Adept 3 rares inblance

[Jagged Halo]

Is there any chance of this being looked at again as fighters and scouts are at a huge disadbantage when it comes to spell upgrades Loams can still be 2-3 times the gem and soft metel equiverlant a return to the old way with any being usable Or maybe even a quest like the dust one for all scholers to be able to make a ink or something from any of the loams or soft metel/gem rares We was told a year ago it would balance out in time that hasnt happened

[IcterusGalbula]

<p>I know that loams are generally more expensive on my server (PVP).  Is that because they are rarest of the rares, or is it because loams are in more demand?  I always assumed it was because loams are in more demand, but I don't know one way or the other.</p><p>I have about as many tier 2 alk loams in the bank as I do blackened iron clusters or rough corals.</p><p>Come to think of it, I believe blackened iron clusters are the most expensive tier 2 rare.  They do not strike me as more scarce than coral, suggesting the high price of blackened iron clusters is due to high demand.  Perhaps the same is true of loams.</p>

[Lilj]

I believe the servers are different. The materials for adepts 3 are so so the same in price on my server, but there is a general pattern though. The gem (priest spell) is most often the cheaper than loam/soft metal (mage spell). Some tiers the loam is most expensive, in other tiers the soft metal is. In tier 7 for example acrylia is in general more expensive than spongy loam. So it is hard to manipulate the numbers from a dev viewpoint. If they make one of the raws easier to harvest and make one server happy, it will swift the economy badly on another server and make players unhappy there. I doubt it is easy to 'fix' assuming there is anything to fix at all that is.

[Jrral]

Loams and hard metals seem to drop the least of all the rares. Loams are in demand for both fighter (tank) and rogue (scout) Ad3s, so demand's always high. Hard metals are also used for 2 armor types, plate and chain, which are also the most in-demand armor for tank and scout types respectively so again high demand. Soft metals and gems, by contrast, are only used for 1 type of Ad3 each and for jewelry so there's not quite as insane a demand for them relative to supply (fewer classes asking for each type of Ad3, and fewer jewelry slots to fill than armor/weapon ones). Pelts and roots seem to drop more often and again each is used for armor for only 1 class. Wood just has a low demand since it's used mainly for shields, staffs and sales boxes. The first two a character only needs 2 or maybe 3 per tier, compared to for example 8 hard-metal rares for a tank's armor and weapons, and sales displays last forever without needing replacement and get recycled to alts.

[Rijacki]

The logic of the devs: Gems and soft metal rares have other non adept recipes (jewelry and, for T6 and T7, carpentry). Loam rares are -only- used for adept recipes. That's why it was supposed to 'ballance' out for demand. Plus, theoretically, if fighters and scouts were harvesting ore for armor rares, they'd increase the loam harvests.

[Calthine]

Yet according to Domino (I'd have to find the quote) the odds of getting any rare is exactly the same for all the nodes.

[Jrral]

<cite>Calthine wrote:</cite><blockquote>Yet according to Domino (I'd have to find the quote) the odds of getting any rare is exactly the same for all the nodes. </blockquote>Which illustrates an error. Suppose the probability for a node dropping a rare is the same for all node types. Ores have <b>2</b> rares that can drop off them, while logs and roots only have 1. That means that the chance of pulling a hard-metal rare is 1/2 the chance of pulling a rare wood or root. At the end of the day, if each node type had dropped exactly 10 rares, you'd end up with 10 woods, 10 pelts, 10 roots, 5 hard metals, 5 loams, 5 gems and 5 soft metals. And this doesn't take into account cherry-picking. Take the above as a starting point, and add one person zooming through the zone picking <i>only</i> ore nodes looking for the valuable hard metals and loams. This means that when you go harvesting you'll find far fewer ore nodes than an even distribution would indicate. What I find are that bushes and logs are rampant, dens and roots less so, ores and stones occur least because they're cherry-picked the most. So out of the 50 rare drops above, instead of 10 from each type I may have 20 wood, 15 dens, 8 roots, 4 stones and 3 ores yielding (ideally) 20 rare woods, 15 pelts, 8 roots, 2 soft metals, 2 gems, 1.5 hard metals and 1.5 loams. That's a pretty uneven distribution from a system that theoretically has equal probabilities, isn't it? As always, the devil's in the details. Ask any C programmer how 65535 + 1 can equal 131071 for a real brain-bending example.

[Domino]

Erm, kinda. With GU37, there should be an equal chance of getting any rare (except roots, which will be a bit more common now they'll drop from bushes as well as roots - but then, they're used more too, with hex dolls and cloaks).  That's not live yet, but is currently on test and should be making it to your local live server Soon <tm>.

[Jagged Halo]

DominoDev wrote:.. <blockquote>Erm, kinda. With GU37, there should be an equal chance of getting any rare (except roots, which will be a bit more common now they'll drop from bushes as well as roots - but then, they're used more too, with hex dolls and cloaks).  That's not live yet, but is currently on test and should be making it to your local live server Soon <tm>. </blockquote>Thank you for the reply fingers crossed it works and give everyone a even playing field

[Morrolan V]

<p>Well, I am confused.</p><p>Domino, you seem to be addressing the "supply" side of the issue by saying that there should, after GU37, be as many loams being supplied by nodes as any other rare.  That does not address, however, the demand side.  Twice as many characters need loam for spell upgrades as need either gems or soft metals.  With supply being equal, you would expect the price for loams to be MUCH higher.</p><p>If you want to balance it out, you need twice as many loams being supplied.</p>

[Sunlei]

<p>  I get a lot more rare harvests out of heroic chests than I have ever got from harvesting 'luck', not loams though. Hmmm, can't even think of any chest where a loam has dropped..and the other rares have always dropped like rain from heroic chests.</p><p>always thought that was why many looted harvest-rares were most common on the broker and the true dug outa the ground only loams were rarer on broker.</p><p>add loams to the loot tables? take away some of that rare woods and gems <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> perhaps they did add some loams to T7 raid only chests. not sure <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>edited to add, yes the poster above me that says 2 rares drop from some nodes so your loam-odds are cut somewhat from a one rare node seems to me to be why some are more 'rare' than others. well no worries soon a rare will last untill you get a pristine every single time <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  plus, over the past few eq2 years a few patch nots mentioned how rock harvest odds were not working right and were adjusted. you'll have to find the notes it was the year around LU 13. maybe the 'odds' for rocks are still adjusted wrong or different than intended.</p>

[EomerFarst]

<p>Scouts or Fighters should use rare roots. .  To Balance it rare loams could be used for Mastercrafted potions etc.</p><p>So it would be:</p><p>Metals - Furnitire, Armor and Weapons.</p><p>Soft metals - Jewelry, Furniture and Mage Ad 3's.</p><p>Loams - Fighters ad 3's and Alchcemy.</p><p>Roots - Furniture, Scout ad 3's and Tailoring.</p><p> Seems fairly balanced.</p>

[dartie]

Morrolan V wrote: <blockquote><p>Well, I am confused.</p><p>Domino, you seem to be addressing the "supply" side of the issue by saying that there should, after GU37, be as many loams being supplied by nodes as any other rare.  That does not address, however, the demand side.  Twice as many characters need loam for spell upgrades as need either gems or soft metals.  With supply being equal, you would expect the price for loams to be MUCH higher.</p><p>If you want to balance it out, you need twice as many loams being supplied.</p></blockquote><p> Hi again Morrolan.  I just praised you in another thread, so I hope you won't take it personally when I disagree with you here.</p><p>It's true that there are 2 classes (fighter/scout) that use loams as opposed to one that uses gems (priests) and one that uses metals (mages), but even thought there are twice as many fighter and scout CLASSES as there are mage CLASSES or priest CLASSES, that doesn't mean there are twice as many fighter/scout CHARACTERS as there are mage CHARACTERS or priest CHARACTERS.  And even if we could demonstrate that ratio to be fairly accutate, there are still other factors to consider.  Maybe the fighters and scouts are picking up Masters instead of AD3s.  Maybe the fighters and scouts aren't as eager to upgrade their combat arts as the mages are to upgrade their spells. </p><p>Maybe if you check the broker on your server, you'll see something similare to what I see on mine, which is that the cost of rare metals is generally far greater than the cost of the rare loams of the same tier.  On my server, it's easy to find silver going for twice as much (25gp) as alkaline loam (12 gp), palladium going for 3 times as much (60 gp) as malleable loam (20 gp), and ruthenium going for four times as much (80 gp) as ductile loam (20 gp).</p><p>Fused loam (50 gp) does make up ground on rhodium (65 gp), and alkali loam usually costs more (1.25 plat) than vanadium (90 gp).  Sometimes I see spongy loam going for 1.5 plat and acrylia going for 80 gold, but other times I will see acrylia going for 1.5 plat and spongy loam going for 95 gold.  </p><p>Weird, wild, wacky stuff.</p><p>But I don't see how doubling the amount of loam would have anything like a balancing effect on that price distribution.  </p><p>Again, I make a plea against balancing things that are only interesting now because of their lack of balance.  Why harvest at all if we are such balance-crazed individuals?  Why not just have a rares salesman who stands in the corner of every instance selling all T1 rares for 10 gp and all T2 rares for 20 gp?  </p><p>Because that's just not any fun is why.</p>

[Devilsbane]

<cite>Sunlei wrote:</cite><blockquote><p> Hmmm, can't even think of any chest where a loam has dropped..and the other rares have always dropped like rain from heroic chests.</p></blockquote><p>I can vouch for that! Loams do not drop in chests from named NPCs. Pelts on the other hand drop, although half of them do not stack with gathered ones.</p><p>I believe the lack of chest drops may account for the problem here. <img src="/smilies/0320a00cb4bb5629ab9fc2bc1fcc4e9e.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Jenarie]

Morrolan V wrote: <blockquote><p>Well, I am confused.</p><p>Domino, you seem to be addressing the "supply" side of the issue by saying that there should, after GU37, be as many loams being supplied by nodes as any other rare.  That does not address, however, the demand side.  Twice as many characters need loam for spell upgrades as need either gems or soft metals.  With supply being equal, you would expect the price for loams to be MUCH higher.</p><p>If you want to balance it out, you need twice as many loams being supplied.</p></blockquote> I think you've forgotten jewelry.  The same people who need loams for spells also need soft metal for jewelry.  Priests need the exact same gem for their spells and their jewelry and which for me at least always leaves me making a choice of which spells and which slots are getting upgraded.  Int casters need both types - one for spells and one for jewelery. Your numbers might be correct if these three items were used for A3s only but there are so many other things to make with that that you really can't use class spell ingredients as the measure of demand.

[Stinge]

Isn't the obvious answer to this making rare loam and rare hard metal drop from fish nodes? <span style="font-size: xx-small">Yes, I know this is ridiculous, but I'm still only half kidding. </span><img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Deson]

<cite>Stinge wrote:</cite><blockquote>Isn't the obvious answer to this making rare loam and rare hard metal drop from fish nodes? <span style="font-size: xx-small">Yes, I know this is ridiculous, but I'm still only half kidding. </span><img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote>Scary thing is I was actually considering suggesting the loam part. Of course, I also believe all spells/skills should come from the same rare(loams) so other crafted items don't have inflated prices- the stated reason for loams in the first place.

[Jrral]

<cite>Stinge wrote:</cite><blockquote>Isn't the obvious answer to this making rare loam and rare hard metal drop from fish nodes? <span style="font-size: xx-small">Yes, I know this is ridiculous, but I'm still only half kidding. </span><img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></blockquote>It's ridiculous, yes, but it is one solution to some issues (eg. some nodes splitting their drops between 2 types of rares, cherry-picking of "valuable" types of nodes). A really extreme solution, one that I don't like for aesthetic reasons, but it'd make certain issues go away.

[Mighty Melvor]

Morrolan V wrote: <blockquote><p>Well, I am confused.</p><p>Domino, you seem to be addressing the "supply" side of the issue by saying that there should, after GU37, be as many loams being supplied by nodes as any other rare.  That does not address, however, the demand side.  Twice as many characters need loam for spell upgrades as need either gems or soft metals.  With supply being equal, you would expect the price for loams to be MUCH higher.</p><p>If you want to balance it out, you need twice as many loams being supplied.</p></blockquote><p>I think you're missing an important issue - balance.  You are only focused on the spell upgrades, however, rares are used for many other things as well.  Soft metal, hard metal and gems are all used for jewelry and symbols.</p><p>Not sure if you're on a PvP server but from what I've seen, many loams are horded to make adept III and dust for potions/poisons.  Take it from a toon with a jeweler and alchy.  I horde my loam and make good coin with the alchy potions/poisons.  This behavior is much less a problem on PvE servers. </p>

[Morrolan V]

<p>Hmm.  You are correct that I was not considering jewelry and symbols.  It would be pretty interesting to see the breakdown of how the rares actually get used.  I would bet that the large majority end up going to Adept III's, but that's just my sense.</p><p>Empirically, on Crushbone at least, T7 rare loams are usually 2 to 2.5x the price of rare gems or soft metals.</p>

[Calthine]

It's not a recipe-by-recipe breakdown, but rares have their class uses listed here:  <a href="http://eq2.allakhazam.com/db/guides.html?guide=952" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://eq2.allakhazam.com/db/guides.html?guide=952</a>