Thread: Farming criticals / RK enamels need an overhaul.

I have spent the last 2 days lvlling my farming, from apprentice to supreme so far, and I can say unequivocally that the rate of criticals for farming is ridiculous, making the items that come from them - and the crafting skills related to them essentially unviable.

I just did another load of spring barley field as I needed it for lvl 50 shepards pie food. I did 150 crops using rivendell soil to make a 100% critrate and gained 447 bundles of barley, my crits from those barley were 25 sprigs of allspice and just 4, yes 4 bundles of straw; which is used to make a hunter trap lure.

25 allspice is bad enough, but 4 bundles of straw for trap lures is utterly ridiculous - and other crits numbers were the same, I've got in my vault now 7 juicy strawberries (for dye/enamels) and 5 saffron thread (for wall paint/enamels) both of which were the results of farming through to gain master lvl, which is HUNDREDS of crops. Bluebottle petals etc etc.

Many of these items are used by scholars to make enamel inlays, extremely useful for RuneKeepers to get you out of a bad situation such as needing a big heal, and using an enamel; boosting your attunement by 3 to get it. Especially if you are in a group that requires you to be both DPS and offheal making getting to 9 nestad (healing) attunes very difficult if not impossible.

But with just 5 saffron threads/bluebottle petals/juicy strawberries, enamels (for any RK lucky enough to actually have any) have become a; "Break glass to use only; and I mean ONLY, in cases of EXTREME EMERGENCY - you'd better be NEED that Epic Conclusion REAL BAD - you'd better be kiting for your life with less than 50 morale, the only person left alive and with the raid boss down to just a couple of hundred morale and on the 50th attempt to kill this boss before you even CONSIDER using this item, - and even then you'd better think twice."

Bonus items like hunter potion of focus (adds 3 focus with a cooldown of 3 minutes), use ordinary scholar items - with the 3m cooldown I can only assume it was designed to be used on a regular basis, maybe in raids or similar, and being made by regular scholar mats, having a stack of them for emergencies is a viable option.

But for RK's getting only a handful of the required ingredients out of hundreds and HUNDREDS of farming crops just makes the whole set of enamels utterly pointless.

Before someone points it out all of the colored enamels do the same thing, there are no lvl limits between journyman and westfold enamels, BUT they still only use a farming "critical crit" to mean the lesser occuring crit out of the 2 possibles when farming.

Captains get Battle tonics using normal scholar items, Loremasters get Parables that make spells both 10% cheaper AND uninterruptable on the same item, also using normal scholar items available from any humanoid monster. RK's are horribly penalized because the 2 bonuses they get are separated, 1 of which has ingredients that are so rare as to be essentially unobtainable - there's no way anyone except your own personal alt will take the time to do the amount of farming necessary to get even 20 of the required ingredients, and even doing so on your own alt will take HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS - is this really how turbine wish us to spend our time?

Either the ingredient for the RK enamels needs to be changed so they use more available ones, OR the critical rate for the materials to create them needs to be increased DRASTICALLY, and I mean DRASTICALLY; like at least 10 per 100, if not more guarenteed. I don't know what the percentage of droprate for scholar items on humanoids is, but it needs to be at least comparable for crops to make it even with the ones made from scholar items like battle tonics and hunter focus oils.

OR - the ingredients for the inlays (making inductions interruptable) swapped for the enamels, or preferably combined, with the farming crits still being much more available.

I'm not asking for it to be made easy but for Deus sake give us a bloody fighting chance huh?

I thought it was just my historically bad luck in getting crit things. I spent 2 hours farming yesterday for bluebottle and iris to make some enamels for my sisters new RK and all I can say is OUCH.

End result
2 Bluebottle petals and 4 iris roots

that's IT

Ahhh but you see....

If they made the drops any higher, nobody would be inclined to buy dyes and ingredient packs from the store now would they....... Hmmm......

I'd be happy if they (additionally) made these secondary crit items spawn on the landscape, like woad / yarrow root / indigo do.

They started to overhall farming on the westfold tier.

At that level, each crop yields 1 item as opposed to 4, and you get bulk recipe's to cut down the time it takes. If the same could be done for all the other tiers, you'd end up with 110 bundles of barley (instead of ~440) with about the same number of crit items: 25 allspice, 4 straw. You'd still have to put in the same amount of work to get enough crit items (minus the unnecessary filling of your bags), but it would be much better IMO. The only problem is, it would make farming at lower levels even more "expensive" as you wouldn't get enough produce to sell.

The problem arose when they added the herbs, imo. Before that, you'd see a fair number of the special ingredient crits, like the juicy strawberries, etc. Once they added herbs, all of a sudden, that was what you would get 9/10 times if you got a crit item at all. I don't see why you would even add herbs to the crit table for flowers imo, the only reason most people farm flowers in the first place is to gain the crit items. I was very disappointed in the change. I'm also disappointed in the change to receiving less output from the same effort of input farming in Westfold - it's not better to get less mats.

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but when I do any farming, I ALWAYS use the Rivendell and Lorien soils, and my rate of crits seems to be a bit higher than what you're all reporting when I do. Generally, I can plant about 20 fields of whatever, let's use saffron for this example, and I'll get about 5 saffron threads and 15 or 20 of whichever herb that one drops (as I can't remember which one it is right now).

The other thing I do is specifically farm ONE type of ingredient at a time. The crits also seem to come more frequently if you're only working on one type of field for a good bit of time, but again, this could just be me.

Originally Posted by Raphedir

hundreds and HUNDREDS of farming crops just makes the whole set of enamels utterly pointless.

My main is a RK. I've never used any class consumables in LotRO except light and fire oils. I dutifully get the stacks of hunter traps or burglar marbles and then never use them because they are too expensive, a pain to replace, and/or I outleveled them. The mechanic has never worked for me in any RPG unless the consumables are a dime a dozen, like potions in Diablo. I guess it must work for some players, but I agree with real skepticism about most items in LotRO.

Originally Posted by Raphedir

...

Bonus items like hunter potion of focus (adds 3 focus with a cooldown of 3 minutes), use ordinary scholar items - with the 3m cooldown I can only assume it was designed to be used on a regular basis, maybe in raids or similar, and being made by regular scholar mats, having a stack of them for emergencies is a viable option.

....

Captains get Battle tonics using normal scholar items, Loremasters get Parables that make spells both 10% cheaper AND uninterruptable on the same item, also using normal scholar items available from any humanoid monster. RK's are horribly penalized because the 2 bonuses they get are separated, 1 of which has ingredients that are so rare as to be essentially unobtainable - there's no way anyone except your own personal alt will take the time to do the amount of farming necessary to get even 20 of the required ingredients, and even doing so on your own alt will take HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS - is this really how turbine wish us to spend our time?
...

While I agree with you that needing such rare materials for a consumable is not good design - are you aware that Runekeepers already have the rather cheap parchments made by woodworkers as their "bread and butter" consumables (most of which work as temporary "skill enablers") comparable to the other class class consumables? The enamels and inlays are an extra on top of that.

http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Rune...per_Parchments

Originally Posted by Vandervahn

While I agree with you that needing such rare materials for a consumable is not good design - are you aware that Runekeepers already have the rather cheap parchments made by woodworkers as their "bread and butter" consumables (most of which work as temporary "skill enablers") comparable to the other class class consumables? The enamels and inlays are an extra on top of that.

http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Rune...per_Parchments

I can honestly say as a lvl 41 RK that I've never seen these, no WW kinmember has ever asked if I wanted any, and never seen any other RK in a raid, with lvl 59 hunter, use one (Hunter is forester).

Either that means that other RK's are just too damned lazy - which seems to be about par as I'm the only hunter that uses oils in grps, or because the wood is deemed too valuable to "waste" on such things by WW.

Now that you've pointed them out I'll definately be gathering wood for them.

However this does not detract from the original statement, just because RK have the above already doesn't mean they should have a flaw to make the other available bonuses unviable, - either give us the ability to make them in better numbers or remove it, don't dangle a carrot onna stick, it's just not right.

Edit: having just looked at the parchments details, they were obviously designed for use in exactly the scenario I suggested - being forced to both heal and dps, quote :"With a quick inscription, the Dagor Infused Parchment removes the attunement cost of Scathing Mockery, allowing its use while Healing attuned." I just hope the materials are normals and not the WW crit equivalents, like heartwood, that would be a double kick inna fork.

They would be a perfect compliment to the enamels...but...oh yes, the enamels are ridiculously hard to get.

Get kindred with the Men of Dunland and buy the Wild Flower Field Recipe at the rep vendor.

http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Item...d_Flower_Field

If you use the crit item for the fields (Rivendell and Lorien soils):

The drop rate for dye ingredients is about 20-25%. (100 fields -> 20-25 ingredients)
The drop rate for cooking crit items is about 50%.
The drop rate for straw seems to have dropped, can't remember when.

T7 is harder because you have to farm the crit items.

I have farmed tens of thousands of fields, the rates have been stable for the last 2-3 years.

When I'm thinking of juicy strawberries two things pop up in my head: Dye & strawberry pie with creme *yummy*

They should really rework these recipe and have scholars use ingots instead (Ancient steel & silver on master level for example)

Originally Posted by Arnvald

Get kindred with the Men of Dunland and buy the Wild Flower Field Recipe at the rep vendor.

http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Item...d_Flower_Field

Nice! Thanks!

Originally Posted by Bunghelm

They started to overhall farming on the westfold tier.

At that level, each crop yields 1 item as opposed to 4, and you get bulk recipe's to cut down the time it takes. If the same could be done for all the other tiers, you'd end up with 110 bundles of barley (instead of ~440) with about the same number of crit items: 25 allspice, 4 straw. You'd still have to put in the same amount of work to get enough crit items (minus the unnecessary filling of your bags), but it would be much better IMO. The only problem is, it would make farming at lower levels even more "expensive" as you wouldn't get enough produce to sell.

They've switched this recently, so you get 2 items per crop instead of 1. Makes farming Black Barley a bit less painful!

as far as straw goes its also used by weapons smiths for lone land rep turn-ins in ost guruth ie " hunter trap" so yea the fact that straw drops so rarely is painful at best.

The reason no one uses the parchments is because, yeah, it's just not really worthwhile using those kinds of consumables when you're leveling up. No one uses them at cap, either, because both of them are pretty useless. It's easy to cap your outgoing healing, and RK's get enough finesse to make the target resist parchments pretty useless, too. I'd spend the gold/resources on them if they did stuff like add straight mastery or HoT/DoT ticks or ICPR or -induction time or something.

Originally Posted by Arnvald

Get kindred with the Men of Dunland and buy the Wild Flower Field Recipe at the rep vendor.

http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Item...d_Flower_Field

Men of Dunland is 61+ .... So, I have to wait until then, sorry, until I've reached lvl 61 AND ground out enough rep to get to kindred to buy the recipe before the enamels - which is ALL I'M INTERESTED IN - become viable for semi-regular use.

This is not an intelligent solution, as enamels are available at journeyman scholar level, or lvl 10+ in relative terms, and group quests start in great barrows, lvl 20+, where you may indeed be required to both heal and dps.

*sarcasm on* Cheers turbine devs, GJ! *sarcasm off*

I'm glad someone pointed out the info about parchments also being essentially useless at higher levels because of inbuilt stats, maybe that will get some attention as well.

I really hope the people who read this will post a reply even if it's just to add a /agree it needs to be changed, the more people, the more chances we have.

The past couple of weeks especially, the drop rate on criticals has been horrendous for me - my RK is a scholar who both needs enamels and makes dyes.

And my tinker is starved for crit mats for food - which outside of Westfold tier now seem to be dropping at an abysmal rate. I did 320 mint fields last week-end, and got 54 pieces of woolly mint (the cooking crit mat) for my trouble.

And yes, I have the top tools and always use the soil crit components.

Originally Posted by Raphedir

I really hope the people who read this will post a reply even if it's just to add a /agree it needs to be changed, the more people, the more chances we have.

/agree it needs to be changed

The drop rates for crit items like Amaranth Petals, Juicy Strawberries, etc is abysmal, and adds exactly zero fun to the role of farming, while detracting from it quite a bit.

In my own private testing - admittedly a small sampling comparatively speaking - I haven't seen enough difference between using crit soils and not using them, in regards to crit item drops. Whether I use the crit soils or don't, the RNG does what it does - sometimes I can go 15 or 20 fields with nothing, then get 2 or 3 crit items in a row. But whether crit soils help or not, the drop rate on crit items (not cook crafting crits, those seem fine) is too low.

PS - My solution to this "problem" has been to get a Scholar to Master with the Scholar's Guild, and use the special recipes that require only 1 crit item per 5 dyes/enamels, etc. I feel deeply for players trying to make these items without that advantage.

Originally Posted by Jenara

/agree it needs to be changed

The drop rates for crit items like Amaranth Petals, Juicy Strawberries, etc is abysmal, and adds exactly zero fun to the role of farming, while detracting from it quite a bit.

In my own private testing - admittedly a small sampling comparatively speaking - I haven't seen enough difference between using crit soils and not using them, in regards to crit item drops. Whether I use the crit soils or don't, the RNG does what it does - sometimes I can go 15 or 20 fields with nothing, then get 2 or 3 crit items in a row. But whether crit soils help or not, the drop rate on crit items (not cook crafting crits, those seem fine) is too low.

PS - My solution to this "problem" has been to get a Scholar to Master with the Scholar's Guild, and use the special recipes that require only 1 crit item per 5 dyes/enamels, etc. I feel deeply for players trying to make these items without that advantage.

Sorry, but this is just wrong or you are doing it wrong. As I said the crit rates are consistent. I always make 100 fields in a row and in the end I always get the same amount of crit items and dye ingredients (+/- a few). Crit items matter significantly, that you cannot see this with such small samples is evident.

Originally Posted by Valerian_Moonfire

Sorry, but this is just wrong or you are doing it wrong. As I said the crit rates are consistent. I always make 100 fields in a row and in the end I always get the same amount of crit items and dye ingredients (+/- a few). Crit items matter significantly, that you cannot see this with such small samples is evident.

Have to agree with Valerian here (and I generally do small samples but track my stats over long periods). Soils do make a huge difference in crit items... as a matter of fact it's the only reason to use peat on fields in Westfold (especially back when it was 1 produce per good crop, now it's a little better but the crop difference between well-tended and regular for Westfold is a far cry from Supreme and below... it's better to consider the difference between regular and hearty for crop in Westfold).

From my own experience, well-tended fields (t1-6) tended to produce a crit mat in 1/4 attempts (~25 per 100 fields)

Normal fields seemed to drop to about 1/10 (~10 per 100 fields)

Regardless, planting 100 fields is by no means entertaining. x.x

Originally Posted by Iorothiel

From my own experience, well-tended fields (t1-6) tended to produce a crit mat in 1/4 attempts (~25 per 100 fields)

It's actually 50% dropchance for cooking crit items and 25% for dye ingredients (T1-T6). IIRC the dropchance for the T7 compost is 25% on a normal field and 50% on fields that use it as a crit item. Westfold cooking ingredient should be 50% on normal fields and 100% on fields that use the compost (100 fields -> 100 Westfold thingies).

Originally Posted by Iorothiel

Regardless, planting 100 fields is by no means entertaining. x.x

Yup