Availability of HMPs, Riftcinders, Riftdross

[BurnNotice]

The only farmable items that are worth it are ones that you can't easily get anywhere else, if you have another way to access them that is still the best way.

Dynamis is the best way to get coins, salvage is the best way to get alex etc.

Very true indeed.

[BurnNotice]

Hardest part of Ambuscade winning the book battle.

I have try to do the runs but this is more troublesome than expected. Having to sit there and spam book for over 5 minutes is a bit much. I hope they make changes to this soon.

[BurnNotice]

Well, after giving VWs a try after update and during campaign, the quality of drops for HMPs, Riftcinders, and Riftdross is as horrendous as it was before. I want to use Aello for example. I fought this daily for exactly 50 times since the start of the campaign on Monday to Wednesday, average two HMP pouches. On Thursday, I did 65 Aello kills, and only seen 2 HMP pouches. As of Friday, April 16th 2016, I killed Aello 80 times tonight and only got 3 HMP pouches. Saturday, I will be to kill 100 Aellos to see what the results will be.

Now keep in mind, I have farm HMPs by myself on Monday and today (Friday). Everyday after, I did it with 3~6 other people who's results were either 1~2 HMP pouches out of 50 kills, except for Thursday, we killed it 65 times and everyone had one or two.

Development, can you see that the quality items and its drop rate is unsatisfactory? Trying to collecting quality items from Ambuscade is as stressful as farming the items from VWs. This shouldn't be a stressful task at all, but it is and clearly there are other forums aside from this are complaining about it. Please understand that there are 22 unique jobs to play and we have a handful of career players who would like to see at least some of their favorite jobs have access to this weapons without the stress and anxiety of trying to make one.

Please advise as to what can be done about the "Quality of Life" behind weapon creations.

[Diavolo]

Development, can you see that the quality items and its drop rate is unsatisfactory? Trying to collecting quality items from Ambuscade is as stressful as farming the items from VWs. This shouldn't be a stressful task at all, but it is and clearly there are other forums aside from this are complaining about it. Please understand that there are 22 unique jobs to play and we have a handful of career players who would like to see at least some of their favorite jobs have access to this weapons without the stress and anxiety of trying to make one.

This cannot be stated enough.

[detlef]

It's nice that Ambuscade provides access to things like HMP but it's pretty damning how competitive it is compared to doing Voidwatch during the auto-capped lights campaign.

[Rydal]

Ambuscade did not help the HMP situation much at all. 1. HMP collecting is still a ridiculous grind and/or money pit even with the changes/additions. 2. Ambuscade limits the amount of currency you can obtain so even if you were able to spam it consistently, it'd take you 7+ months to get your Empyrean to 95 on Ambuscade alone.

Please help make these weapons more obtainable. At least make them guaranteed drops from the NMs via proc or normal drop. All other weapons have their currency guaranteed, why is Empyrean so much more difficult?

[detlef]

You're missing the point. Ambuscade isn't great, and yet it's still roughly as good as VW during a campaign intended to make VW as easy and quick as possible which also coincides with new improvements that make VW even easier to spam.

Voidwatch needs serious adjustments.

[Rydal]

I don't see what my post said that "missed" anything your post said. The fact that Ambuscade is about the same as grinding VW during the campaign (which isn't necessarily true but for argument's sake, let's say that it is), doesn't take away from the fact that the entire empyrean 95/99 system is ridiculously more difficult, expensive and time-consuming than both mythic and relic base to 119. My point still stands that Ambuscade limits you on how many of each item you can get so you'd still need to buy the rest or go back to the jacked up VW system until the next month, effectively negating the reason for doing VW for HMP/rift. Also, considering that Ambuscade offers unique prizes (capes at the moment) to spend Hallmarks on, there's an even bigger grind to get the maximum amount of HMP/rift for the month.

[detlef]

You totally missed the point. Both of Voidwatch and Ambuscade suck for generating HMP. The point is that it's particularly obvious that Voidwatch is broken because right now, under the very best circumstances, its HMP generation is still only on par with Ambuscade (which, as we both agree, also sucks at generating HMP).

[BurnNotice]

I would like to share some other feedback. I spoke with at least 4 people yesterday that spent the entire day ( they fought Qillin, Uptala, and Aello at minimum 400 times) farming HMPs. The results varied but for these people to fight these NMs well over 400 times and can account for only 150 HMPs or less. Talk about a big disappointment.

[Catmato]

Also, considering that Ambuscade offers unique prizes (capes at the moment) to spend Hallmarks on
Capes are not the unique reward; they're the permanent reward. See: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/50274-Ambuscade!-1-NPC-100-players?p=576292#post576288

[BurnNotice]

I was reminded to ask this question or two: Why not permanently make HMP pouches give 15? Even better, why not make pouches give between 15~50?

[Diavolo]

To quote Byrth's posts from another forum:

------------------------------------------
With 9 Heavy Metal Plates per pouch average, 6% chance of pouch drops, that works out to 0.54 plates per Zilart VW T3 kill.
Kaggen/Pil/Akvan are 0.35 plates/kill and drop crafting materials for armor upgrades.
Morta/Bismarck are 0.13 plates/kill but also drop Rift items 6% of the time and crafting materials

It takes roughly 3500 Voidstones to farm a 99 Empyrean. At 2 voidstone recharges/day, that's 4.8 years worth of voidstones on one character. Clears (before the voidwatch time reducing KIs), a little squandering here and there, and you're up near 5 years worth of voidstone recharges.

Voidwatch has been out since May of 2011. Congrats to anyone who has been saving up stones since then because you can finally solo a level 99 Empyrean without buying anything or making a second account.
------------------------------------------

How can you look at those numbers, then look at the state of the game today, and not see how ridiculously unbalanced the quest for 99 Empyrean weapons is?

[Rydal]

Capes are not the unique reward; they're the permanent reward. See: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/50274-Ambuscade!-1-NPC-100-players?p=576292#post576288

Unique meaning you can't obtain them outside of Ambuscade, not unique as in they are a temporary reward. We also don't know if or when there will be other unique rewards that we can obtain from Ambuscade so spending Hallmarks on HMP and rift items, while consistent and about equal to VW during the campaign, it isn't a fix to the issue.

[BurnNotice]

Tonight, killed Aello 36 times and not a single HMP pouch. So much time wasted. :(

[Diavolo]

Tonight, killed Aello 36 times and not a single HMP pouch. So much time wasted. :(

It's not much better when you finally get that one pouch to drop in the 50 or so battles you've fought through and it only gives you 3 plates. Random number generators on top of random number generators... it's demoralizing sometimes.

[camaroz]

I just wanted to note that on Saturday and Sunday a total of 18 hours was spent killing Qilin. A total of 28 pouches for 2 days is absolutely demoralizing and this needs to be addressed even with lights capped. I do thank you for the key item so I didn't have to leave however that is not the answer to this problem.

[Olor]

Is it just me or do drops seem even worse solo even with capped lights? Or does at least being in a group help with the numbing tedium?

[detlef]

I think pouch rate is 6% or something like that so if you do it a lot you'll experience many, many streaks of hopelessness.

[Raydeus]

(Thanks for the offer, but I'll have to pass.)

[Stompa]

Is it just me or do drops seem even worse solo even with capped lights? Or does at least being in a group help with the numbing tedium?

Here's the official response from Page 13 (I think) of this thread ;


Voidwatch drops are placed into individual loot pools, and drops increase greatly with more participants.

This explains how I was able to finish my HMP by going with my VW LS and alliance farming with 100% procs and 12~ people.

I have had far worse luck on solo drop rates.

However, even when I went with my friend's VW Static LS, we would often see the same person get five pouches in a 6-pop run, while another person was getting zero pouches in the same 6 pops.

So the problem remains, even if being in an alliance increases the overall drop rates, those drops can still randomly go to the one guy who was AFK most of the time, while the people who are spamming multi-weapon swapouts can be getting zero drops.

[Gwydion]

Here's the official response from Page 13 (I think) of this thread ;



This explains how I was able to finish my HMP by going with my VW LS and alliance farming with 100% procs and 12~ people.

I have had far worse luck on solo drop rates.

However, even when I went with my friend's VW Static LS, we would often see the same person get five pouches in a 6-pop run, while another person was getting zero pouches in the same 6 pops.

So the problem remains, even if being in an alliance increases the overall drop rates, those drops can still randomly go to the one guy who was AFK most of the time, while the people who are spamming multi-weapon swapouts can be getting zero drops.

How funny/sad would it be if the official response is just poorly translated. "The drops increase greatly with more participants" could mean that 6 players receive 6 individual pools and 18 players get 18 pools....but the drop rate is unchanged. (This sounds entirely possible to me!).

[Catmato]

How funny/sad would it be if the official response is just poorly translated. "The drops increase greatly with more participants" could mean that 6 players receive 6 individual pools and 18 players get 18 pools....but the drop rate is unchanged. (This sounds entirely possible to me!).

That's what I assumed it meant. Bringing 17 more people increases the drop rate 17 times. Hopefully a rep can give us some clarification.

[BurnNotice]

I kind of tested this theory already. I know the official response was stated that drops increase drastically with more participants, but it seems that there is some kind of variable that represents a number of quality upgrade items to be distribute per kill. For example, this past weekend, I was in an alliance of 18 people and it seems that only up to four people at a time will see the quality items, whereas the remain participants will receive craft items and/or crystal petrifacts. However, I have experienced and so have others during this campaign, that the lower the participants (in this case we had no more than 7 people) the better the rotation on quality items. Adversely, soloing it does lower the chances of getting a quality item, regardless of how fast we kill the NM. In addition, Heavy Metal Pouches produces a random number of heavy metals. This shouldn't be happening since its already an uncommon item with less than 6% droprate.

No matter how you slice it, the distribution of the quality items is truly unbalanced simply because the quality items is being rotated based upon the number of participants. I truly hope I am wrong about this, but until we can get an official response to how this works and what real adjustments can be made, I will have to assume this theory is fact.

Also, this only proves that the direct labor rate variance (which is the measure of difference between the actual cost of direct labor and the standard cost of direct labor utilized during a period) is unbalance and unfair compare to building Relics, Mythics/Ergon, and Aeonic Weapons. If a Dev rep is reading this response, it is much more time consuming to do an Empyrean Weapon than its counterparts. Creation of empyrean weapons at this juncture of the game brings a great amount of stress, being perceived as a deterrent due to its availability of quality items and repugnant drop rate, and has literally taken away the enjoyment of creating one in this game...for some, it takes away the enjoyment of the game in it's entirety.

[BurnNotice]

How funny/sad would it be if the official response is just poorly translated. "The drops increase greatly with more participants" could mean that 6 players receive 6 individual pools and 18 players get 18 pools....but the drop rate is unchanged. (This sounds entirely possible to me!).

I hope they will clarify this soon.

[BurnNotice]

Well folks, killed Aello 50 times tonight and not a single pouch. Party members were between 2~5. Only a 3 people seen 1~3 pouches total out of 50 kills. Myself and one other got 0 out of 50 kills. Wasted almost 3 hours. Just my feedback. :(

[Rydal]

Something else I want to bring up, unless you spam Ambuscade, have tons of extra gil, or are sitting on literally thousands of voidstones, it is almost impossible to solo farm VW for HMP in any reasonable amount of time. This is a multi-layer issue and I'm breaking it down because the update earlier this month did not do anything to change VW really because even with the campaign (which ends this weekend), the drops are terrible so imagine how it will be when it ends (pretty much back to square one).

1. Voidstone accumulation. This is mainly an issue for new/returning players that have only started VW out in the past year or so. The amount of voidstones they can accumulate is finite and abysmally low compared to the task at hand, making it impossible to have enough voidstones to spawn 1500 VWNMs, much less spawn enough NMs to actually get it to drop HMP/rift. Even if the drops were 100%, 1500 NM spawns is a task enough, given that you have to wait days, weeks, months to have enough stones to participate in the content. Now, you may say "you can buy voiddust and get as many stones as you need you idiot". Yes, I thought of that too. However...

2. Voiddust is not added to NPC stock despite the recent QOL update. Now this may not sound like a big deal. You run out of stones, you use your unused conquest points, allied notes, etc in order to buy ONE VOIDDUST AT A TIME (hint: make it so we can buy more than one at a time and also increase the stack to 99). But eventually you buy a few stacks. Now you've lost precious inventory in order to give the NPC hundreds of voiddust to obtain stones to spam the NMs without going back to town every 10-20 minutes. But wait... What's this? The Galka in Bastok Markets is saying that my Voidstone stock is full... He won't accept my Voiddust into his stock... ?! So now I have wasted all my inventory and the only way to make use of them is to switch back to the old way, making the QOL change completely null and void.

3. Empyrean weapon creation is more of a time/gil-sink than all other legendary weapons except *maybe* Ergon. It's ridiculous, it excludes people that don't have the stones saved up or the gil to buy the currency outright. All other weapons are soloable and given the general shift of this game, Empyrean weapons should be as well.

I don't understand why HMP and rift items aren't guaranteed drops from VW. 1500 NM fights for an empyrean (not to mention all the other trials leading up to the 90 weapon which are ALL NMs) compared to the multiple easy fodder mobs or easier NMs and plentiful currency Relic and Mythic weapons have for their base weapons and the trivial, yet time consuming trials to get them to 99.

[Olor]

Hey just curious folks can anyone tell me how the "not having to refill stones" things works? I wasn't able to find that by googling...

[Vanfrano]

Hey just curious folks can anyone tell me how the "not having to refill stones" things works? I wasn't able to find that by googling...

Examining a planar rift while in possession of a voidstone key item will enable voidstones to be consumed directly from the stock held by the Voidwatch Officer.

Setting This Option

1. Speak to the Voidwatch Officer and select “Ask a bunch of questions.”
2. Choose “Voidstone consumption” from the list of responses.
3. When prompted, select “stock.”

[detlef]

Also in the Version Update notes (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/50256-Apr.-5-2016-%28JST%29-Version-Update).

[Railer]

What sucks is when you run out of stock void stones.

Then you can only replenish key item capacity with void dust(which I have to buy 1 at a time from npc). So I can only do 5 nms then I have to go back to town like it was before the update.

A big help would be not allowing already acquired armor to pop in chest.

[Olor]

Examining a planar rift while in possession of a voidstone key item will enable voidstones to be consumed directly from the stock held by the Voidwatch Officer.

Setting This Option

1. Speak to the Voidwatch Officer and select “Ask a bunch of questions.”
2. Choose “Voidstone consumption” from the list of responses.
3. When prompted, select “stock.”

Thanks for that, this helps.

[BurnNotice]

Anyone blow through more than 1200 voidstones trying to collect rifts and hmps this campaign? What are your results?

[Diavolo]

Anyone blow through more than 1200 voidstones trying to collect rifts and hmps this campaign? What are your results?

I blew through 2,400 voidstones on my character and about 1,200 or more on a friend's account collecting the 1,500 heavy metal plates and 60 riftcinders I wanted. Divided my time between Qilin, Uptala and Aello for pouches and stuck mostly to Morta for cinders as it was less annoying to fight with two THFs. Given how the game seemed to prefer dropping those items into my friend's account more often than mine I wonder if my initial stock of 3,700 stones would have even sufficed if I only had the one character.

[BurnNotice]

*Bump* and idea: Why not add quality items to Walk of Echoes when in surge mode?