back to the dungeon mines. XD

Its the main reason why I'm discussing the antiquity system now since it is one of the few sore spots left for me in the game that once fixed would have me playing even longer.

Also OMG that rng is brutal.

katanagirl1 · August 17

Gabriel_H wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Leads in IA need to also be included in all chests, not just the ones in the side areas and Tho’at.

PW and Marauders also drop leads. Just to add.

Only if you go past arc 1. I’m soloing on a trials dps toon so that is as far as I go.

I used to see the Pilferer in arc 1 but after some update he stopped appearing.

ChaoticWings3 · August 18

After doing another lead grind to no avail for that 3rd ayleid well for 2 more hours it occurred to me why can't the leads be purchased after the grind the first time? You could make it the same amount of gold as the furniture items or a set price for the mythic leads but at the very least you would only have to do the mind numbing grind once and then could spend gold to get the rest of the codex entries.

I still think that A) the rng system for antiquities needs to be adjusted because the drop rates are unreasonable (this purple lead for instance gets me mad after the first hour of no drops.....it should not take that long if you are constantly grinding the drop requirement). B.) I still think after getting one of the antiquities the other codex entries should really just unlock. The amount of lore you get for filling a codex entry is about as long as a snippet from a motif book for daggers, staves, etc. In the case of motifs it unlocks the ability for that character to craft that specific style. Meanwhile your other reward for collecting a three to four sentence snippet is maybe another "free" furniture piece or you know a second/third copy of a mythic you already own and can reconstruct and pain....lots and lots of pain.

I'm just coming up with alternative solutions to hopefully alleviate the problem in the future if there still needs to be some sort of grind or better yet lets just have a rotating gold purchasable leads from the antiquarian circle at all times. Gold grinding is something that I think most players can do reasonably and is less annoying then doing the exact same task for the 500th time and getting no results. Lets make it have at least 10 leads a week. Any less would be too little and we would continue to have the infinite archive situation where only 2 leads can be acquired. I think the infinite archive could still be used for some of the more difficult or highly sought after leads but lets at least increase it to 4 different leads.

Nharimlur_Finor · August 18

After nine years of play, my experience suggests to me that ZOS are on a path of ever-increasing difficulty for players in every aspect of the game.
My own personal observations leads me to conclude that ZOS will only change any difficulty constraint when it can be proven to them that that will result in increased revenue.
I found that the grind for antiquities (on previous accounts) was overly onerous. I won't even consider purchasing the DLC that provides this feature, for my current account.

I will no longer pay to be aggravated by my supplier.

Your experience may be different

liliub17_ESO · August 18

My issue may be anecdotal, but all my original characters have abysmal 'luck' with antiquities drops, fishing, just about anything in which RNG plays a huge part. Newer characters - especially those since High Isle, have really good luck with the same sorts of things the older can barely find ever.

I play the older girls much more often, so it's not a case of "oh, you just play the new ones, so you notice more".

To be honest, I gave up long ago on the grind for certain fragments and such. That cute big-eared ginger kitty? I tried for a goodly long while for the last fragment, and finally a guildmate gave me like the fourth one he'd gotten in the same cursed string of runs we had JUST been doing together!!! If I had to guess, there was some sort of RNG shuffle a couple of years ago. Not a coder, so of course I couldn't tell you if there is any possibility of that, but on both my accounts there is a marked difference in the drops and drops' likelihood between the original and the more recent chapters/DLCs.

ChaoticWings3 · August 18

liliub17_ESO wrote: »

My issue may be anecdotal, but all my original characters have abysmal 'luck' with antiquities drops, fishing, just about anything in which RNG plays a huge part. Newer characters - especially those since High Isle, have really good luck with the same sorts of things the older can barely find ever.

I play the older girls much more often, so it's not a case of "oh, you just play the new ones, so you notice more".

To be honest, I gave up long ago on the grind for certain fragments and such. That cute big-eared ginger kitty? I tried for a goodly long while for the last fragment, and finally a guildmate gave me like the fourth one he'd gotten in the same cursed string of runs we had JUST been doing together!!! If I had to guess, there was some sort of RNG shuffle a couple of years ago. Not a coder, so of course I couldn't tell you if there is any possibility of that, but on both my accounts there is a marked difference in the drops and drops' likelihood between the original and the more recent chapters/DLCs.

Yeah the rng system is kind of weird. I don't know if it is like a daily reset as to how likely something is to drop or if it really is just true rng being very stubborn. I said before earlier I was having trouble with the painted war drum but then after deciding to try to get it again I got 2 leads within the span of 7 minutes.....I was doing that grind for hours on other days. If something was officially stated for the rng system I would be more confident in how everything kind of works but for now I keep finding superstitions of changing characters can lead to better drop chances, changing zones can lead to better drop chances, coming back another day on the same character can lead to better drop chances (my experience), etc.