I know all about RNG. Believe me. I know in the core of my soul how easy it is to get the idea that there is “something wrong” with the loot tables, drop rates, etc when in fact is it just the roll of the internal game logic “dice”. I’m old. I’ve ground out Molten Core runs for months, never to see that one Tier 1 piece. I played roguelikes when then were still just ASCII mazes and good loot was denoted only by stats in a text list. That’s why I waited over a year to make this post, just to make sure.
I have entire transfer files full of stuff like Aldanar’s Vanity, Venomspine Greaves, and many other non-set legendaries, but I have yet to ever see a chest piece or shoulders (although I have every helm recipe) of a legendary set drop. I have vaults full of epic sets with so many legit duplicates of one particular set piece that I could give a free one out to everyone that views this thread, and yet there is still one piece missing to complete the set. With 1.0.0.6 I am starting to see a few new blue pieces which is great, but still I can go for marathon play sessions and get so many copies of epic blue pants, gloves and boots that it is starting to feel like there is just no point to playing anymore.
Is is absolutely required to trade for legendaries to have a chance at what I’m missing? It seems somehow contrary to the spirit of the game to me, but I guess I might have to start if I want the game to stay fresh. Some of my 85s are just too weakly geared to be fun atm and I’m tired of leveling new characters. Am I, as sort of a non-expert GD player, doing something wrong? I was under the impression that drops are 100% random in this game with very few exceptions (Mogdrogen, etc) but perhaps I should be farming certain bosess or areas?
I dunno. I put the preface in here to explain that I do know RNG can seem to have malice when in fact it’s just perception, but I’ve been playing this game for over a year now.
Well I’ve been playing this game since before whenever you started and I complete sets all the time! You just have bad luck and/or are bad at the game. Why just yesterday I played for 20 minutes and killed every single nemesis twice over and got four of the new sets. Then Darlet came out of the computer and gave me a blowjob! You just need to play more/get better/read a vaguely described thread that hasn’t had a post in 3 years.
Now that we got that out of the way: I agree. The RNG is capricious as the sea and there needs to be a better way to access full sets without putting in 5000 hours of spinning the wheel.
Humorous Yaw, although if this guy hasn’t seen a single Legendary set piece period, perhaps he’s not farming at a high enough level just might be the answer.
He might not be leaving Elite, thinking he still needs to be full geared to enter ult, despite the fact that hasn’t been true for many months now. Most sets don’t start dropping till the enemies are level 75, with a few exceptions. There are more set legendaries than not, so the odds of never seeing ANY set legendary is just too low to be realistic, unless the player is never putting them-self in a position they can actually get them even remotely reliably.
More at the OP, legendary grinding is pretty rough. 1 shot chest will almost never reward set legendaries, so trying to gamble on 1 shots won’t work. Instead, I’d recommend farming Nemesis or if you are really ambitious, the Crucible. You can get 5+ Legendaries in 20 minutes in the Crucible fairly easily on Glad, assuming your build can stand up to the dangers. And yea, if you play pure 100% solo, you probably will never see everything in the game. To a point, a .2% chance of getting the specific legendary you need, on a .1% chance for one to drop normally in the first place, just means you won’t get it. And some legendaries are heavily weighted to be more common as well (Looking at you Grasp of Unchained Might, my 7x+ Venomspine Greaves, or the time I got 3 PRM wands within a span of 20 minutes due to crafting two (Out of 3 crafts) from the Celestial Smith, on top of getting one from a basic enemy like 10 minutes later in the same dungeon as the smith…)
Also, one final point, that massively affects the OP. If you want to maximize your unique legendary drops per unit of time, don’t restart the session repeatedly. First, as long as you are in the same session, enemies can’t drop duplicates of any legendary that has dropped that session (crafting is sadly exempt from this rule…), and while it’s unconfirmed, the seed for the run may well not be removed until you full exit from the game, not just back to the main menu, meaning you will be far more likely to see the same legendaries as you had already run into prior. Many players say that it feels this way, vs full resets via quitting to desktop tends to get a breath of fresh air in the drop pool.
I believe this is absolutely true for all uniques. For the Perdition set for example I’ve never gotten the chest piece and only one of the shield. But I’ve gotten tons of the other pieces. And I’ve gotten enough Hellion Greaves to open a flaming boot store but only one Avarice of Androneus.
There is also the issue of WYSIWYG WRT what monsters wear and drop. If you farm monsters that wield mostly 1H melee weapons, then you will get a lot of 1H melee weapon drops.
Everyone’s been on the RNG boat, I’ve been grinding for new sets daily since the 1.0.0.6 patch came out and so far I’ve only found 2 new items, well 3, as Infernal Knights Girdle gotten a dupe… so many new things to drop and of course I had to roll the dupe of one of the 2 new items I already found :eek:
Anyways a lot of people often forget that there is something that does try (and often succeeds) to balance out a bad streak of RNG.
The celestial smith.
Run a few bosses, get some rare materia from them and heroes you meet along the way (or do trove runs, some you meet along the way to certain bosses, like the Darkvale Village one on the way to Zaria), collect the dupes that get droped by them. Craft or look for dynamite, go to Darlet to blow them up to get more rare materia, then go the the Necropolis smith to transmute them into 8 pieces of the same materia (in order of what are you aiming for either armor, weapons or accessories). Then go to the celestial smith and roll the dice again
It works better for me then farming Nemesis as the most worthy in loot are damn hard to find and even when found on the way to a boss, the drops often aren’t top quality (2 times encountered Valdaran in the Hidden Laboratory this weekend and 2 times an empowered lvl65 item with 25/35 lvl relic blueprint drops).
Hell, I’ve blown up the dupe of that girdle today along with some other dupes and in it’s place I’ve rolled the Orb of the Black Flame at the smith. Feels nice and now I’ve got one more new item~
Well I did gain a couple pieces of info that I hadn’t known about from this thread. One, I didn’t realize that breaking down gear could yield rare materials…again, I had some bad RNG on the very few times I tried it, but I only did it a couple times. Second, the thing about not resetting the seed. Dunno how Steelflame got the idea I never leave elite as I mentioned I have several 85’s, so yes I do farm elite. The smith usually gives me dupes also, and it’s a high cost in mats, but I might try the Darlet route and go to him more.
PS: I do have one chest piece actually. The one piece that ever dropped for me was Dreeg’s Vestments. Pretty meh for my one build that might use it, but still I did forget about that one.
Another thing: the last 3 or 4 times I’ve killed Fabius, there were no Legendaries or recipes. Does the game know I’m overfarming him? I mostly go after him since he’s the easiest to find for me plus I can get dynamite while I’m at it.
Ran SoT today after a few cronley runs and didn’t see a single leg on the entire time. I love leveling in the game but grinding for loot feels very unrewarding most of the time.
Hell I still can’t craft an eye of the storm, necrosis, or ulzin or whatever relic due to missing a couple of low level relics. I’ve put over 200 hours into the game not including time debating my options in town.
Sets, I have no hope of completing any without trading which would kill this game for me. I would play PoE if I wanted to trade.
I can relate to OP.
Legs needs to have a more controlled chance of getting them and the smith at tyrant’s hold isn’t cutting it as the rare mats required is too high.
Nemesis is another problem…as i’ve to travel through full levels on the hope that i may get lucky and find one and if he isn’t there time to clear another dungeon/level and if not there maybe in one of the rogue like dungeons.
I’ve over 150 hours in the game on 2 characters one of them is just a level 40 something and still for my build i’m messing all the important stuff.
When the game is built as a single player experience because let’s face it it does then one expect farming to be some how less time consuming.
And if i’m required to Trade then increase the size of the stash so i can locate shit faster and more easy for the trade instead of having to open a third party program that contains all my loot and still risking the chance of it getting bugged and destroying all my work.
Any way i think both leg drops and this damn smith need a change.
Hi there, you are right RNG is a harsh mistress i can give you few hints though:
ALWAYS farm on ulti and optimize your farming route (my personal is : twin falls/search the area around the hive for champions/enter the hive kill the named purple > boc1 search for the trove chest (you can see online where it spawns) kill champions on the road then kill the named purple. Rinse and repeat.
Even better (they say cause i don’t find the crucible fun personally) is to farm the crucible gladiator but again, i’m not the right person to ask cause i’ve not a big experience of it.
Another alternative, both rewarding and fun, is to use a mod called “grimmer and grimmest” it basically add a lot more hero and boss spawn : your screen will be flooded with stuff and surviving might be tricky but loot is obviously more.
Even with that said i trade sometimes and i think there is nothing wrong with it : sometimes you just miss 1 single piece of a set to make your build and it’s just a pain to wait for it to drop.
Hope the above can make your gaming experience more fun
ps: it happens often that nemesis won’t drop nor legend or recipe. That is why i just farm them for monster infrequents.
During my 1k+ hours with this game I’ve been mostly disappointed by much of what is considered recommended farming.
All those hive runs are giving me tons of Royal Jelly and components, but only rarely epics or legendaries (or even blueprints).
Nemesis farming (on Elite as well as Ultimate) is just totally underwhelming. In the beginning, at least I got some missing blueprints, but legendary drop rate is disappointing throughout. At least I’m sitting on more than two dozens of Warrants now …
There were only two things which felt at least remotely rewarding: dynamite/treasure trove farming and visiting Etram Fald.
But that’s just too little. This game desperately needs more useful crafting/trading options to compensate for farming frustration and to give players more opportunities to transform their vast amounts of rare and legitimately farmed but useless loot into something new.
RNG just often sucks (especially when combining long walks, dangerous opponents and abysmal drop rates), which is why every ARPG is made much much more fun if it is providing some mechanisms to break up farming monotony by gambling, trading and crafting - and by giving players the chance to have an impact on the outcomes of all this, instead of just making results 100% random again.
Most recent example: Currently trying to get some still missing blueprints. Farming Sentinel for “Covenant of the Three” on Ultimate. Made 60 (yes, sixty) runs, killed him 60 times. Did I get the blueprint? Of course not. This is just pathetic …
Farming for the last dozen or so blueprints is just … ugh, the worst. I have a couple of legendary sets that I can’t complete now because of missing blueprints. I try to kill at least five to ten nemesis a day (the kind with full chance to drop them) but it’s been weeks since I got anything.
I have more tonics of clarity and warrants than I will ever need. Great I guess…
I’ve managed to craft several mythical relics now (just finished Agrivix’s Malice the other week which I wanted to try so bad, yay!) but not on the characters at the time they needed them.
I ended up pooling all my components and empowered/transcendent relics I crafted so far across over 20 characters for the first page of my transfer stash and then was able to craft some mythical relics. I also had to cycle through characters to do it since I needed soulbound components like ancient hearts and manticore eyes which I couldn’t pool in my transfer stash, and tons of iron bits, so I had to cycle through my characters to create each little piece one by one until I had everything needed to finally make a mythical relic.
It was pretty damned painful but it didn’t seem hopeless after I did that, but I’d say pretty hopeless if you expect to wear a desired mythical relic on your very first character playthrough, especially one of those that requires another mythical to craft.
I kind of wish the game had a smart loot gaming mechanic, meaning that you would get items based n your class… I have been trying to get an empowered black bood for my summoner and all i keep having is epic or blue items for classes i dont play…
Recipes make a lot of sense to me to mitigate this problem if the game’s RNG ensured that a recipe already learned cannot drop.
When I collect a recipe for an item that not a single one of my characters can use (about a couple dozen characters), like a blueprint for Raka’Jax (lightning crossbow for a ranged shaman, probably using PS), I’m not nearly as disappointed. I’m actually excited and feel rewarded because I can craft it at some point if I ever want to create some crossbow-wielding shaman.
It doesn’t hog up the very limited and precious stash space. I can learn the blueprint and have it take no space at all, and I can then craft it with any one of my characters as needed. A learned recipe takes zero stash space. It’s like as far as recipe knowledge is concerned, we have “infinite stash”. The game doesn’t have a maximum of like 20 recipes you can learn before it reaches “memory limit” and forces you to delete some recipes or mule them over.
Meanwhile if Raka`Jax dropped as an item instead of a blueprint, I’m generally quite disappointed (as I repeatedly am with most epic/legendary drops), especially if it’s the second or third one I’ve encountered. It’s like now I got yet another item that none of my characters want to use hogging up my stash – too nice to pass up or sell, but too useless at the moment even for over 20 characters I’ve made.
A heavier focus on unique blueprints as drops might help things a lot to make farming and collecting loot more enjoyable even with the sheer number of items in the database that only fit the narrowest range of builds. It’d also mitigate the stash problem.
Ok, so for everyone complaining about drops on popular farm routes, and Nemesis farming.
Fabius (And any human faction Nemesis at that, including Iron Maiden and Zaterain from Death’s Vigil) have reduced drop rates due to being very easy to farm due to having few spawn points. Don’t farm them if you want good loot. Even though 2 of the 3 of them are the hardest nemeses in the game, they are terrible to farm as their drops rates are half a normal Nemesis’s drop rate.
Different farming routes have different optimal drop rates in general. Crucible Glad 150 has stupid high legendary and Rare/MI drops, very poor blue drops, maybe 1-2 per 4+ legs you find. Twin Falls hive runs has the highest rate of getting blue items, average rate of legendaries. Monster Nemesis runs have fairly frequent BP and Legendary drops, and if you farm Benn or Vald, instead of Moo, you can also get rare mats from them for the related faction, which can further be converted into more legendaries (Although Moo is easier to find than either of them, so it’s a trade-off). Speed Trove farming has some of the highest Legendary per minute investment, especially for weak builds (You can easily get 1 legendary for every 8 minutes), but it tends to require a ton of dynamite.
My preferred farming route if not doing Crucible is this…
Start in Arkovia Foothills, check both Fabius’s spawn point (If you know you can handle him), and Moo’s at the nearby areas. Kill the nearby Aether Crystals for Dynamite mats.
TP into Old Arkovia, check hidden area behind the New Harbor town, go into cave. Run through cave, grab dynamite spawn + kill Hadrian the Rat. Run out, and run the loop through 4 hills all the way to a Cronley Kill. If you want to farm Fabius, and haven’t found him yet, TP to Devil’s Crossing and kill him at Shanks area.
TP into Broken Hills, and run through the loop to kill all 3 named ghost (Skip the first one on Floor one, we get him after Kilrain), checking each Trove spawn point along the way. Kill Kilrain, pop up, kill the first Ghost boss, check the last Trove spawn. Run out to get to the surface of Twin Falls. Check both Moo spawns, run into Twin Falls hive and kill everything. If Moo hasn’t been found yet, TP back out to Broken Hills rift, run Steps of Torment, hitting the Trove on the way down. If Moo isn’t found after this, he is behind the SoT gate. Either reset, or run Steps of Torment’s lower levels, depending on how you feel you can handle it.
You’re done. You have hit 1-2 Nemesis, 8 Named bosses (10 if you go full SoT), countless heros, 2 Troves and potentially gotten a Brain from Cronley and a Heart from the Hive, and have gotten at least a few epics and maybe a few legendaries as well, as well as gotten at a bare minimum 4-5 Dynamite spawns, with potential for more. Blow up all epics/legendaries you don’t want to keep at Darlet, and reset run. Run takes less than 20 minutes once you optimize it, and can be really highly rewarding.
Note how my route gets the best of Nemesis farming, Hive farming, and Trove farming, all in the same route. Not as focused as any one thing, but should get you the best general drop rates of loot. Most of my gear I got before Crucible came out was from this farming loop.
Best example for that constant over-analyzing, over-balancing, over-compensating and over-nerfing taking place in games like these. So there are five nemesis bosses in your game, giving identical loot, but may be more or less difficult to locate. Everyone could be happy with this, but no, someone had the brilliant idea to compensate fewer spawnpoints by reduced drop rates. Honestly, what’s the point of all this - other than making an already grindy game even more grindy for all players? What’s so terribly wrong about some nemesis being easier to farm than others?
But nooo, balance police is deciding that you either have to run around like some idiot in search for some nemesis or have to be happy with some sorry-assed loot (from, you said it, the hardest enemies to be found in the game!!!). Gimme a break!
