MIN BOT AND THE REST

I am not too sure where to put this, as gathering material by killing mobs is neither MIN nor BOT nor anything of the sort but still is gathering.

I would like to understand the reasoning behind the whole drop system when killing mobs to get BASE material, something that you need in huge quantities basically in everything you create.

Lets take wyvern skin, only one place where you can get it, ONE place for the entire server to go and get some wyvern skins, so not only you need to compete against those beasts but also with other players that are there for the same reasons as you if not for the hunting quests as well. This works the same with Archeonis and the rest.

The drop is horrendous, you get, when Lucky, and I mean this LUCKY because is RNG right ? between 7-10 skins per hour, when you know you need 3 of those to make a single skin, it means that in a hour I got material to build at most 3 skins which turns out to be max 2 final product.

I understand that it shouldnt be easy, I understand that everything needs work to get, but here is just beyond that, cant that be adjusted either drops are higher or number of required material is lower ?

Beating on mobs for hours at end, sometimes going up to 5-10mn without getting anything is just frustrating, VERY frustrating, add to it that wyverns are only in one place and the frustration grows as people come and steal from you, I even believe that if the guy that is coming after you have started on the mobs and steals from you aggro, it steals also the potential loot, I dont have confirmation of it but is a belief, if that is true, my goodness is even worse.

This for me, is probably the worst feature of all Heavensward, there is nothing enjoyable, nothing rewarding, nothing fun, in standing there hours at end, even more so if your time online is limitated, you need to create to make gils, you need to gather to make gils, but if it feels this way, you dont want to do it because you dont play a game to get frustrated, at least not me.


Potentially SE gets the risk to see BOTS, I cant blame them to use BOTS to be honest and RMT gils sellers, increase in number and people using those, just because nobody wants to be frustrated or spend their RL time in doing something that is NOT FUN.

This is the worst feature ever and might need some rework, not much of a rework, but still some more, for everything that is related to BASE material, the difficulty in getting that base material shouldnt be in the proportion is today.

Thank you for listening

End of rant

Mei

Eh .. I just send my Retainers out for materials. Combat retainers can bring back 10 Wyvern Skins, or 10 Chimera Manes, or 10 of any other myriad materials, per hour.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MeiUshu

Potentially SE gets the risk to see BOTS, I cant blame them to use BOTS to be honest and RMT gils sellers, increase in number and people using those, just because nobody wants to be frustrated or spend their RL time in doing something that is NOT FUN.

This is the worst feature ever and might need some rework, not much of a rework, but still some more, for everything that is related to BASE material, the difficulty in getting that base material shouldnt be in the proportion is today.

Thank you for listening

End of rant

Mei

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There comes the "best" feature of FF14: ARR /HW into play... Bots have to pass through MSQ, Chrysalis, Steps of Faith... maybe flying.. and there are areas only accesible after doing dungeons (Sohm Al).

Just send out your own "bots", named retainer.

sure I will surely do so (jk) !!

The fact that you can use the retainers, doesnt remove the fact that the drop is still horrendous and doesnt make sense that for BASE material you require hours just to get a decent (not even a huge number) just a decent number of material to aford 1 or 2 finished product.

Some players can spend 24h/24h others dont...and even with a retainer you still dont get the base material sufficient to enjoy the crafting/gathering feature as it can be enjoyed, I am not talking of lvl 60 which I can undersatnd the difficulty at that level, I speak of simple levelling here, and still doesnt make sense and I still dont understand the reasoning behind it of making it such a chore that it becomes pure frustration of something that otherwise can be a wonderful distraction from dungeons and the like

Mei

Drop rates for mob hunting are ridiculous. In 2.0, they made adjustments to several key mobs, including adding extra spawn points and drop rate for fleece for example.

3.0 seems to be designed specifically to create huge UN-FUN, SOUL-DESTROYING, grinds.

Just now I needed Yak milk to do some collectable turn-ins to level up my CUL. Here are the results:

Time taken: 37 minutes
Mobs killed: 78
Mobs that dropped 1 or more items: 23
Average kills to get a drop: 3.4
Yak Milk dropped: 37
Average items per drop: 1.6
Average items per kill: 0.47
Number of HQ drops: 0

There are 2 problems. The drop rate is way too low (it should be at least average of 1 per kill) and the number of HQ is stupid. This should be ~20%.

I've found that the ONLY way to get HQ hunt drops is to use retainers. They usually return at least 20% HQ (perhaps higher).

The way it is now seems to be deliberately designed to create a market for gil sellers who will gladly provide you an option to avoid the grind and get on with, you know, actually doing fun content.

ive gotten hq from killing yaks

I have gotten HQ Yak Milk as well.
However I have to agree with Waeksyn, the drop rates are terrible. My numbers are very similar for Yak Milk farming. Okeanis Eggs were a little bit easier...but the ram meat from Forelands (Lontghorn Chump or whatever) was another ballbuster.
It just seems out of whack when I know I can get at least 6 Heavens Lemon every 30 minutes, and the chances of getting that same number of Yak Milk in 30 minutes is left to RNGesus

Finally people are voicing it for us gatheres, this is just insane. Retainers do bring back some HQ material, I am not doing much of cooking I hate it RL and hate it even more in pixel world, but the dam drops are low, very low. I have this problem with also those sorbet slluggish sort of bombs on ice that gives you material for glue, drops is even more horrendous, then Archeonis skins.

SE pls do something with these drops, I love gathering, creating, but I will stop doing it altogether and get bored fast with the whole game if one of the things I like to do becomes a frustration first to fight to get EVENTUALLY something and second with otherse that do the same and steal your own target, which is still mistery if it is you or the other or both that gets the potential loot....which is on all account but the both one option, unfair.

Mei

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Waeksyn

The way it is now seems to be deliberately designed to create a market for gil sellers who will gladly provide you an option to avoid the grind and get on with, you know, actually doing fun content.

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Or perhaps as an incentive to pay for additional retainers to do this work.

Or maybe that's just me being skeptical. It could be that they want to avoid the mats being too easily available for new items, leading to the crafted items being easily and cheaply made by anyone, and thereby it's value on the MB would drop.

After leveling my MIN, BTN, and CRP to 60 and slowly...ever so slowly getting my DoH leveled I have to agree with the OP. The drop rate of basic materials from mobs, which are needed in large quantity, in addition to the timed-node gating for other basic materials is too much. We're talking about basic leveling here, not crafting items to turn in for scrips or that are in any way end-game. Leveling should not be this way. I can understand challenge and needing rare/timed items for end-game gathering and crafting scrips and actually making valuable things, but not during leveling. The sheer quantity of items required to make even basic items is in itself enough of a time sink.

Going along with what the above poster mentioned, I can see their rationale being one or more of a couple things.

1. To try to "encourage", aka force, players to purchase more retainers to gather these items reliably and in somewhat large quantity.

2. As a heavy-handed response to what they may have viewed as unbalanced/too-strong retainer gathering in 2.X

3. As a heavy-handed means to slow crafting/gathering leveling as a delaying tactic to give them more time to come up with more content.


It's a sad case when it's more effective to make money to buy vendor items to spam leves to level than it is to actually, you know, make things to level crafting.

Personally, I think it's all three. Given the way gathering and crafting has been designed, I get the strong impression that they didn't have time to really polish it and make considered decisions. Now they're having to find ways to delay us so that they can make the refinements the game needs. At least that's my hope. It would be awful if all of these problems were intentionally designed this way thinking it would be a good thing/conceptually sound.

Prior to Retainer Ventures, I remember Aldgoat Skins being a bottlenecking item. They did not drop nearly enough, and people were paying quite a bit for the things, especially HQ.

Bottlenecks are not new. They went WAY overboard on bottlenecks with 3.00 and 3.05, I doubt anyone can rationally dispute that. But yes, there is at least one example that I can think of off the top of my head where the bottleneck was rather bad. Of course, they've extended that bottleneck to most things this time around, not just one (or two?) types of leather.