Thread: Rune-Carbed Tablets -- WHY OH WHY are they used by SOOOO many recipes?

I would REALLY love to see the scholar tier 6 recipes given a bit of an overhaul... sooo many things require rune-carved tablets. I have multiple stacks of 100 of everything else, but am constantly having to go farm for MORE rune-carved tablets. The other scholars in my kin likewise are running over with the other stuff too.... Even just reducing the number needed for some of the recipes from 2 to 1 would be truly helpful..

(ROFL just saw I typed the subject wrong... sigh)

Sadly I think it is as intended. Other tiers are the same way if you recall. The faded passages ring a bell? Anyway while I agree with you I doubt they would change it since I suspect they intentionally designed it that way.

Yeah, from what I can tell, all of the tiers have the same issue. I can't unlock apprentice mastery even though my Scholar is level 19, just because I can't find enough of those lousy Third Age Relics to grind through the crafting XP.

However, I wouldn't be so quick to assume that this will never be changed. Lots of the other professions have had overhauls in the past, so if we're all lucky perhaps Scholar will be next.

In every tier (well most every) I have run into a shortage of something. AH charges a premium for some items so I refuse to head there. Farming takes a long time just to get enough to try to Master a tier. Endless cycle. It would be really nice if they created some sort of solution where we could combine certain mats with a gem, potion or scroll to yield 1 mat that is rare. For instance; 2 torn craftsman's diaries + gem, potion or scroll = 1 faded sindarin passage. I've seen this implemented in other games or MMOs. You still have to farm things but it would help.

In every Scholar tier, I have noticed (and tried to do the very rough math on) what I call the "Primary" item versus the "Secondary" and "Tertiary" items. To explain my terms, every tier from 1-3 has 10-XP recipes that require 2 "Primary" pieces, one "Secondary" piece, and one "Tertiary" piece which I have so-named because these two recipes are frequently the only ones that even call for this component. Most other recipes in the tier require one "Primary", one "Secondary", or one of each of these two, not including those components which are easily store-bought. (Dyes/paints are excepted... these generally have their own mats.) These other recipes generally give less than 10 XP as well, making the ones that require three of these drop component type more valuable for leveling the craft.

So, now that I've explained my terms... drop rate. I have noticed that the Primary mats for pretty much every single tier consistently drop about half as often as the Secondary and Tertiary. (In fact, part of why those 10-XP recipes are so efficient to make is that the Tertiary components seem to drop the most of all of them! That one could just me me, of course... the drop difference is not as obvious.) And before you say that I may just be using the other ones twice as fast, I have tried to watch the numbers -before- building things on various tiers. I seem to have twice as much of everything else as the Primary.

What this amounts to, since I use twice as often what drops half as often, is that the Secondary and Tertiary pieces wind up being about four times as plentiful as the Primary. Given that there's not much to do with the Secondary and almost nothing you can generally build with the Tertiary that doesn't also need Primary and Secondary, I can only guess that if this is WAI, the others are meant, in part, to be "vendor trash", as there will -always- (even within Kins who share resources, and even in the AH) be a surplus of these items.

Now, giving a scarcity of drop to the item we know we use more of adds a bit more realism, and makes the item itself seem "more rare", and there's nothing wrong with selling things at a vendor for some quick cash... but I admit it has been the single-most infuriating part of the Scholar craft for me that the drop-rate seems to be the inverse of the use-rate, and consistently so on each tier.

Is this pretty much everybody else's experience as well? Or am I missing something?

When I've returned to lower level areas to farm for scholar mats, I've actually found that the only reason for killing humanoids in the areas are for some vendor coin form the trash drops. Pulling things from the scholar nodes has been the best way for me to acquire the most mats. Also, I started noticing that the primary mat was dropping more often than had previously been the case. I seemed to at least get one of the primary mat at each node, and other items in similar amounts at random. This was only within the last week or so, which could mean that they've finally adjusted the rates for scholar mat drops.

(Side note) this was only with nodes up to tier 5, since my scholar hasn't quite been able to manage tier 6 areas alone.

the previous responses are partially correct, but they're missing the real cause of the problem which is the tier "6a/6b" crafting material distinction. Rune-carved tablets are a tier 6a material which means they primarily drop in sage's lockboxes which are found in moria. They aren't a 6b material (like broken-dwarf statues for eg.) which are the ones which primarily drop in the sage's caskets found in lothlorian, mirkwood and enedwaith. So we get the double whammy of them being a "primary" resource used in a lot of recipes (scrolls, enamels, fire-oils, 3x in relic recipes) and being in short supply as you hit end game due to it being a tier 6a material. My only suggestion is to make sure you use tallow candles whenever you're making anything using rune-carved tablets and get familiar with the left-hand door at the scholar instance...

Jewelers have a similar problem with khazak-copper btw, as it's a 6a resource needed to make hope tokens.

One way to ease the pain is the Steeped rep recs in Mirk. Ex: The steeped anthelas rec calls for broked darf statues which I have by the ton.