Thread: Farmer's Faire - Egg Scramble

Originally Posted by Koomaster

If you lose the egg scramble, you can pick the quest up again right away. If you win, there is a cooldown before you can accept the quest again. Usually someone starts the scramble so you can't get into the very next round.

Makes sense to do that if all you care about are the festive eggs. That way you could play round after round without waiting.

Also, I am starting to think that the more bad eggs that are picked up, the quicker the round is over. I had one round where I picked up a bunch of bad eggs right after the other just to clear the field for other players and then the round just suddenly ended. Could explain some of the wonky times people see, perhaps WAI or just a bug after all?

OK, I did that yesterday but not to intentionally fail, I wound up being the only player in one round and did NOT get 5 eggs, so many Bad Eggs got dropped.

Anyone who can complete Tier 2 must be really good or really lucky, I think I will settle for Tier 1 to complete the Deed and do Tier 2 of the Mushroom game, there the 'bad' shrooms still count for your total. I would think a Farmer would appreciate people picking up his bad eggs so they could be sorted out instead of sitting in his yard.

Originally Posted by Eartholloth

I was wondering if those could be sold in the AH. Seriously who is gonna spend 50g for a egg that gives, 2, 5, 10 or even the 50 tokens??? Just another way for the greedy players to try & make a buck.

THe problem is not greedy players -- the problem is that there are people who will make such purchases.

Originally Posted by Kaynith

Fix the drop rate please. At least double it. Then maybe folks will have a slim chance of completing this quest/deeds.

Yes, please.

I guess its just the same principle turbine uses for the TP store. Time vs convience.

If you want the item, or deed, badly enough but don't have time to farm for it, buying the eggs from other players is your only option.

I also hardly think its greedy to sell tradeable festival items. After all, its not required for you to buy them all, you can totally ignore it if you want to. I even think it would be better to have a collect mushroom deed on that game as well, if only to split the farmers between two events and make things a little less crowded.

Regarding the white eggs. I see fewer and fewer people bother picking them up every day. It should get easier for you to complete the quest deed as time goes on.

And still no sign of the golden egg (

Originally Posted by Nellaen

I guess its just the same principle turbine uses for the TP store. Time vs convience.

If you want the item, or deed, badly enough but don't have time to farm for it, buying the eggs from other players is your only option.

I also hardly think its greedy to sell tradeable festival items. After all, its not required for you to buy them all, you can totally ignore it if you want to. I even think it would be better to have a collect mushroom deed on that game as well, if only to split the farmers between two events and make things a little less crowded.

Regarding the white eggs. I see fewer and fewer people bother picking them up every day. It should get easier for you to complete the quest deed as time goes on.

And still no sign of the golden egg (

Its not he fact that they're selling them that makes them greedy but the amount they are selling them for. 50 gold for an egg?

Originally Posted by Glicyn

OK, I did that yesterday but not to intentionally fail, I wound up being the only player in one round and did NOT get 5 eggs, so many Bad Eggs got dropped.

Anyone who can complete Tier 2 must be really good or really lucky, I think I will settle for Tier 1 to complete the Deed and do Tier 2 of the Mushroom game, there the 'bad' shrooms still count for your total. I would think a Farmer would appreciate people picking up his bad eggs so they could be sorted out instead of sitting in his yard.

Like the fishing quests, it seems based on luck here as well. I admit that I have had solo rounds where five white eggs didn't drop. But lately I have had solo rounds where 7 or more white eggs dropped. So, it's a gamble I guess. If you are persistent I think the deed is doable, there is still 2 weeks left to the faire. I have already gotten 16/20 wins for the egg scramble.

As for 50g for an egg, maybe that was someone testing the waters and I hope nobody bought it. The highest I have seen on my server is 15g for an egg, but most tend to fall around 400s-1g, which is fairly reasonable; at least by comparison.

Originally Posted by Crell_1

Any chance you've done the other 5 egg deeds on that character? (Golden,Striped,Speckled,Solid ,Victory1,Victory2)

It'd be nice to get this 'there might be a hidden deed' out of the way once and for all.

Done with all 6. No meta-deed. At least, not for the eggs.

I'm still not done with Helping Hand (3 more days to go), Fine Faire Fishing (stupid luck with Big Fish, Little Fish), and Fishy, Very Fishy (stupider luck) though, so there's still a possibility that there be something after all of those.



The fishing quests are ridiculous. They should have factored in Erebrandir's Horseshoe, fishing skill level, and also allowed retries with Festival Tickets.

Originally Posted by Nellaen

If you want the item, or deed, badly enough but don't have time to farm for it, buying the eggs from other players is your only option.

The Golden Egg is Bound though, and it's the rarest one too, so people who really care about the deeds still have to play a lot of Egg Scramble or be really lucky.

Originally Posted by Fortinobrand

THe problem is not greedy players -- the problem is that there are people who will make such purchases.

How is there a problem at all? AH prices are determined by basic demand and supply. They aren't determined by monopolistic sellers. If you're unwilling or unable to pay the market equilibrium prices, the issue lies with you, not other sellers and buyers.

Originally Posted by nonamebrand

I was lucky enough to get the golden egg on my second play of the egg scramble. It gives 50 tokens and nothing else.

It gives a deed, like the other egg sets, but no title.

Originally Posted by Crell_1

Any chance you've done the other 5 egg deeds on that character? (Golden,Striped,Speckled,Solid ,Victory1,Victory2)

It'd be nice to get this 'there might be a hidden deed' out of the way once and for all.
Highly disappointed this is 'BOUND' instead of BOUND to account at the very worst ^_^, Especially because it comes from a 'ticked' event.

When I got mine, I had all other egg deeds done, and was carrying the egg basket.

Originally Posted by Tamiya

I'm still not done with Helping Hand (3 more days to go), Fine Faire Fishing (stupid luck with Big Fish, Little Fish), and Fishy, Very Fishy (stupider luck) though, so there's still a possibility that there be something after all of those.



The fishing quests are ridiculous. They should have factored in Erebrandir's Horseshoe, fishing skill level, and also allowed retries with Festival Tickets.

The fishing quests are just wrong. The tickest say they can be used to reset cooldowns. WRONG! There are no quests that have thier cooldowns reset by them, just two that you need one to enter. The fishing quests would have been acceptible if you could fork over a ticket to have another go.

I HATE bigfishLittlefish. Ive fished it every 24 hours since start of festival and no victory. Closest I got was 6/7 4/5 and failed last pull.

Originally Posted by Glicyn

NOTE - Restocking the Market, Farmer's Fair, Northcotton - You need to go to Oatbarton and bind the Milestone then return for the this, it is the only way to do it in time (7 minutes, you will not be able to get there by fast horse or stable and return using max pie speed). Get the Quest then Milestone to Oatbarton using 30 seconds, get the wine and return using pies for speed often, I finished with 2 minutes, 15 seconds left.

This isn't true, you can easily ride or run to Northcotton and back in the time given - sure it's a close thing, but it's not impossible by any means. If you're having trouble have a look at your route - you can pretty much head straight across country.

That said, I prefer to do it by porting to Bree (all my char have the Bree port skill), take a swift horse to Tinnundir then another to Oatbarton and run back. That works with about a 2 minute margin.

Originally Posted by Nostro44

This isn't true, you can easily ride or run to Northcotton and back in the time given - sure it's a close thing, but it's not impossible by any means. If you're having trouble have a look at your route - you can pretty much head straight across country.

I second that. It can be a close call, but it is far from impossible. My personal record is 44 seconds left using no swift travel or teleports and I have hardware that is far from being new.

One thing that helps is that, contrary to most other carry quests, you can swim while carrying the wine (have not tested it for the other helping hand deliveries).

My egg scramble theories...

While playing with just ONE other player I failed 3 times. Got a multi-colored egg though.

While playing by myself I finally won. I noticed early on, that the 'bad' eggs look to be smoking (odor plume?). So I figured, why waste time on those? The time I failed by myself, I left the smelly eggs alone. Seemed like the timer all of a sudden was up (three bad eggs were there). Huh? Was like 3 minutes the last time. After that I picked up ALL the eggs, and I had enough time to finish and then some.

So to win:

1. Play alone.
2. Pick up all eggs to keep game going.

Out of interest has anybody tested if chasing the chicken or leaving them alone has an effect on the egg drop rate?

Originally Posted by Nellaen

I also hardly think its greedy to sell tradeable festival items. After all, its not required for you to buy them all, you can totally ignore it if you want to.

There are a few people on my server who are selling multiple of the same colour of eggs on the AH for several gold each. This means they're picking up eggs they don't need, which means they're likely taking it away from another player who might need it. If they're playing the game on their own, of course my point is moot. But when I see one person selling about 5 eggs of multiple colours (including the rare stripped ones), I can help but think that's being somewhat greedy.

Personally, the few times I've won, I've stopped at 5 white eggs and have now stopped picking up single-coloured eggs since I've completed that deed.

Regarding the white eggs. I see fewer and fewer people bother picking them up every day. It should get easier for you to complete the quest deed as time goes on.

I'm hoping this is the case!

Originally Posted by Lothirieth

There are a few people on my server who are selling multiple of the same colour of eggs on the AH for several gold each. This means they're picking up eggs they don't need, which means they're likely taking it away from another player who might need it. If they're playing the game on their own, of course my point is moot. But when I see one person selling about 5 eggs of multiple colours (including the rare stripped ones), I can help but think that's being somewhat greedy.

No offence, but unless there is only 1 colour I need, I'm picking up any coloured eggs I see so I don't have to open my deed tracker to figure out if I need this egg only to find out I need it but someone else beat me to it now...

As for selling festival stuff on the AH, that isn't exactly anything new. Festival cosmetics appear all year long. Some people get a few of the popular item and post them throughout the year. Longer it's been since that festival, the higher the value of the item. It's all part of trying to make some cash at least for all the time you spent trying to get some silly titles...

I find picking up eggs encourages the timer to keep going, as a few others have mentioned, and I think you underestimate just how many eggs you can accumulate after doing that for 7 days. After all, one of the best ways to finish off your deeds, is to try and trade/sell your spares, to buy/trade what you need.

I've given away a lot, but there comes a time when you need to start putting them on the AH just to clear your inventory space )

And the quest for the golden egg continues :/

Originally Posted by Dawnsinger

Out of interest has anybody tested if chasing the chicken or leaving them alone has an effect on the egg drop rate?

Great question, I wondered the same thing myself. Anyone see a pattern?

I also had assumed that picking up bad eggs helps out the respawn but it seems when I play, I am the only one with that assumption as the stinky eggs just seem to sit.

I wonder if there was a tweak to drop rate because the 1st night I played I had little trouble completing this multiple times and now 3/5 is the closest I seem to get. Something has changed.

I don't think this was mentioned yet, I hope everybody knows you get a token for every egg collected, including white eggs. So if you get 3 tix, get 2/5 on each run...that is still 6 tokens. I was about to sell the eggs and did not know you could right click on them until I won a colored one and began to wonder!

Originally Posted by Lothirieth

There are a few people on my server who are selling multiple of the same colour of eggs on the AH for several gold each. This means they're picking up eggs they don't need, which means they're likely taking it away from another player who might need it. If they're playing the game on their own, of course my point is moot. But when I see one person selling about 5 eggs of multiple colours (including the rare stripped ones), I can help but think that's being somewhat greedy.

I picked up all festive eggs that I could until I'd finished all three deeds, primarily because I wanted to have trade bait for the last couple eggs that I needed. It worked quite well - I was able to trade for probably 1/3 of the festive eggs because I was picking up extras of ones that I already had.

Originally Posted by Kril

No offence, but unless there is only 1 colour I need, I'm picking up any coloured eggs I see so I don't have to open my deed tracker to figure out if I need this egg only to find out I need it but someone else beat me to it now...

What you're doing is fair. Though if you were playing with several other people, knew you'd finished all solid or spotted eggs, were picking them up and selling them.. yeah, to me that's not so nice. Trading is another matter entirely imho.

As for selling festival stuff on the AH, that isn't exactly anything new. Festival cosmetics appear all year long. Some people get a few of the popular item and post them throughout the year. Longer it's been since that festival, the higher the value of the item. It's all part of trying to make some cash at least for all the time you spent trying to get some silly titles...

I'm fully aware of this. My join date is due to the EU transfer. I have no problem with people selling cosmetics. Getting extra cosmetics doesn't take them away from others. But there are a finite amount of eggs per round and there are many people complaining that they can't finish the rounds. There's also the element of Turbine charging real money for more chances to play these games. So when I see a single person selling multiple eggs of multiple colours...it just gives me a bad feeling.

I usually stand and wait until I'm alone in the area before I start the quest. Picking up every colored egg I see though even if there are others there too. I only ever pick up 5 whites in a round, but I have difficulty seeing which colors the eggs are if they're not white, so pick them up and if it proves out I had it, I usually select one of the others who was in the area and trade to him/her. When playing alone in the area I just send the egg to an alt.

This means I often end up with several of one color egg, but still need 3 striped and I really can't see if they're striped/spotted/colored before after I pick them up.

Originally Posted by Lothirieth

What you're doing is fair. Though if you were playing with several other people, knew you'd finished all solid or spotted eggs, were picking them up and selling them.. yeah, to me that's not so nice. Trading is another matter entirely imho.

Yet you already judge people who sell their eggs on AH, despite not knowing at all the circumstances they got their extra eggs from.

I'm fully aware of this. My join date is due to the EU transfer. I have no problem with people selling cosmetics. Getting extra cosmetics doesn't take them away from others. But there are a finite amount of eggs per round and there are many people complaining that they can't finish the rounds. There's also the element of Turbine charging real money for more chances to play these games. So when I see a single person selling multiple eggs of multiple colours...it just gives me a bad feeling.

And since you bring real money into the picture, that's one less reason for anyone to give up eggs that they've paid for access to.

If you want to blame someone, blame the game designers. The quest is set up to be a competition. Players are expected to compete.

Well, finished Tier 1 and I don't see myself going for Tier 2 this time.

Seen too many rounds with a lot of Bad eggs, these seem to be the ones with most drops of Festive resulting in few drops of White. Actually found at times there will be Double White drops, 1 White next to another, if you are not careful you might miss that sometimes 1 of them is a Bad Egg.

Originally Posted by Tamiya

Yet you already judge people who sell their eggs on AH, despite not knowing at all the circumstances they got their extra eggs from.

Reading everything a person writes is quite helpful! If you would have done that, you would have read what I wrote:

This means they're picking up eggs they don't need, which means they're likely taking it away from another player who might need it. If they're playing the game on their own, of course my point is moot.

A correction would be nice. Thanks.

If you want to blame someone, blame the game designers. The quest is set up to be a competition. Players are expected to compete.

Sure they're at fault too. Turbine's greed has marred festivals for me.

Originally Posted by Lothirieth

Turbine's greed has marred festivals for me.

What greed? Sure they offer you an opportunity to buy more tickets but they don't require you to, in fact they give each of your characters 3 free tickets every day.

Just because an option is there for those who want it doesn't equate to "Turbine's greed".

That's really not called for in this case, they are being quite generous in my opinion. This "Turbine's greed" seems to be a fall back mantra whenever they put something in the store somebody wants but doesn't want to pay for it, even if it's available in game. I'm not saying they don't push the line on some things but this is NOT one of them.

Originally Posted by Lothirieth

Reading everything a person writes is quite helpful! If you would have done that, you would have read what I wrote:

A correction would be nice. Thanks.

I did read everything you wrote.

Despite admiting that there's a possibility that those players aren't actually taking anything away from anyone, you continued to conclude at the very end with

Originally Posted by Lothirieth

But when I see one person selling about 5 eggs of multiple colours (including the rare stripped ones), I can help but think that's being somewhat greedy.

Reads to me that you are labelling them as greedy anyway. If I misintepreted your message, I apologize.

Sure they're at fault too. Turbine's greed has marred festivals for me.

Turbine isn't at fault "too". It's entirely Turbine's fault for making things work the way they do.

Just don't blame other players at all, when they're simply playing the game the way the game is made. The Egg Scramble is specifically designed as a competition. The special eggs are specifically made tradable to facilitate trading. The quest specifically says to continue collecting eggs even after meeting the quota. If you aren't happy with any of these conditions, blame Turbine.

The other thread where some people whine about other players resetting the drunk hobbits is equally ridiculous. It's not other players fault when the game design is broken.

Originally Posted by Unique

What greed? Sure they offer you an opportunity to buy more tickets but they don't require you to, in fact they give each of your characters 3 free tickets every day.

Introducing a paid element into the game that even people who have paid for their accounts would have to pay for is pure and simple greed to me. If I have a paid account, I expect to be able to play all aspects of the game. Especially when there are deeds tied to it as well! Sell extra storage, cosmetics, deed accelerators.. fluff like that. Fine. But when it affects game play, yes even for a simple festival, it's greed. It baffles me that anyone can defend this new trend. :/

Originally Posted by Lothirieth

Introducing a paid element into the game that even people who have paid for their accounts would have to pay for is pure and simple greed to me. If I have a paid account, I expect to be able to play all aspects of the game. Especially when there are deeds tied to it as well! Sell extra storage, cosmetics, deed accelerators.. fluff like that. Fine. But when it affects game play, yes even for a simple festival, it's greed. It baffles me that anyone can defend this new trend. :/

You don't have to pay though; they give you 3 free tickets each day of the festival. The festival lasts ~3 weeks, so they are giving you 63 chances to play the two games. And that's just on a single character, they have made the tickets un-bound, so if you have multiple characters that's 63 chances x amount of characters you have. I have 5, so I could have a maximum of 315 opportunities to play these games if I wanted. I think that's more than faire.

You actually have more chances to do these quests than you do the non-ticket quests. Each of those you can only play 1x/day, so only like 20 opportunities to play each one. With just 1 character and 63 tickets, that means that you can play the mushroom hunt and egg scramble 31 times each.

If you only have 1 character, it really only takes like an hour to get a new one up to speed. Create a hobbit, do the introduction stuff and you'll end up in MD, there is a horse to take your character to the festival and a mailbox at the festival grounds. Get tickets, mail tickets, pick up tickets.

With how easy it is to get tickets, I am surprised they bother selling them at all really. Speak again about their greed if they ever make the tickets for these festivals bound to a character.

Originally Posted by Koomaster

With how easy it is to get tickets, I am surprised they bother selling them at all really. Speak again about their greed if they ever make the tickets for these festivals bound to a character.

I'd imagine that the fact that they're unbound is an oversight. The Race Tokens for the hobbit and dwarf races are bound, and I believe those are for sale in the Store when those races are active.

Maybe it is time to suggest only a one type of festival ticket, that go to the premium barter wallet and account (server) wide.

Btw after I got used to the mechanics (and the camera), today I finished my 5th Eggsellent + Mushroom-muncher deeds, it takes me an average of ~45 tickets each char. After completing those deeds, plus the other ones in progress, each char ends with like ~1200 tokens, so a dedicated festival player can get everything he wants.

Sadly this cant be considered a rule for all people, usually I have to see others failing and I feel guilty because they cant grab enough white eggs. The quest cooldown works here and winners cant run the next round which seems to be fair.

I haven't seen a golden egg yet.

Originally Posted by Lestache

I'd imagine that the fact that they're unbound is an oversight. The Race Tokens for the hobbit and dwarf races are bound, and I believe those are for sale in the Store when those races are active.

That might be the case or not.
But this has been the case since teh spring festival and tbh this is a lot better then the bound tickets from the other festivals. I didn't even want to try the bets on the races at Thorin's Hall and the Shire.

Originally Posted by Laerien

I haven't seen a golden egg yet.

Me neither :/

Seen all other eggs, dozens of times over. Seen nothing even resembling a golden egg. Even the ones I've been too far away to pick up, clicked on them to see the name, and still nothing.

(

I don't object to folks picking up colored eggs they've already acquired just to sell or trade them. What I DO object to is people standing on the sidelines on their horses just watching for the good ones. No law against it is of course, but I do believe the scramble should have been designed to dis-allow the use of mounts. It's a design flaw.

If you think selling Egg Scramble eggs is bad, you should have seen what I found at the Imladris AH this week.

Someone posted an auction of 100 Chicken Eggs like Cooks use.
Sell price began at 20 silver, buyout at 50 silver.

Originally Posted by Glicyn

If you think selling Egg Scramble eggs is bad, you should have seen what I found at the Imladris AH this week.

Someone posted an auction of 100 Chicken Eggs like Cooks use.
Sell price began at 20 silver, buyout at 50 silver.

Well, a full stack of 100 eggs is 24 silver. So I dunno, it's not as if they are making that much profit even if it did sell for 50 silver. The price is so low I can't even see them being that deceitful, maybe they just had a stack of 100 eggs laying about they wanted to get rid of.

Unless you meant selling them for 20g-50g which would be downright dirty.

Originally Posted by Lothirieth

If I have a paid account, I expect to be able to play all aspects of the game. Especially when there are deeds tied to it as well! Sell extra storage, cosmetics, deed accelerators.. fluff like that. Fine. But when it affects game play, yes even for a simple festival, it's greed. It baffles me that anyone can defend this new trend. :/

I guess I missed the memo, but I've not paid one TP for any Farmer's Faire content. They give you tickets at no cost each day. You can experience most of the Faire without even using those free tickets.

Originally Posted by Koomaster

I think that's more than faire.

I see what you did there.

Originally Posted by auximenes

I guess I missed the memo, but I've not paid one TP for any Farmer's Faire content. They give you tickets at no cost each day. You can experience most of the Faire without even using those free tickets.

I'm afraid you've missed the point. It shouldn't be ticketed in the first place, especially for subscribers... just like the shrew stomping or beer brawl.

Your OPINION is that it should not be ticketed. I personally don't care if they are ticketed or not. I'm not buying any tickets regardless. I fail to understand how Turbine spending time and money to produce and support a festival and then offering a way for players to buy more tickets if they so desire can be considered greedy.

Originally Posted by auximenes

Your OPINION is that it should not be ticketed. I personally don't care if they are ticketed or not. I'm not buying any tickets regardless. I fail to understand how Turbine spending time and money to produce and support a festival and then offering a way for players to buy more tickets if they so desire can be considered greedy.

"Greedy" is subjective, certainly.

It does strike me as a bit uncouth that the only festival quests that have been monetized are the ones that involve luck and/or gambling (egg scramble, mushroom picking, hobbit/dwarf races, grabbing envelopes, treasure hunting) - put another way, they're the festival quests with the highest chance of failure, and often through no fault of the players.

I imagine that some people would shell out TP for the chance to do the Hedge Maze quests more than once a day, or to repeat the dance quests, or AA or IL runs, and so forth. Yet the only quests that allow us to buy additional chances to do them in a day also happen to be the only quests that we can "fail" through no fault of our own (although arguably success in the mushroom picking event is entirely within the player's control).

It may not be greedy per se, but it certainly doesn't strike me as some altruistic addition made with the players' best interests in mind.


Edit to add: Like everything in LOTRO, the design of the festival quests is entirely within Turbine's control. There's no natural law or inherent characteristic of the Egg Scramble that says it must require a festival ticket to participate and that said festival tickets are limited to three per character per day. As someone else mentioned, the Egg Scramble could have been designed like the Beer Brawl, in which a character can participate every 10 minutes or so as long as the festival is up, and at no additional cost. Instead, Turbine yet again chose to put a limitation on something in-game that can, voila!, be removed by spending money/TP.

We should be used to such things by now, but when they creep into festivals - the one part of the game that truly is accessible to everyone, the part that should be a fun diversion - it leaves a bad taste.

A few comments: first -- as it stands, the festival tickets aren't bound. You can buy them, trade them, use alts, etc. This is a good thing (although, i agree, likely an oversight or error). Having said that, I find it great when my main needed tickets (for deeds) and I could trade them off my alts.

Second, I would LOVE to see MORE things available on the auction house. Let supply and demand help fuel things. I had several kinnies that were also running for deeds, and we happily traded extra eggs to help complete those deeds. I've given eggs away to friends to help them with deeds...but I've ALSO put up spotted and striped eggs on the AH. And people have bought them. I don't think I've listed anything at more than a gold (and yes, i did deliberately undercut other sellers...but 3+ or 4+ gold seemed silly). I have extras, i've tried to give them away to kinnies...why not have another method of off-loading them? This is a good thing and I'd love to see more opportunities for people to work together.

Third, I actually DO like that the golden egg is bound. I'm disappointed there is no associated meta-deed. All done now! I would have really like to see an egg-laden horse awarded for completing the meta deed. Or a title...or something. I have seen kinnies find it -- it IS very rare. But it rewards you for actually doing it.

Finally, I think there is some *strategy* that can help others. I personally realized when I was completing my Eggsellent deed that picking up extra white eggs didn't help anyone. For that matter -- i didn't want the white eggs anyway, although i do secretly belive that the timer on the eggs is related to the EGGsisting eggs on the field...so taking bad eggs actually helps repopulate new ones....