Thread: Armourer = no way to farm flax fibers?

I have been out of the game for a very long time. Upon my return I have discovered that farming the materials needed for a critical success for my tailor are unobtainable as an armourer. Am I confused, or, is the only way for my armourer, who is not a forester, able to gather Flax Fibers is by killing humanoid mobs hoping for the rare drop? This seems like a ridiculous oversight if this is truly the case. It seems like hide dropping mobs should be dropping tailor crit materilas, not wood!!! Any thoughts?

Originally Posted by zbenz

I have been out of the game for a very long time. Upon my return I have discovered that farming the materials needed for a critical success for my tailor are unobtainable as an armourer. Am I confused, or, is the only way for my armourer, who is not a forester, able to gather Flax Fibers is by killing humanoid mobs hoping for the rare drop? This seems like a ridiculous oversight if this is truly the case. It seems like hide dropping mobs should be dropping tailor crit materilas, not wood!!! Any thoughts?

It's been brought up in one form or another since the change to these crit items; I don't believe there's been ANY dev response.

I just rolled a new Armourer 10 days ago and have come out with a stack (or more) of Flax Fiber for each Tier throughout the normal course of adventuring. They may have just come from mob drops, but they certainly are more plentiful than gathering them from Wood Nodes. EDIT: Let me repeat "You get *FAR* more Flax Fibers from normal adventuring than a Forester does tapping Wood Nodes!"

I suspect the Devs snuck in a change in the last Update that increased the Drop Rate for them to fix their scarcity.

So, all an Armourer needs to farm Flax Fibers is to find the nearest humanoid mob and roll them for what is in their pocketsess. Eventually you'll find plenty of your precioussss Flax Fibersss. EDIT: As with many things, you'll find more Flax Fibers on Goblins and Orcs than you will any other type of mob...but maybe that's also because both types of mobs are ubiquitous in Middle-Earth and you can't go 50 yards without running into one or the other.

Originally Posted by TsarithArcher

I just rolled a new Armourer 10 days ago and have come out with a stack (or more) of Flax Fiber for each Tier throughout the normal course of adventuring. They may have just come from mob drops, but they certainly are more plentiful than gathering them from Wood Nodes. EDIT: Let me repeat "You get *FAR* more Flax Fibers from normal adventuring than a Forester does tapping Wood Nodes!"

I suspect the Devs snuck in a change in the last Update that increased the Drop Rate for them to fix their scarcity.

So, all an Armourer needs to farm Flax Fibers is to find the nearest humanoid mob and roll them for what is in their pocketsess. Eventually you'll find plenty of your precioussss Flax Fibersss. EDIT: As with many things, you'll find more Flax Fibers on Goblins and Orcs than you will any other type of mob...but maybe that's also because both types of mobs are ubiquitous in Middle-Earth and you can't go 50 yards without running into one or the other.

We just started a new kin on Vilya a few weeks ago and, by far, the rarest of all our crit components is flax. We're especially sensitive to this shortage because we're all in need of new crit armour as we level up (slowly because we are playing permadeath ). At least for the first three tiers, we have been almost relying solely on our explorers to provide flax to our tailors. Humanoids are dropping it, but not nearly as often as we're finding it in wood nodes.

Hopefully this balances out in the higher tiers.

Isn't there a way to get it from skirmishing? I don't have a use for the stuff myself so I never bothered to look if it's among the stuff you can buy with skirmish pts, but i'm guessing it's there.

You can barter for them at a Skirmish vendor, I believe the craft vendor. I've gotten several that way.

I watch the auctions very closely and check all flax specifically whenever I log on; prices on my server haven't changed since SoM was released and craft crit items introduced into the skirmish vendors (crafting vendor, yes). Paying 100s-ish for flax (of any tier) is a bit much, so I also get my flax from the skirmish vendor if there's nothing reasonable on auction. I don't know if this means that the combination of availability and demand are still off-kilter or what--AFAIK, other crafting crit items are still far cheaper on the market than flax.

Originally Posted by TsarithArcher

I just rolled a new Armourer 10 days ago and have come out with a stack (or more) of Flax Fiber for each Tier throughout the normal course of adventuring. They may have just come from mob drops, but they certainly are more plentiful than gathering them from Wood Nodes. EDIT: Let me repeat "You get *FAR* more Flax Fibers from normal adventuring than a Forester does tapping Wood Nodes!"

I suspect the Devs snuck in a change in the last Update that increased the Drop Rate for them to fix their scarcity.

So, all an Armourer needs to farm Flax Fibers is to find the nearest humanoid mob and roll them for what is in their pocketsess. Eventually you'll find plenty of your precioussss Flax Fibersss. EDIT: As with many things, you'll find more Flax Fibers on Goblins and Orcs than you will any other type of mob...but maybe that's also because both types of mobs are ubiquitous in Middle-Earth and you can't go 50 yards without running into one or the other.

L18 RK that's done these humanoid deeds (IIRC, 90 kills per completion) in the last week (actually, 90% of these was this past weekend).
Goblins in Ered Luin
Dwarfs in Ered Luin
Goblins in Shire
Bandits in Shire

360 Kills, minimum

I have a total of 10 T1 fibers, 2 T2 fibers. This also includes any thing I may have found (i know of 1 for sure, but not really something I was watching) farming wood (he's an explorer and has farmed 200+ of Rowan, 100+ of ash, and a handful of Yew (when I did the T2 tailor quest lol)).


I'm not really sure what that says lol.

Edit: Another interesting tidbit: after running 7 new chars to the intro (yea.. didn't skip any lol) I also noticed that I did not get any crafting items at all. Of course, this could be simply because non of the humanoids (5 chars in Ered Luin fighting goblins, 2 in Archet fighting humans) were above L10...

If I recall correctly, just after the new crit items were introduced, someone ran the numbers for farming flax vs farming hide. What it amounted to was that your time was much better spent farming a mountain of hide and brute-forcing your crits (using only tools and scrolls). If you have flax, sure, use it, but if you must have crits and you don't have flax, just keep assembling until you get what you want.

Found it:

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=280560

Originally Posted by MCorey

If I recall correctly, just after the new crit items were introduced, someone ran the numbers for farming flax vs farming hide. What it amounted to was that your time was much better spent farming a mountain of hide and brute-forcing your crits (using only tools and scrolls). If you have flax, sure, use it, but if you must have crits and you don't have flax, just keep assembling until you get what you want.

Found it:

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=280560

LOL, that actually coincides with one of my "let me try this game again" periods, and I did end up just bulling through some tailoring crafts for my baby RK and warden. It seems I'll be doing something similar this time around

Originally Posted by MCorey

If I recall correctly, just after the new crit items were introduced, someone ran the numbers for farming flax vs farming hide. What it amounted to was that your time was much better spent farming a mountain of hide and brute-forcing your crits (using only tools and scrolls). If you have flax, sure, use it, but if you must have crits and you don't have flax, just keep assembling until you get what you want.

Found it:

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=280560

But that costs money for threads or cloth. Brute-forcing the 5-10% crit chance while paying for cotton or whatever might not come out cheaper than buying flax on the AH. Also costs money on both the foresting tools and the tailor tools, and obviously you use expensive tailor tools here, and those have high repair cost.

I ran my forester around looking at flax and yes it is a very rare drop. Might be more efficient to kill two-legged mobs as it drops other nice stuff.

Originally Posted by Darmokk

But that costs money for threads or cloth. Brute-forcing the 5-10% crit chance while paying for cotton or whatever might not come out cheaper than buying flax on the AH. Also costs money on both the foresting tools and the tailor tools, and obviously you use expensive tailor tools here, and those have high repair cost.

I ran my forester around looking at flax and yes it is a very rare drop. Might be more efficient to kill two-legged mobs as it drops other nice stuff.

Although your numbers are close to what I'll be facing at my low level, that depends on your level. A L45 (?) with the right tools can (IIRC) reach up to 35% without a mastery item: 20% tool, 5% minimum, 10% scroll (which can last for about... 5 craftings?). For someone who's been playing this game since before masteries came out, that's still a decent chance to play (heck, I was critting beryl-shard bracelets with that % lol) with, rather than spending a Lot of time trying to find enough items to crit with.

Originally Posted by MCorey

If I recall correctly, just after the new crit items were introduced, someone ran the numbers for farming flax vs farming hide. What it amounted to was that your time was much better spent farming a mountain of hide and brute-forcing your crits (using only tools and scrolls). If you have flax, sure, use it, but if you must have crits and you don't have flax, just keep assembling until you get what you want.

Found it:

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=280560

I'm not sure when, but they seem to have drastically increased the drop rate of crit items on resource nodes since that post. I normally hang on to all my crit items for crafting and kin (probably now have at least 50+ if not 100+ for every craft at every level).

With the last character I ran through the North Downs for a few hours questing, I looted at least 20-30+ each of woodworking and Tailoring. Contrasting that to the 3-5 scholar crit items, it definitely is much easier to grab resource nodes.

Bruteforcing crits without the optionals might be ok if you have a L45+ crafter who can use decent scrolls and tools, but if you're the poor guy who's trying to crit at level, You'll be lucky to reach a 15% chance. At those odds, that's a lot of resources.

Flax is by far the worst since you're likely being asked to create multiple pieces for each individual. Jeweler's rock-salt is a close second, unless you're a scholar and absolutely must have the candles.

The most abundant seem to be the two smithing optionals and the woodworker one, but the latter you rarely need more than 2-3 at a time so the stack continues to grow over time. If you are an active farmer, it takes no time at all to build numerous stacks of cooking optional components though. 700 fields netted me over 300 of the cooking optionals.

Originally Posted by Duredhel

Bruteforcing crits without the optionals might be ok if you have a L45+ crafter who can use decent scrolls and tools, but if you're the poor guy who's trying to crit at level, You'll be lucky to reach a 15% chance. At those odds, that's a lot of resources.

Flax is by far the worst since you're likely being asked to create multiple pieces for each individual. Jeweler's rock-salt is a close second, unless you're a scholar and absolutely must have the candles.

The most abundant seem to be the two smithing optionals and the woodworker one, but the latter you rarely need more than 2-3 at a time so the stack continues to grow over time. If you are an active farmer, it takes no time at all to build numerous stacks of cooking optional components though. 700 fields netted me over 300 of the cooking optionals.

For sure. Sadly enough, tho for totally "different" reasons in a span of 2+ years, I still find tailoring to be the redheaded stepchild of crafting I can Still make a Whole Set of gear for my Guard at L15 (He already got an accidental crit of a bronze leggings... at L7) at FAR FAR less effort than to do the same for any medium or light armor wearing char at L12, or even L18.

My RK's leading the pack right now, as he seems to me to be the best one to survive any thing with less than my usual level of crafted gear. When I started before, it was my Hunter (Mins didn't have WS then lol).

I have stacks of weaponsmith, jeweller, woodworker, and metalsmith crit items. I sometimes have some paltry few tailor crit items. When I need to fill the gap, checking AH either yields no tailor crit items of the needed tier, or a couple at outrageous prices.

I've sure noticed no improvements. I cannot understand why Tailors can't get their crit items from the source they farm (critters) just like the other crafts do. It's absurd.

Even if flax fibers could be harvested by Farmers (similar to cooking optional crit items) then at least one could be a focused attempt at obtaining a few when needed.

What kind of Farmer can't harvest flax anyway?

I think maybe just adjusting the drop rates from wood nodes and mobs would do.

You see, the core of the problem is that if you want to crit-item out a character you need 1 or 2 weapons crit items, or maybe one more for a ranged weapon, and for most weapon users you can also choose between a wood-based weapon and a metal based weapon.

To crit out light or medium armour you need 6 flax fibers.

But the trick is that flatstones, brimstones and drops of resign are not only used in lesser numbers, they are more common drops in the same nodes (wood drops resign much more often than flax) and there are many more prospectors than foresters running around.

Myself, I have a proficient forester but the flax drop rate from the wood nodes is so low I can't warrant making a business out of it. I sit on a whole bunch of flax fibers of various levels so that I can use them if I need to outfit a new low level character. Can't really sell them because I see no point in harvesting ~100 logs of rowan wood to get just a couple of tier 1 flax fibers.

Brute-forcing critical clothes by using a decent set of tailor tools and go with the ~10% chance is expensive since you use up lots of thread or cloth. To make this worse, if a couple people starting doing it on the same server you'll have another flood of non-crit clothes, competing with those who sell their path-to-mastery results.

%%

In summary, raising the chance of drop of flax to be the same chance as resign would be a good thing for everybody involved.

Just for a point of reference. I needed some Yellow(Artisan) Flax Fibers and decided to do a Trollshaws run. I stopped at 100 and 200 to take a count but the end result was 200 logs = 5 Yellow Flax Fibers and 5 Black Resin.

Side Note: It took me about 2 hours for that on a high level character (No need to fight) but keep in mind I also explored some areas where there is no Lebethron spawning. (Elite Spiders, Elite Wood Trolls and the Undead ruins all in far north area). You could probably do 200 in this area in half that time with no fighting.

Side / Side Note: More Flax dropped from the Heavy Lebethron but 2 dropped from the regulars above..

Originally Posted by DirtyDeeds2

Side / Side Note: More Flax dropped from the Heavy Lebethron but 2 dropped from the regulars above..

At any rate, flax drops to sparingly by all accounts. After farming flax on multiple characters as they level up, I can still easily wipe out my reserve if I attempt to make a full set of armour for just one alt.

Too bad we couldn't trade in various crit items for those of other professions. My farmer can produce literally 100s of sprigs of this/that/other (cook crit items) in one session, but can't grow flax? What?

Whilst I realise that its not the solution to the problem, I spent the better part of a day farming Rich Iron and Yew. I managed to collect a little over two full stacks of Yew, which sold extremely fast at 500silver per stack, and then promptly spent that on Pale Flax Fibres. I was lucky and got a few for around 60silver a piece, and had to swallow the bitter taste of inflation and paid around 150silver each for a few more.

The thing about farming mobs for crafting mats is that if you loot all the stackable vendor trash they carry and then sell it, the money you make from that rubbish loot can be then used against the auction house for the crit mats you need.

As a crafter that runs a main with tailoring, I whole heartedly agree that the drop rate for flax is borked.

The problem is that to get a tailors crit items you need to get woodworkers collecting wood. Unless you make it so Woodworkers need more wood then you are not going to get a lot more tailors crit items in circulation. The skirmish tokens for crit items was a good idea but they are very expensive, and does not even begin to address the less than level 30 non-skirmishing group of players.

Unlike weaponsmithing or metalworking you do not have 3 profession classes all collecting wood. There is simply more call for metals and the crit items you get from them. Metalcrafters mining the ore have extra weaponscrafters crit items and explorers that have no crafting requirements have both weapons and metalsmith crit items from their gathering.

On a bright note let me offer a simple solution that would satisfy everyone.

Change all crit item vendors to vendors that only give out:
Tier 1 Crit token- Apprentice
Tier 2 Crit token- Journeyman
Tier 3 Crit token- Expert
Tier 4 Crit token- Artisan
Tier 5 Crit token- Master
Tier 6 Crit token- Supreme

All recipes would now use the crit tokens. All crit items for any Metalsmith, Weaponsmith, Jeweler, Cook etc would turn in the gathered crit items you see today and get the new crit tokens above. An crit token above could be used in any professions appropriate crit slot. 1 size (level) fits all so to speak.

This would allow anyone to buy any crit item from any other profession and substitute it for a standard crit token.

Then again this would clear up a lot of storage space and thus is very unlikely to get noticed or implemented.