Buried in loam

[Calris]

Am I the only one that has a problem with 80+% of what I dig out of ore nodes being loam? :p I'm finding myself in need of a lot of Feyiron for Carpenting to grind up to 40 (trying to catch up to my adventure level), and I'm getting WAY more Loam than ore. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Only one tradeskill relies heavily on loam (though others use it in small amounts). Meanwhile, at least 4 rely heavily on ore. Shouldn't the commonality be the other way around? More ore than loam? Or...am I just having a hugely bad fight with the RNG? I know it's not perception... I always have more than 2 stacks of loam before I finish my first stack of ore when I go out harvesting...

[Ixalmaris]

Yes, this is a huge problem. I made most of my money by buying loam cheap on the broker and selling it high. But now the price of loam which normally ranged between 3s and 7s dropped to 12c.

[Tremelle]

I think you got on the bad side of the ring gods, I usually end up with about 50/50 which is cool with me since I have crafters that use both. A few classes use loams by the way, at least three of my crafter do.

[Calris]

I realize others use it (as I noted in the post <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> ). But, nowhere near as heavily as metal ore is used. My carp has 1 recipe per teir that uses it. Provi has maybe 2 or 3. Alchemy is the only one that uses it heavily. Meanwhile, armor, weapon, and carp all use it pretty heavily. To a lesser extent, woodworking, too. Not -that- heavy, but more than provi or carp use loam.

[Snowdonia]

You forgot Tinkers and Jewelers. Both use loam, Tinkers especially so. As for harvest rates, sometimes it <i>seems</i> like I'm getting far too much loam when all I'm wanting is the ore, but it ends up being equal or less. It's just my need for ore is so great, any loam hit is "too much." lol On the note of loam and ore on the same node though, I want to see loam moved off the ore node and put onto it's own node (I heard there use to be harvestable mushrooms ages back, they could put them on those!). I'd also like to see the precious metal be move to the ore nodes and actual STONE resources put on the stone nodes with the gems (both are common pairings in real life btw), but that's prolly just dreaming. The loam on it's own node, I think not so much and could be a doable and desirable change.

[Calris]

I've not done much jeweling or tinkering yet, so I didn't realize they used a lot. :p However, I'd still say overall ore demand is much higher. And it's really not just perception. Like I said, I'll almost always be done with my second full stack of loam before I've gotten one stack of ore. Moving the loam to its own node, I could get behind... The mushrooms you mention were an artifact from the sub-combine days. You got seasoning herbs and certain alchemy ingredients out of them. I kinda miss the sub combines (more pristine combine recipes. :p ), but definitely NOT the heavy reliance on other tradeskillers. Having to pester one guy for your paper, another for your ink, then another for your quills so you could scribe a spell seriously sucked. *sidetrack off*

[LaurnaRose Fauldorn]

<p>IMO, every harvestable should have its own node other than dens, fish and shrubbery.</p><p>Ore for hard metals (carbonite/feyiron/fulginate ect)</p><p>Stone for soft metals (vellium/gold/diamonite ect)</p><p>Gem for rocks (malachite/opaline/agate)</p><p>Clay for loams (no more explaination needed - we've all seen plenty)</p><p>Root/Wood/Shrubbery/Dens/Fish remain as is.</p>

[Oakleafe]

Anobabylon@Befallen wrote: <blockquote><p>IMO, every harvestable should have its own node other than dens, fish and shrubbery.</p><p>Ore for hard metals (carbonite/feyiron/fulginate ect)</p><p>Stone for soft metals (vellium/gold/diamonite ect)</p><p>Gem for rocks (malachite/opaline/agate)</p><p>Clay for loams (no more explaination needed - we've all seen plenty)</p><p>Root/Wood/Shrubbery/Dens/Fish remain as is.</p></blockquote> IMO, either leave nodes as they are or make EVERY node seperate.  You think you have a hard time with loams?  Try harvesting for pelts and being swamped by 2 types of meat!  BTW, leaving root, wood and fish nodes as they are is a bit of a no-brainer in a "every harvestable should have its own node" argument. <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Here's my experience of loam harvesting - I have found that I, generally, get less loams than ore in T1, T2 & T3 but that I generally get more loam than ore in the other tiers.  There also seems to be a similar bias, in my experience, between the soft metal and the gem (the soft metal being like the loam in numbers).

[Ixalmaris]

Well if broker prices do relate in any way with the rarity of a ressource then Loams are a lot more common than before. (5s->12c).

[LaurnaRose Fauldorn]

<cite>Oakleafe wrote:</cite><blockquote>IMO, either leave nodes as they are or make EVERY node seperate.  You think you have a hard time with loams?  Try harvesting for pelts and being swamped by 2 types of meat!  BTW, leaving root, wood and fish nodes as they are is a bit of a no-brainer in a "every harvestable should have its own node" argument. <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Here's my experience of loam harvesting - I have found that I, generally, get less loams than ore in T1, T2 & T3 but that I generally get more loam than ore in the other tiers.  There also seems to be a similar bias, in my experience, between the soft metal and the gem (the soft metal being like the loam in numbers). </blockquote> The reason I suggested leaving the dens as is, is because they JUST rebalanced them and we need to see how that is going to work out.  As for the no-brainer for fish ... fish yeilds several types of fish out of each node just as shrubbery yields several types of food items ... yes, wood and root was a no brainer ... just stating the obvious <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />.  Also with the dens, what would you suggest as the second node?  What needs to happen w/dens IMO is that the ratio needs to be 70 pelts/15 meat 1/15 meat 2.  Pelts are used in SEVERAL crafting professions where as the meats are used in ONLY provisioner.  At these ratios provisioners could still easily harvest meats in the same quantity they harvest each item from shrubberies, and other harvesters would gladly trade meats for pelts or place them on the broker at reasonable prices as they have no need for thm. 

[Liyle]

Remember that you are comparing loam prices before and after all characters could sell from the broker. Prices on pretty much anything that is plentiful should crash until people fill up their boxes and start vendoring and destroying overages. In my experience the only loams that have any value on the market are leaded. After that, 2c.

[Snowdonia]

Well, ok. Here's the actual breakdown... Dens - With the exception of the first tier (1 meat) yield 2 meats (Provisioner) and 1 pelt (Tailor, Armorer, Carpenter, Woodworker, Weaponsmith, & Jeweler) Fish - With the exception of the seventh tier (1 fish) yield 2 fishy products (Provisioner) Shrubs - Yield 4 different types of food stuffs (Provisioner) Ore - 1 hard metal (Armorer, Jeweler, Weaponsmith, Carpenter, Woodworker, & Tailor) and 1 loam (Tinker, Jeweler, Alchemist, Provisioner, & Carpenter) Stone - 1 gem (Alchemist, Jeweler, Sage, Tinker, & Carpenter) and 1 soft metal (Alchemist, Jeweler, Sage, Tinker, & Carpenter) Wood - 1 wood (Jeweler, Tinker, Sage, Carpenter, Tailor, & Woodworker) Roots - 1 root (all 9 primary crafting classes) Here's my problem though. There are THREE nodes out of seven who cater 2/3 to all of their products to a <b>SINGLE CLASS</b>! IMO, this alone makes harvesting nodes quite unbalanced. So the problem isn't just with loam and it starts by fixing the weighting of Provisioner nodes to everything else. Now, before any Provisioner comes in here and tells me I've got it out for them, I HAVE a Provisioner. She's sitting on TONS of food stuffs that my other characters have harvested either for her or in addition to what they needed for themselves and she'll NEVER get through it all. Getting food stuffs for a Provisioner is, excuse the pun, a piece of cake because other than roots, who do you have to compete with for your materials? That's right, only other Provisioners. Another note on loam though that I thought of after my initial posting, it seems shortly after Tinker was put in that loam hits started to pick up. So it is very possible that the devs back then gave loam a bit more weighting on the table seeing as Tinkers go through a TON of the stuff and people were complaining about it. Still wish it was on its own node though.

[Jrral]

Snowdonia@Runnyeye wrote: <blockquote>Another note on loam though that I thought of after my initial posting, it seems shortly after Tinker was put in that loam hits started to pick up. So it is very possible that the devs back then gave loam a bit more weighting on the table seeing as Tinkers go through a TON of the stuff and people were complaining about it. Still wish it was on its own node though.</blockquote>I'm pretty sure the loam ratio was boosted in response to a shortage due to Tinkering. Now that tinkering seems to have tailed off, that leaves an overage. Especially since I don't think loams are on any craft's most-used material list. I know as an alchemist loams are the one material I rarely run out of, even though they're my primary. I burn roots the fastest, followed by gems, with loams rarely running out.

[Force Weaver]

<cite>Tygerpaws wrote:</cite><blockquote>Am I the only one that has a problem with 80+% of what I dig out of ore nodes being loam? :p I'm finding myself in need of a lot of Feyiron for Carpenting to grind up to 40 (trying to catch up to my adventure level), and I'm getting WAY more Loam than ore. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Only one tradeskill relies heavily on loam (though others use it in small amounts). Meanwhile, at least 4 rely heavily on ore. Shouldn't the commonality be the other way around? More ore than loam? Or...am I just having a hugely bad fight with the RNG? I know it's not perception... I always have more than 2 stacks of loam before I finish my first stack of ore when I go out harvesting... </blockquote> Actually as long as I harvested for at least an hour straight I usually ended up with a 50/50 split, but if I only harvested for like 20 min I usually was loam heavy. 

[Tarlok]

Don't forget tinkering, my main toon is a tinkerer/alchemist so all these loams are a godsend to him.  Two thumbs up to loams actually being easy to get now.

[Calris]

<cite>Tarlok wrote:</cite><blockquote> Two thumbs up to loams actually being easy to get now.</blockquote> I'm not against that. I just think that it's a problem that it comes at the cost of hard metals being harder to get. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Tarlok]

You have a good point there, and I have noticed I have to harvest a lot more to get the needed metals and such I need for tinkering.  My weaponsmith is always 1 tier behind my main in crafting and tinkering so that I just forward any unneeded metals and such to my main when that toon is done grinding a tier.

[Oakleafe]

Anobabylon@Befallen wrote: <blockquote><cite>Oakleafe wrote:</cite><blockquote>IMO, either leave nodes as they are or make EVERY node seperate.  You think you have a hard time with loams?  Try harvesting for pelts and being swamped by 2 types of meat!  BTW, leaving root, wood and fish nodes as they are is a bit of a no-brainer in a "every harvestable should have its own node" argument. <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Here's my experience of loam harvesting - I have found that I, generally, get less loams than ore in T1, T2 & T3 but that I generally get more loam than ore in the other tiers.  There also seems to be a similar bias, in my experience, between the soft metal and the gem (the soft metal being like the loam in numbers). </blockquote> The reason I suggested leaving the dens as is, is because they JUST rebalanced them and we need to see how that is going to work out.  As for the no-brainer for fish ... fish yeilds several types of fish out of each node just as shrubbery yields several types of food items ... yes, wood and root was a no brainer ... just stating the obvious <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />.  Also with the dens, what would you suggest as the second node?  What needs to happen w/dens IMO is that the ratio needs to be 70 pelts/15 meat 1/15 meat 2.  Pelts are used in SEVERAL crafting professions where as the meats are used in ONLY provisioner.  At these ratios provisioners could still easily harvest meats in the same quantity they harvest each item from shrubberies, and other harvesters would gladly trade meats for pelts or place them on the broker at reasonable prices as they have no need for thm.  </blockquote>Even if they have just rebalanced the dens why should other nodes be split and not these?  Just to see if one type of raw drops more than the other?  Well, they won't drop as often as one of your proposed split nodes would it?  Would be grossly unfair to split some nodes and not others.  Split them all in a logical manner or split none of them, as it's the only fair way. <img src="/smilies/385970365b8ed7503b4294502a458efa.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> In most nodes of fish there are two types of fish both are only used by the provisioner class, so splitting fish nodes would be plain daft.  For a similar reason, if dens were split you would only need two nodes - one for the meat and one for the pelts.  Oh, as for names for split dens - call one type a den and one type a trap, seems simply enough (won't go into messy details but I'd make the den for pelts and the traps for meat).  If you really want to split fish/meat nodes then there are plenty of trap types to choose from, as man has a very large imagination when it comes to killing animals for meat and fur. <img src="/smilies/499fd50bc713bfcdf2ab5a23c00c2d62.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> All that said I'd rather we do not split the nodes, and that the devs get on with something a bit more important. <img src="/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  That's not to say that some tweaks in balancing the raws aren't required, but I think there are far greater issues affecting this game than getting a bit too much loam in your harvest. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Vonotar]

Splitting nodes (in itself) will not help. You'll simply get people whining that there are not enough such-n-such nodes and too many other such-n-such nodes. Splitting nodes would only help if the new-node code was changed to take into account what nodes are currently in the zone.  At present when a node respawns it is randomly assigned. Before the recent changes, we had too many bush nodes as people cherry-picked the nodes they wanted and the game kept randomly replacing them.  What we need is for groups of nodes to be assigned specific types of nodes, these nodes would respawn as the same node every time. Example, you want to mine iron in Antonica? check around the oracle tower, you want provisioner foodstuffs check near the farms etc. If each type had it's own node, everybody would cherry pick those nodes and we'd end up with loads of bushes etc again.

[Liyle]

Actually it isn't true that all nodes are randomly assigned. DoF and up they definitely are not. Some of the assumptions made in posts above are based on lower tiers. For example, once a Prov hits 70 you find out what it means to have the component you really really need drop less than 25% of the time while your bag fills up with junk you will end up destroying. I'd rather harvest for my husband's Armorer any day of the week over his Prov (yes, I get strong-armed into berrypicking and rock plinking,,, the things I do for love!)

[Ixalmaris]

<cite>Tarlok wrote:</cite><blockquote>Don't forget tinkering, my main toon is a tinkerer/alchemist so all these loams are a godsend to him.  Two thumbs up to loams actually being easy to get now.</blockquote> Two thumbs down for ore being even harder to get than before. Now we poor armorers get flooded with loams which we can't even sell for any kind of profit.

[LaurnaRose Fauldorn]

<cite>Tarlok wrote:</cite><blockquote>Don't forget tinkering, my main toon is a tinkerer/alchemist so all these loams are a godsend to him.  Two thumbs up to loams actually being easy to get now.</blockquote><p> yes, but there again it doesnt help the other crafting professions for nodes to cater more heavily to single professions as opposed to the other 5 professions that use resources that come out of the same node.  </p><p>IMO:  </p><p>Unused nodes should despawn every 10 min.  Partial nodes should despawn every 15 min (so if you begin harvesting a node that is about to despaw, it will have an additional 5 minutes for you to harvest from it rather than despawning before you can pull the second round).</p><p>Nodes should be separated into ore (hard metal), stone (soft metal), clay (loam), gems (agate/opaline and the like), roots, wood, dens (meat), nests (pelts) (all yeilding single resource other than rare and materials), and keep shrub and fish as is.</p>

[Enever]

I got a carpenter...this is how my Ore goes. 1 fulginate cluster 5 bonded loams 3 bonded loams It's usually this I -never- get fulginate And when I run into an ore node 90 percent of the time I get loams,. Loams are worthless to me, I can only use them in the fireplaces, thats it. If they can't make Loams into their own node, can they at least balance the chance of the two?

[Dagorgil]

<p>All I know is that my alchemist literally has a bank full of nothing but loam, because my Weaponsmith can't get enough Fulginate to level.  All I'm getting is Loam. 90% loam 10% fulginate.</p>

[aardda]

<p>Just thought i'd post this log from todays daily harvest from everfrost.. was a handful of ore nodes available so i harvested them in turn</p><p><img src="http://www.watchmenofaard.co.uk/harvest.gif" border="0"></p><p>While i may have gone a little longer than normal between pulls of fulginate, i do *always* end up with far more loam than metal, and hope that its addressed</p><p>if anyone is interested, this was done with a level 48 crafter with capped 240 mining skill</p>

[Liyle]

I see nodes despawn all the time lately. Has this change been made already? I haven't harvested anywhere that bush/wood overload thing is a problem (at T7 everyone fights over everything, especially bushes and dens/nests.)

[Calris]

<cite>aarddave wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Just thought i'd post this log from todays daily harvest from everfrost.. was a handful of ore nodes available so i harvested them in turn</p><p><img src="http://www.watchmenofaard.co.uk/harvest.gif" border="0"></p><p>While i may have gone a little longer than normal between pulls of fulginate, i do *always* end up with far more loam than metal, and hope that its addressed</p><p>if anyone is interested, this was done with a level 48 crafter with capped 240 mining skill</p></blockquote>There is another issue at work here: When I pull ore, it's almost always 1 or 2. Loam, on the other hand, is almost always in batches of 3-5. This does kinda add to the mountain of loam building up faster than the ore. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Lakaah]

You can add Jeweler to the list of classes using ore. We use roughly twice as much ore as we do loam. Rarely do I come up with a very unequal return from these nodes, its usually pretty close to 50/50. Still, I think they could use an adjustment on the order of whats been done with the dens. Compare the prices of ores vs. loams on the broker since the tinkering craze has died down and its pretty obvious which is in higher demand.

[Morgane]

Snowdonia@Runnyeye wrote: <blockquote>Now, before any Provisioner comes in here and tells me I've got it out for them, I HAVE a Provisioner. She's sitting on TONS of food stuffs that my other characters have harvested either for her or in addition to what they needed for themselves and she'll NEVER get through it all. Getting food stuffs for a Provisioner is, excuse the pun, a piece of cake because other than roots, who do you have to compete with for your materials? That's right, only other Provisioners. </blockquote> Agreed. My Prov has so much meat I don't have enough room for it... gotta sell it and alot of the time I end up destroying it because it's been on the broker taking up a sell slot for three weeks. I hope the recent changes (more pelts, less meat) will help with that but you're right... lots of stuff out there for Provs, much more than we need.

[Liyle]

I ran an informal survey of harvest ratios... I find that filling the Wantia bag gives a pretty balanced picture... and found that in EL I got about 1 to 1 on loams and metal but in SS (normal Croc Caves run) I was getting a 3 to 2 ratio in favor of loams. This was done with a 70/70 toon, maxed out harvest skills and overclocked tool.

[denmom]

I harvested for abit for ore in TT.  Had the area around the stonesetters to myself and mined every one that popped, and with the overclocked tools it's pretty quick now. I have the Wantia bag, and lined it all up...as I mined I noticed that I was filling up loam stacks faster than the ore.  The loam would be about a stack and a half ahead of the ore. When done I had 9 stacks 16 ore, 13 stacks 48 loam. That's about a 3:1 almost...I think.  I'm not real good with math. I asked in chats if anyone needed the loam, no one did, my Jeweler and Alchy both are set, so I destroyed it, twitching the whole time.  I hate destroying raws. I'm going to have to do the harvesting all over again for my Woodworker...almost L60.  I'm finding so much loam I'm considering making a Tinkerer just to be able to use that loam for <b>something.</b>

[LaurnaRose Fauldorn]

<p>What Im concerned with is the definition of "balanced" that everyone is using.  My understanding is that when you're saying "balanced" you mean that a node is yeilding 1:1 ratio of raws.  HOWEVER, My definition of "balanced" is that you take how many common raws are possible from the node then take into consideration how many crafting professions use that common raw and base the yeild ratio on THAT percentage.  Just because a node yeilds 1:1 pelt to meat now does not mean that it is now balanced.  In fact, it is still extremely imbalanced for the simple fact that just off the top of my head 5 crafting professions use pelts while only one crafting profession uses meat.  Therefore, in order to properly balance dens, the yeild ratio should be set at 5:1.  Similarly with ore and stone.</p><p>Another note would be to state that IF they ever decided to separate the nodes into separate entities (ore/stone/clay/gems ect) that their spawn rates should be based on the above ratio.  Since ore is used more than any other raw, it should have the highest chance of spawning a new node when a node is depleted and opens up a new spot for a node to spawn. </p>

[Calris]

So...just because more professions use pelts it's balanced to screw harvesting for the one that uses meat?

[kyrr]

<p>As a provisioner I find way more pelts than meat. </p><p>On my tailor I found more meat than pelts.</p><p>Just my luck I suppose. But I have to agree that it isn't necessarily correct to "balance" a node's drop rate based on how many classes use that raw.  For the minority it'll suck.</p>

[Deson]

Calris@Antonia Bayle wrote: <blockquote>So...just because more professions use pelts it's balanced to screw harvesting for the one that uses meat? </blockquote>In this case? Yes since meat is used in nowhere near the volume of pelts.  Plus, since meat is only valuable to one class, those harvesting for pelts tend to put it up cheap on the broker. I'd wager she could make it 75/25 in favor of pelts and Provisioners still wouldn't hurt from the loss.

[eqvach]

<cite>Deson wrote:</cite><blockquote>Calris@Antonia Bayle wrote: <blockquote>So...just because more professions use pelts it's balanced to screw harvesting for the one that uses meat? </blockquote>In this case? Yes since meat is used in nowhere near the volume of pelts.  Plus, since meat is only valuable to one class, those harvesting for pelts tend to put it up cheap on the broker. I'd wager she could make it 75/25 in favor of pelts and Provisioners still wouldn't hurt from the loss. </blockquote> I was thinking the same way, Deson, until I thought about players that do all of their own harvesting.  You're absolutely right that for players that choose to buy from the broker, but for players that don't,  Calris has it correct.  Now, if that same harvest-my-own player was harvesting for multiple tradeskillers, I still think a proportional drop rate based on usage would be most beneficial.  So, it would really only hurt the harvest-my-own-just-for-my-provisioner player, right?

[Calris]

<cite>Deson wrote:</cite><blockquote>Calris@Antonia Bayle wrote: <blockquote>So...just because more professions use pelts it's balanced to screw harvesting for the one that uses meat? </blockquote>In this case? Yes since meat is used in nowhere near the volume of pelts. </blockquote> Overall? No. By the classes that use them? Yes, actually, it is.

[Calthine]

I dunno, once my provisioner got past the meat levels she never went back to them.  She doesn't even keep them in stock.  My woodworker uses more pelts than my provisioner does meats.

[LaurnaRose Fauldorn]

hence why it was also suggested to separate the node into dens and nests ... one for meat and one for pelts.  HOWEVER, the extra pelts a "harvest-my-own-resource for just my provisioner" gets when harvesting their meats could always sell those pelts on the broker.  There is a far better chance people will be buying those than there is that people will be buying the meat ... it costs 2c on Befallen 1c for the sale, 1c for the commission.  Pelts go for 1-20s each depending on tier.

[hisawat]

Tinkering uses a lot of materials, especially loams.  one of the problems in tinkering is that it's really difficult to past tier 1.  Lead loams are very expensive, plus you only gain a level every 4 or 5 combines.  It takes a while to craft one item, plus leveling up is totally random, so it's really frustrating too. (This might be worse than tradeskills in EQ1.) Right now in my server, only lead loam is expensive, but other loams are not.  On the other hands, hard metals in other tiers are quite expensive.  I have a lot of loams in tier 2 - 7, but I can't past tier 1, plus I don't have enough hard metals for t2 - 7. So basically, I have to farm hard metals for those tiers, but I know I will farm more loams than metals.