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Should IA drop gear that is not IA specific?
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DenverRalphy✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭YesDenverRalphy wrote: »DenverRalphy wrote: »thatnewcatsmell wrote: »
Great question! You might think that everyone started playing this game 8 years ago and/or already collected everything, but that's simply not the case. You could obviously just farm the sets in the specific zones, but this is a nice alternative method.How is getting a set drop we first got 8 years ago a "reward"?
So you prefer tens of hours of grinding for a gear piece to spending 1000 gold to buy what you need.
Overland gear drops in IA are curated drops. I'd sooner just farm the last few pieces of an overland set in IA with a couple quick Arc 2 Cycle 4 Boss runs. Each run being 30ish minutes.
You'd rather spend 30 minutes for a CHANCE to get a drop than spend 30 seconds and 1k gold to FOR SURE get what you're after? This is what you just said.
Overland sets from the cycle chests are curated. So the chances are pretty good. Besides which, I also get the style mats from the deconstruction of the DLC drops (huuuge bonus). I also get my archival fortunes. IA set pieces (before I completed all 14 sets). Style pages. Research folios and furnishing plans from urns. A bit-o-gold, The occasional rare mat from the crafting satchels. Etc..
I'm more than happy with the non-IA sets that drop.
Style mats from overland gear is worthless. Their value is so low we can't even sell them in guild stores.
Apparently you've never needed nor sold style mats from low drop rate dlc styles like Shimmering Sand from N Elsweyr. Housing enthusiasts gobble up style mats.Edited by DenverRalphy on May 11, 2026 11:58PM0 -
Gabriel_H✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭YesThey are not "diluting" the IA gear drops. Those are completely unconnected pools.
Cycle chests drop overland gear. There is never any chance for an IA set in those chests.
Arc chests and Marauders drop IA sets. Guaranteed.PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »It's not diluting the drops, they drop from different things.You get IA gear from Marauders and Thoat and overland gear from intermediate bosses.
Would I prefer if every chest gave IA gear instead? Sure, I also think fortune rewards should be double, but that's not the balancing of those things they wanted.
You both ignored the question and changed the subject.
Nah, they are just pointing out that if the removed the overland drops you'd still get the same number of IA drops, because it drops from Arc and Wandering bosses.
So the chests and bosses that drop overland gear in IA aren't in IA? You don't see the fault in your argument?
No fault, I just have an understanding of the intent. The overland sets that drop are so players can play IA and not have to go farm zone sets, because the game is so monumentally huge at this point. The sets cycle. The same intent is behind the overland sets and curated coffers in the Night Market.
If you'd like a less clinical and more fanciful take: It is the Infinite Archive, pulling knowledge from all over the Mundus. Many secrets may be found in the Archive, from lost antiquities, ancient treasure maps, and pieces of armour and weapons forged in many lands.PC EU
Never get involved in a land war in Asia - it's one of the classic blunders!0 -
Varana✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭Yes"Curation" in ESO has always been notoriously unreliable or totally faulty.
No, curation works fine. Not every source drops everything, so it can happen that you need weapons of a set but the source drops only armour. That's not a case of curation not working, that's a question of understanding the system.So the chests and bosses that drop overland gear in IA aren't in IA? You don't see the fault in your argument?
They are, but they don't drop IA gear. If you remove overland gear from them, they still won't drop IA gear.
If you want all chests to drop IA class sets, that's a different request than "Should IA drop gear that is not IA specific?"
And it would collecting them even more trivially easy than what it is now, and removing an incentive to run IA is not in anyone's interest.1 -
JustLovely✭✭✭✭✭
✭No"Curation" in ESO has always been notoriously unreliable or totally faulty.
No, curation works fine. Not every source drops everything, so it can happen that you need weapons of a set but the source drops only armour. That's not a case of curation not working, that's a question of understanding the system.So the chests and bosses that drop overland gear in IA aren't in IA? You don't see the fault in your argument?
They are, but they don't drop IA gear. If you remove overland gear from them, they still won't drop IA gear.
If you want all chests to drop IA class sets, that's a different request than "Should IA drop gear that is not IA specific?"
And it would collecting them even more trivially easy than what it is now, and removing an incentive to run IA is not in anyone's interest.
Curation in ESO has never worked as reliably as it should. It's not too bad when it comes to drops from the last dungeon boss, but when it comes to curated crates and similar curated drops they've always been unreliable in ESO. For sure the curation of overland set drops in IA is not working correctly.
IA is 100% recycled content. There is nothing new in IA except the class sets and the puzzle rooms. So the only reason to go there is the class sets, which drop at such a stingy rate it's not even worth it. If IA and vengeance is the future of ESO then ESO doesn't have a very bright future ahead.2 -
JustLovely✭✭✭✭✭
✭NoSpeaking for myself, I'm very unhappy with Infinite Archive dropping random overland gear I already have. With so many IA gear sets, and every one of those sets coming in all 3 weights, why the heck is random overland gear diluting the IA gear drops?
Every time I get a drop in IA that is trash overland gear I lose a little bit more respect for ZOS and their marketing.
You just outlined why I don't waste my time in IA. It's just recycled content, nothing new. If class sets dropped at a reasonable rate it would be ok, but they don't, so it doesn't work.
Edited by JustLovely on May 12, 2026 5:35PM3 -
DenverRalphy✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭YesJustLovely wrote: »"Curation" in ESO has always been notoriously unreliable or totally faulty.
No, curation works fine. Not every source drops everything, so it can happen that you need weapons of a set but the source drops only armour. That's not a case of curation not working, that's a question of understanding the system.So the chests and bosses that drop overland gear in IA aren't in IA? You don't see the fault in your argument?
They are, but they don't drop IA gear. If you remove overland gear from them, they still won't drop IA gear.
If you want all chests to drop IA class sets, that's a different request than "Should IA drop gear that is not IA specific?"
And it would collecting them even more trivially easy than what it is now, and removing an incentive to run IA is not in anyone's interest.
Curation in ESO has never worked as reliably as it should. It's not too bad when it comes to drops from the last dungeon boss, but when it comes to curated crates and similar curated drops they've always been unreliable in ESO. For sure the curation of overland set drops in IA is not working correctly.
Curated overland sets work just fine in IA. If for example you loot a Frostbite set item, and you haven't filled out the stickerbook for Frostbite, then you will get one that you have not yet collected. Each week the overland sets will be a rotation of one base game zone, and one DLC zone.Edited by DenverRalphy on May 12, 2026 6:30PM0 -
Aylish✭✭✭✭✭YesIA is an archive of everything around Tamriel and beyond. That‘s why there are bosses from everywhere and that‘s why there are set pieces from everywhere. IA set drops aren‘t affected by overland drops at all since they from distinct sources.0 -
JustLovely✭✭✭✭✭
✭NoDenverRalphy wrote: »JustLovely wrote: »"Curation" in ESO has always been notoriously unreliable or totally faulty.
No, curation works fine. Not every source drops everything, so it can happen that you need weapons of a set but the source drops only armour. That's not a case of curation not working, that's a question of understanding the system.So the chests and bosses that drop overland gear in IA aren't in IA? You don't see the fault in your argument?
They are, but they don't drop IA gear. If you remove overland gear from them, they still won't drop IA gear.
If you want all chests to drop IA class sets, that's a different request than "Should IA drop gear that is not IA specific?"
And it would collecting them even more trivially easy than what it is now, and removing an incentive to run IA is not in anyone's interest.
Curation in ESO has never worked as reliably as it should. It's not too bad when it comes to drops from the last dungeon boss, but when it comes to curated crates and similar curated drops they've always been unreliable in ESO. For sure the curation of overland set drops in IA is not working correctly.
Curated overland sets work just fine in IA. If for example you loot a Frostbite set item, and you haven't filled out the stickerbook for Frostbite, then you will get one that you have not yet collected. Each week the overland sets will be a rotation of one base game zone, and one DLC zone.
No, curation of set drops in IA does not work properly. Never once have I gotten a overland set drop in IA that I didn't already have. I know you will say that just means I already have all the overland set pieces, but I don't.
The people defending ZOS in respect to IA's extreme lack of rewards are the same crew that defend ZOS every time on every issue no matter what.2 -
CatalinaWineMixer2✭✭✭✭NoCuration coffers and other things dont work right anyway. If you're going into IA, only IA stuff should drop. Its like spending 2000 hrs in VDSR to get 1 staff and having them turn around and nerf Pillagers. Absolutely ridiculous3
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Elendildur✭✭✭NoJustLovely wrote: »DenverRalphy wrote: »JustLovely wrote: »"Curation" in ESO has always been notoriously unreliable or totally faulty.
No, curation works fine. Not every source drops everything, so it can happen that you need weapons of a set but the source drops only armour. That's not a case of curation not working, that's a question of understanding the system.So the chests and bosses that drop overland gear in IA aren't in IA? You don't see the fault in your argument?
They are, but they don't drop IA gear. If you remove overland gear from them, they still won't drop IA gear.
If you want all chests to drop IA class sets, that's a different request than "Should IA drop gear that is not IA specific?"
And it would collecting them even more trivially easy than what it is now, and removing an incentive to run IA is not in anyone's interest.
Curation in ESO has never worked as reliably as it should. It's not too bad when it comes to drops from the last dungeon boss, but when it comes to curated crates and similar curated drops they've always been unreliable in ESO. For sure the curation of overland set drops in IA is not working correctly.
Curated overland sets work just fine in IA. If for example you loot a Frostbite set item, and you haven't filled out the stickerbook for Frostbite, then you will get one that you have not yet collected. Each week the overland sets will be a rotation of one base game zone, and one DLC zone.
No, curation of set drops in IA does not work properly. Never once have I gotten a overland set drop in IA that I didn't already have. I know you will say that just means I already have all the overland set pieces, but I don't.
The people defending ZOS in respect to IA's extreme lack of rewards are the same crew that defend ZOS every time on every issue no matter what.
Each week, the small boss chests cycle through a DLC zone and a basegame zone, the chests will only drop loot for those zones
For example, if the zones for that week are Reaper's March and Blackwood, then the chests will drop pieces from the Reaper's March sets (Skooma Smuggler, Senche's Bite, and Soulshine) and the Blackwood sets (Bog Raider, Deadlands Assassin, and Frostbite). If you're missing pieces from a set that isn't dropping for that week, then you won't find it. That's not curation messing up, that's how it works3 -
PrinceShroob✭✭✭✭✭Tho'at and Marauders drop gear from Infinite Archive sets with body and weapons alternating--so, for example, in Arc 1, Tho'at drops a body piece, then in Arc 2, the Marauder and Tho'at drop weapons, and so on. You'll always receive a piece you don't have, restricted to the type of gear that's dropping (so if you have all the body pieces, you'll never get a weapon from Tho'at in Arc 1). After you've completed the collections menu for the class of the character you're playing, you'll get gear from other classes, which will let you complete the collection without actually having a character of that class.
The overland gear that drops from chests after cycle bosses first determines its source and then is curated, so you can get something you already have if you have everything from that zone. For example, if the zones are Hew's Bane and Reaper's March, you may receive a Reaper's March item when you have everything collected from there, even if you haven't collected everything from Hew's Bane.
Once you've completed all the collectibles, the coffer you receive from Master Malkhest's daily quest gives a curated piece of gear from a random set--so something you don't have, but not based on the class of the character who opens it.
There's also the curated and random coffers you can buy from the Filers.
I think the set sourcing is fine--I'll admit that it was better when you got on the leaderboard on a per-character basis. I think what you actually have happening is that there's a lot of players who are upset they have to farm two-year-old sets since a lot of them will be better next patch, and they completely ignored the Archive until now.1 -
AScarlato✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭NoI'd rather the ones that currently drop overland set items to drop uncurated set pieces for any class instead, so the likelihood you get a piece you are currently farming is low but you still get sets that are actually from IA. As is it feels like a lot of time wasted getting garbage which is disappointing. It feels like running a dungeon and having only the end boss drop a set from the dungeon, which is too time consuming for why you may be farming there.
It would probably speed up how much time you need to farm IA, but I don't think I will be farming all the sets at this pace.Edited by AScarlato on May 13, 2026 3:48AM2 -
SaffronCitrusflower✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭NoI'd rather the ones that currently drop overland set items to drop uncurated set pieces for any class instead, so the likelihood you get a piece you are currently farming is low but you still get sets that are actually from IA. As is it feels like a lot of time wasted getting garbage which is disappointing. It feels like running a dungeon and having only the end boss drop a set from the dungeon, which is too time consuming for why you may be farming there.
It would probably speed up how much time you need to farm IA, but I don't think I will be farming all the sets at this pace.
This is where I'm at too. It's just too much grinding. IA is far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far to redundant. As others have pointed out, there isn't even anything new in IA. It's just recycled content except for the puzzle rooms. It's not even new content. So to force thousands of hours of grinding for sets that may or may not be worth it is crazy. It's disrespectful to the customer.
The "arguments" in favor of worthless random overland gears don't work. Overland gear is worthless trash and so are the mats we get from deconning the gear.
Edited by SaffronCitrusflower on May 13, 2026 3:49PM3 -
AScarlato✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭NoSaffronCitrusflower wrote: »I'd rather the ones that currently drop overland set items to drop uncurated set pieces for any class instead, so the likelihood you get a piece you are currently farming is low but you still get sets that are actually from IA. As is it feels like a lot of time wasted getting garbage which is disappointing. It feels like running a dungeon and having only the end boss drop a set from the dungeon, which is too time consuming for why you may be farming there.
It would probably speed up how much time you need to farm IA, but I don't think I will be farming all the sets at this pace.
This is where I'm at too. It's just too much grinding. IA is far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far to redundant. As others have pointed out, there isn't even anything new in IA. It's just recycled content except for the puzzle rooms. It's not even new content. So to force thousands of hours of grinding for sets that may or may not be worth it is crazy. It's disrespectful to the customer.
The "arguments" in favor of worthless random overland gears don't work. Overland gear is worthless trash and so are the mats we get from deconning the gear.
Agree of course.
For some of the more popular arguments, like "It's not diluting the loot pool because only 1 or sometimes 2 fights in an entire arc drops IA gear" my question would be "why?" All the bosses should like any other dungeon I go to for the sticker book.
"I like deconning things" - well, decon the IA drops then?
I already have ways to farm very old overland sets if I wanted them, and they aren't why I go to IA and I don't even view them as desirable in any way.
Edit: TyposEdited by AScarlato on May 13, 2026 5:07PM1 -
spartaxoxo✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭YesSaffronCitrusflower wrote: »The "arguments" in favor of worthless random overland gears don't work. Overland gear is worthless trash and so are the mats we get from deconning the gear.
The mats are not worthless trash on the dlc sets. Some of the style materials are expensive relative to the price of other mats because they're used in housing. And even the ones that aren't are good for master writs.
ZOS most likely, imo, didn't want to put them in cycle chests because they wanted the main rewards to be from finishing Arcs and killing Marauders so that going deeper was rewarding instead of people just being able to farm the first few cycles and get everything.
I understand that there is a correlation between the cycle chests and overland gear. But correlation =/= causation.
Objectively, the overland gear is in a completely separate pool. And objectively, the presence of any given reward does not prevent them from adding additional rewards to the cycle chests in the future.
ETA
Make of that what you will but I don't really see any reason to remove rewards people like because some others don't like them. They can just add additional rewards.Edited by spartaxoxo on May 13, 2026 5:26PM1 -
Varana✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭YesFor some of the more popular arguments, like "It's not diluting the loot pool because only 1 or sometimes 2 fights in an entire arc drops IA gear" my question would be "why?" All the bosses should like any other dungeon I go to for the sticker book.
IA sets are rewards for completing an arc because they want you to finish arcs, at least one, not just run the first cycle over and over again.
Similarly, dungeons don't usually drop weapons except from the last boss, because they're the reward for running the whole dungeon.0 -
SaffronCitrusflower✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭Nospartaxoxo wrote: »SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »The "arguments" in favor of worthless random overland gears don't work. Overland gear is worthless trash and so are the mats we get from deconning the gear.
The mats are not worthless trash on the dlc sets. Some of the style materials are expensive relative to the price of other mats because they're used in housing. And even the ones that aren't are good for master writs.
And since the presence of the overland gear has absolutely no bearing on their ability to offer IA sets, it is not a valid argument that they are causing more grind.
ZOS most likely, imo, didn't want to put them in cycle chests because they wanted the main rewards to be from finishing Arcs and killing Marauders so that going deeper was rewarding instead of people just being able to farm the first few cycles and get everything.
I understand that there is a correlation between the cycle chests and overland gear. But correlation =/= causation.
Objectively, the overland gear is in a completely separate pool that. And objectively, the presence of any given reward does not prevent them from adding additional rewards to the cycle chests in the future.
No, the vast majority of the overland sets DO NOT provide valuable mats when deconned. They just don't. Seems a couple posters in this thread think nobody else has deconned items from IA or something. We have. We know what we get. It's trash for the most part is what we get in IA. And the fights are all recycled from other content we've already played dozens or more times.
IA is nothing but a grind. It's just one infinite grind for virtually no rewards. It's not even fresh content.2 -
AScarlato✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭NoFor some of the more popular arguments, like "It's not diluting the loot pool because only 1 or sometimes 2 fights in an entire arc drops IA gear" my question would be "why?" All the bosses should like any other dungeon I go to for the sticker book.
IA sets are rewards for completing an arc because they want you to finish arcs, at least one, not just run the first cycle over and over again.
Similarly, dungeons don't usually drop weapons except from the last boss, because they're the reward for running the whole dungeon.
Yes but you don't get random overland sets for doing bosses in a dungeon, like IA. IA quickly feels tedious spawning waves to get disappointing chests for long periods of time.0 -
spartaxoxo✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭YesSaffronCitrusflower wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »The "arguments" in favor of worthless random overland gears don't work. Overland gear is worthless trash and so are the mats we get from deconning the gear.
The mats are not worthless trash on the dlc sets. Some of the style materials are expensive relative to the price of other mats because they're used in housing. And even the ones that aren't are good for master writs.
And since the presence of the overland gear has absolutely no bearing on their ability to offer IA sets, it is not a valid argument that they are causing more grind.
ZOS most likely, imo, didn't want to put them in cycle chests because they wanted the main rewards to be from finishing Arcs and killing Marauders so that going deeper was rewarding instead of people just being able to farm the first few cycles and get everything.
I understand that there is a correlation between the cycle chests and overland gear. But correlation =/= causation.
Objectively, the overland gear is in a completely separate pool that. And objectively, the presence of any given reward does not prevent them from adding additional rewards to the cycle chests in the future.
No, the vast majority of the overland sets DO NOT provide valuable mats when deconned. They just don't. Seems a couple posters in this thread think nobody else has deconned items from IA or something. We have. We know what we get. It's trash for the most part is what we get in IA. And the fights are all recycled from other content we've already played dozens or more times.
IA is nothing but a grind. It's just one infinite grind for virtually no rewards. It's not even fresh content.
They don't do all provide valuable mats but enough do that people like them. Mats line Shimmering Sand are valuable and can be sourced from IA when they're in the rotation. You can check the overland set for the week and only do it when it's worth it, if you'd like.
And regardless of whether the overland sets are nice or trash is up to the individual. That's subjective. What's not subjective is that they don't have to take them away to offer additional loot.Edited by spartaxoxo on May 13, 2026 5:59PM2
