Thieves Guild Armory Station.

Thoriorz · June 19

Hi, I just finished the 3/3 codex at this station, and for those of you trying to do the same, here's how I farmed it.

I got 2 Leads from the Heist quest. Leads can drop from both the purple coffer and the blue one (if you don't complete the Heist at that time).

But practically all of the remaining 13 Lead drops came exclusively from Thieves' Trove, and specifically only in Hew's Bane zone (I skipped Glenumbra—it didn't seem like a suitable place to me...).

My route:

I basically started at one point, and the red line shows the route I took as I simply drove around possible Thieves' Trove spawn locations. One of these routes took me 5–7 minutes (along the way, I only picked up Violet Coprimus when I spotted one now and then, or Psijic Portals—nothing else. just mount and sprint, sprint, and sprint.), and I opened 1–3 Thieves' Troves on one full route. Of course, I was farming during "off hours," hoping there wouldn't be too many other players in the zone doing the same thing as me...

What do I think? Well, the worst part was the 1/3 codex—I spent about 4 hours on that. The 2/3 and 3/3 codexes were noticeably easier (maybe earning the achievement increased the chance of a Lead drop?). In total, I needed about 7 hours for the 3/3 Codex. If you have time to play during off-hours, I'd say that's ok, but farming this when there are more people in the zone who are after the same thing as me would be a huge pain, and ZOS should consider where to place Leads in the future, in my opinion.

So good luck to everyone who's farming this station!

DenverRalphy · June 20

I think the drop rate itself actually isn't so bad overall. Each time I went out of my way to focus on it, I finished within a couple of hours. My third round this morning I finished in about an hour and a half. Though I attribute that efficiency to having rehearsed and refined my 9 trove loop the first couple times.

The biggest hurdle is acquiring the troves before another player can snipe them from you.

Nemesis7884 · June 20

I immediately tune out anything troves related....worst grind ever

decaffeinated · June 20

There are thieves troves spawned anywhere in game? That's news to me. I've tried to farm it and can't find more than 1 trove per hour that's up.

Nemesis7884 · June 20

decaffeinated wrote: »

There are thieves troves spawned anywhere in game? That's news to me. I've tried to farm it and can't find more than 1 trove per hour that's up.

in any area but fix locations like treasure chests

FlameDark · June 20

decaffeinated wrote: »

There are thieves troves spawned anywhere in game? That's news to me. I've tried to farm it and can't find more than 1 trove per hour that's up.

There are addons that show you where they are supposed to spawn on the map if you need help finding where they spawn. They are fixed locations that they do not share with anything else. But their respawn time is ridiculously long. Especially when they are being farmed. When I was looking for troves even before the armory station (for the one music box piece) I was finding more psijic portals then troves, and I was using the addon to help me find them! So, it's no surprise that blind searching you only found one an hour.

DenverRalphy · June 20

FlameDark wrote: »

decaffeinated wrote: »

There are thieves troves spawned anywhere in game? That's news to me. I've tried to farm it and can't find more than 1 trove per hour that's up.

There are addons that show you where they are supposed to spawn on the map if you need help finding where they spawn. They are fixed locations that they do not share with anything else. But their respawn time is ridiculously long. Especially when they are being farmed. When I was looking for troves even before the armory station (for the one music box piece) I was finding more psijic portals then troves, and I was using the addon to help me find them! So, it's no surprise that blind searching you only found one an hour.

It's not the respawn timer so much that it's the number that can actually exist versus how may possible spawn locations there are in any given zone. Making the respawn time seem a lot longer than it actually is. For example, suppose there are 100 possible trove spawn locations, but only 20 actual troves. When you loot a trove, waiting around for it to respawn is almost always fruitless because there are at best 81 other possible locations that trove can respawn.

[edit] Caveat.. I used completely made up numbers for illustration purposes.

Nemesis7884 · June 20

where does the hood drop? heists or thieves troves? finding conflicting info and havent gotten that one neither from countless of both...

DenverRalphy · June 20

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

where does the hood drop? heists or thieves troves? finding conflicting info and havent gotten that one neither from countless of both...

All 5 leads can drop from heists, and they can all drop from troves.

Nemesis7884 · June 20

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

where does the hood drop? heists or thieves troves? finding conflicting info and havent gotten that one neither from countless of both...

All 5 leads can drop from heists, and they can all drop from troves.

Hmm weird, all other leads i got quite quickly but for the last one, the hood, ive do ne four heists and opened around 10 troves without success.

allochthons · June 20

DenverRalphy wrote: »

It's not the respawn timer so much that it's the number that can actually exist versus how may possible spawn locations there are in any given zone. Making the respawn time seem a lot longer than it actually is. For example, suppose there are 100 possible trove spawn locations, but only 20 actual troves. When you loot a trove, waiting around for it to respawn is almost always fruitless because there are at best 81 other possible locations that trove can respawn.

This. I camped a few troves because I was doing chores or reading or dishes or...
One respawned in 20 minutes. One spawned in 90, one I waited over 2 hours with no spawn. It's not set. It's the number of active troves in a zone and randomly spawning in the set locations.

ETA: My RNG is awful on this one. I've been doing heists on two characters a day, not a single lead. I've been farming the troves in both zones for hours (a similar route to Thoriorz in Hews), and I'm only up to 3 total on the first station. I'm finding plenty of troves. The leads just don't drop. I even tried a character that doesn't have antiquities leveled because there was a rumor years ago that those characters could have better drops. Nope. High frustration for the drops on the Armory and Summerset furnishings.

method__01 · June 20

same here.done about 25 heists ,opened a lot of Troves in Hew's Bane and Glenumbra and im 4 leads EU and 3 NA

SkaiFaith · June 20

I spent the afternoon and evening farming troves and got all the 5 leads but just one time, over 4-5 hours.

I really hope filling codex won't take another 10 hours of farming troves.

To anyone who has filled the codex - does this really become purchasable at the achievement vendor in Glenumbra? Because I've checked its inventory and the item isn't even present locked in the list.

FlameDark · June 20

DenverRalphy wrote: »

FlameDark wrote: »

decaffeinated wrote: »

There are thieves troves spawned anywhere in game? That's news to me. I've tried to farm it and can't find more than 1 trove per hour that's up.

There are addons that show you where they are supposed to spawn on the map if you need help finding where they spawn. They are fixed locations that they do not share with anything else. But their respawn time is ridiculously long. Especially when they are being farmed. When I was looking for troves even before the armory station (for the one music box piece) I was finding more psijic portals then troves, and I was using the addon to help me find them! So, it's no surprise that blind searching you only found one an hour.

It's not the respawn timer so much that it's the number that can actually exist versus how may possible spawn locations there are in any given zone. Making the respawn time seem a lot longer than it actually is. For example, suppose there are 100 possible trove spawn locations, but only 20 actual troves. When you loot a trove, waiting around for it to respawn is almost always fruitless because there are at best 81 other possible locations that trove can respawn.

[edit] Caveat.. I used completely made up numbers for illustration purposes.

Huh, I did not know that! Thank you

Well that just makes farming these even worse. I really hope we don't get too many more of these type of leads that come from Troves. Or they will need to make some changes with the amount that can spawn, and the timer itself too.

DenverRalphy · June 20

SkaiFaith wrote: »

To anyone who has filled the codex - does this really become purchasable at the achievement vendor in Glenumbra? Because I've checked its inventory and the item isn't even present locked in the list.

It's found at the Hew's Bane achievement vendor.

SkaiFaith · June 21

DenverRalphy wrote: »

SkaiFaith wrote: »

To anyone who has filled the codex - does this really become purchasable at the achievement vendor in Glenumbra? Because I've checked its inventory and the item isn't even present locked in the list.

It's found at the Hew's Bane achievement vendor.

Thank you very much for the info! Nice.
Guess the guide I've read online was wrong.

Nemesis7884 · June 21

im really confused about the leads...the first 4 leads i all found with opening 1 or 2 thieves troves - but for this last lead i have done 10 heists now and opened over 50 troves and havent received it...seems weird

Gabriel_H · June 21

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

im really confused about the leads...the first 4 leads i all found with opening 1 or 2 thieves troves - but for this last lead i have done 10 heists now and opened over 50 troves and havent received it...seems weird

They seemed to have flat lined the drop rate from the method they have used the last couple of years. It looks to be higher overall than pre-Gold Road, but the ~100% chance on 1st iteration is gone.

Nemesis7884 · June 21

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

im really confused about the leads...the first 4 leads i all found with opening 1 or 2 thieves troves - but for this last lead i have done 10 heists now and opened over 50 troves and havent received it...seems weird

They seemed to have flat lined the drop rate from the method they have used the last couple of years. It looks to be higher overall than pre-Gold Road, but the ~100% chance on 1st iteration is gone.

its just weird that all leads are easy and then the last one is uber difficult

Gabriel_H · June 21

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

im really confused about the leads...the first 4 leads i all found with opening 1 or 2 thieves troves - but for this last lead i have done 10 heists now and opened over 50 troves and havent received it...seems weird

They seemed to have flat lined the drop rate from the method they have used the last couple of years. It looks to be higher overall than pre-Gold Road, but the ~100% chance on 1st iteration is gone.

its just weird that all leads are easy and then the last one is uber difficult

Where are you farming?

Nemesis7884 · June 21

Hews bane where all other leads dropped here too so id assume this one too

Thoriorz · 3:18AM

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

Hews bane where all other leads dropped here too so id assume this one too

Yea, all 5 Leads can drop in Hews Bane.

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

im really confused about the leads...the first 4 leads i all found with opening 1 or 2 thieves troves - but for this last lead i have done 10 heists now and opened over 50 troves and havent received it...seems weird

Well, I have this theory that if, for example, you have a multi-Lead item (like this Thief Station) and multiple(all of them in this case) Leads for that item come from the same source (Thief’s Trove/Heist Coffer), then the game simply has a chance to drop a Lead, but there’s no guarantee that if a Lead does drop, it will be one you don’t already have.

Let’s say global chance of a Lead drop is 70% (that number is just an example), and let’s say you have 0 out of 5 Leads for the Station. Now, when you open the Trove and the 70% chance triggers, you get a Lead—you’ll see it drop on your screen, great. Now you have 1/5, so the next time the 70% chance triggers, the game will randomly select one of those 5 Leads—it could be one of the 4 you’re missing, but it could just as easily be the one you already have. If it’s one of the 4 you’re missing, you’ll see a Lead drop—great—but if, unfortunately, it’s the one you already have, you won’t see any drop because you already have it, yknow.
And the more Leads you gradually collect for a Station, the lower the chances are that you’ll get the ones you’re missing—if you have 4 out of 5 and need that last one, and if my theory is correct, then when the 70% triggers, it's more likely that the drop will roll one of the 4 you already have = you won't see any drop.

It's similar with treasure chests; Leads aren’t curated, and if you need a specific one (1 out of 10 or something like that, for example), it can take a long time before you see the one you want because, mathematically speaking, when game triggers Lead drop, you’re more likely to get ones you already have (and you don’t see those drops because you already have them—unless you’ve dug them up, of course... ).

That's why I think this might apply to Antiquities that consist of multiple Leads, where those Leads share the same drop source.

Of course, this is just a theory, and it would be ideal if one of the devs could confirm or refute it, but in practice, this actually seems to back it up... And we can just assume it’s true, and at the same time 10 people could come along with 10 different theories. But unless the devs tell us more about this, it’ll always just be a theory, yklnow.

NoticeMeArkay · 3:27AM

I collected all 5 leads for the thieves guild armory station yesterday by hunting down thieves troves in Glenumbra. It took a while less than 3 hours if I recall correctly. It's a very nice station by the way. Really digging the design. Also a bit larger than the standard version.

So, thieves troves in Glenumbra work for all 5 of them.

Nemesis7884 · 4:50AM

found it now but holy cow...the first 4 leads i found within 2 hours, the last one took me 2 days 15 heists and around 70 troves

Thoriorz · 5:36AM

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

found it now but holy cow...the first 4 leads i found within 2 hours, the last one took me 2 days 15 heists and around 70 troves

Congratulations, and now all that's left is to finish 3/3 codex!

Nemesis7884 · 6:08AM

Thoriorz wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

found it now but holy cow...the first 4 leads i found within 2 hours, the last one took me 2 days 15 heists and around 70 troves

Congratulations, and now all that's left is to finish 3/3 codex!

Thx but i pass