The Hidden Forest

7 hrs killing.

Fiery Spirit Equine Overlord x5
2 mantle of flame wisdom.
1 flame gilded cloak.
1 black rage of flame.
1 ornate leather pants.
1 ornate silk pants.

Jopal Seer x5
1 ornate silk boots.
1 ornate leather boots.

Obsidian War Spider x6
1 ornate silk boots
Spell: Chaotic Poison
Spell: Chaotic Ascendance

Lots of surrounding mobs. Which netted 312 Steaming water, 8 strange fluid, 25 fiery essence, 10 chaotic essence, 3 strange silk, 3 strange chain, 4 strange metal, 5 strange leather, and a combination of 20ish needles/hammers (ph's dropped needles and hammers).

Currently the drops on the strange materials seems way low especially considering they are used for both the strange and powerful armor. The named are fairly disappointing with the possibility of them dropping nothing but a a needle or hammer, aside from the Fiery Spirit Equine Overlord with 1 of his 3 items he is guaranteed to drop.

I'll probably end up going back to get 1 more piece of silk so I can make the silk boots but as far as trying to get the other 8 pieces of silk for the other boot or leg pattern not with drops rates this low.

The strange silk, metal, leather, chain drops need to be doubled at the least. 8 strange fluids in 7 hours comes down to about 1 fluid an hour which if there are no failures will get 4 essences a small increase would be nice. Would rather see the named only drop 1 type (leather/silk/chain/plate) pattern or a 100% drop of 1 of the 4. In 16 kills I would have expected to have seen 1 double drop (boot/helm or legs/gloves) of patterns, but it did not happen. The aa exp in the ldons, and points towards an exact item you may want, out weights me really wanting to go to this zone and hunt for ornate armor pieces that may or may not ever drop.

Yeah..the drops are really bad, but it's for top notch armor. I think it would be better to just create new, not so rare items for the strange armor sets and keep the other drops as they are.

Btw, I spent a good 2-3 days chain pulling/killing 20-30 mob trains by the zone in...so I feel your pain =p

What about switching drops so its not 15% chance between 4 items? Maybe spiders drop silk, horses leather, fire elems would be another and the gatherers could be something and liquid thrown on all of em, that would improve the drop rate alot and make more sense to me instead of having a 1 in 5 chance of something or nothing dropping.

Another idea I had is how about someone we can turn the ornate pieces into and get the kind we want/need. As is I have 2 leather boots, and leather legs that I have no characters or bots that can use. The same could be done for the silk/chain/metal/leather drops turn it in and get something your character can use. I also killed 5 more named tonight and nothing as disturbing as seeing the war spider drop only a needle, but in between I did manage to get the last piece of silk I needed to make an attempt.

Jeido wrote:Yeah..the drops are really bad, but it's for top notch armor.

it's tier 4. meant to be like that. it shouldn't be anything easy tbh. Jeido got the point.

I obtained a few hundred AA there and I still have pieces not made yet. As Jeido and Lillu said, its Tier 4, not supposed to be easy.

Perhaps I posted poorly or maybe I just did not explain it well, let me try again.
Ornate Gauntlet mold = Strange Metal Gloves
MAGIC ITEM LORE ITEM NO TRADE
Slot: HANDS
AC: 60
Effect: Dragon Thunder (Focus)
STR: +15 STA: +20 WIS: +30 INT: +30 AGI: +25
HP: +300 MANA: +300 Endurance: +300
SV FIRE: +15 SV DISEASE: +25 SV COLD: +15 SV MAGIC: +15 SV POISON: +25
Attack: +20
Damage Shield: +3
Dot Shielding: +6%
Regeneration: +3
Accuracy: +15
Haste: 46%
Bard skill: Percussions (+120%)
Required level of 70
WT: 6.5 Size: MEDIUM
Class: BRD SHD PAL CLR WAR
Race: ALL
Slot 1, Type: 8 empty

4x Strange metal not a guaranteed drop from any mob in zone. 2x Strange Fluid not a guaranteed drop from any mob in zone. Ornate Gauntlet mold not a guaranteed drop from any mob in zone. 250+ smithing skill, 250+ brewing skill. 5000pp Metal Stone past 3 raid level mobs (which if you are careful you can get past). Total time to collect 24+hrs maybe more maybe less depends on if a named decides not to just give you a needle or hammer, 1 person gets gloves.


Sturdy Iron Gauntlets
MAGIC ITEM LORE ITEM NO TRADE
Slot: HANDS
AC: 35
STR: +5 DEX: +5 STA: +5 WIS: +5 INT: +5 AGI: +5 CHA: +5
HP: +200 MANA: +200 Endurance: +200
SV FIRE: +5 SV DISEASE: +5 SV COLD: +5 SV MAGIC: +5 SV POISON: +5
WT: 2.5 Size: SMALL
Class: BRD SHD PAL CLR WAR
Race: ALL
Slot 1, Type: 1 empty
Slot 2, Type: 2 empty
Slot 3, Type: 8 empty

400 LDON points

Glowing Prism of Slaughter
AC: 25
Effect: Cleave III (Worn)
STR: +7 DEX: +7 STA: +7 WIS: +7 INT: +7 AGI: +7 CHA: +7
HP: +150 MANA: +150 Endurance: +150
SV FIRE: +5 SV DISEASE: +5 SV COLD: +6 SV MAGIC: +6 SV POISON: +6
Avoidance: +5
Damage Shield: +1
Regeneration: +2
Mana Regeneration: +1
Accuracy: +5
WT: 0 Size: SMALL
Class: ALL
Race: ALL
Augmentation type: 2

100 LDON points

Total Cost 500 LDON Points
Time to collect 30hrs on normal difficulty with guaranteed availability of items and entire group sees rewards. Could be done faster I based mine off 1 hour and 15 minutes per adventure.

It should be mentioned you will also with out a doubt collect a single stat stone for the type 1 slot which can be anything from stats,hp,mana, or ac. The LDON gloves are going to end up being the superior item due to the fact you can upgrade the aug to a 200 350 or 600 point one. The difference in stats versus hp/mana I would consider about an equal item, maybe the strange gloves are a bit better but you have to get them to drop from a named that has it as a 25% chance of a 25% chance.

Ornate armor quest I doubt anyone will subject themselves to the countless hours trying to put a complete set together. Which is a shame because someone took the time to make the quest and it would be a very nice alternative to running countless LDON's.

The rate can seem punishing some times (I swear metal and chain drops less than the others, I do; anyone want 30 silks? ) but I haven't really felt this quest has taken too long at all, overall.

We've almost got one chain user fully equiped and one plate user fully equiped in less than 1 week of spending less than three hours a night there.

I've felt the progression went along at a nice pace, personally; it helped that we already have plenty of smiths in the group (Kael quest) and you only really need one to learn how to brew, which took less than a single night to max out with 3 mastery ranks as well (barely any failures on the fluid).

I don't know, really... besides the fact that it's taking quite a long time to get the last few pieces, for the reward I've felt it's been fine. I expect everything to take a long time from now on and upwards but this was pleasantly painless.

I can't speak for the comparison with Ldon but I refuse to repeatedly grind an instance for the length of time it would take to get a full suit equal to that of the Strange armour; so I think that's a matter of "each to their own".

However, with all that said, one thing about the drop rates in POFire makes little sense to me:

The trash at zone in has the exact same drop rate as the raid trash deeper in the zone and everything in between. Right now, to farm the items required it makes zero sense to go hunting in the first lava citadel because the mobs are tougher, take longer to kill yet still drop the items at the exact same rate.

Could the drop rate for materials and fluids not be upped just a little for the following sets of mobs?

1) Weak trash on left side of 1st field stays the same
2) Stronger trash on right side of 1st field upped by 2%
3) 1st Citadel trash upped by 4%

That's just a rough suggestion. As it stands, the only viable and sensible method is to destroy the left side of the 1st field repeatedly, then move in quickly to kill some named in the citadel before coming back to repeat. This netted us a faster gain than camping inside the citadel (in fact we barely spend any time in there now as we can see it's not as profitable, we just go in to kill the named or PH then gate right back out again).

I don't mind it... but it'd be nice to feel rewarded for spending time in the deeper regions of the map, if only to relieve the tedium of sitting in one spot for too long.

This is really an interesting topic for a full group boxer... with the drop rates in PoFire like this, I'm thinking maybe it might just be a good idea running LDoNs since I accumulate points with all my 5 toons anyway. I'm not a fan of tradeskills, would rather kill mobs instead... even if it's in a rinse-repeat fashion (always liked LDoN back in EQ-Live).

Question now is: (A) guaranteed... but LOTs of LDoN runs VS. (B) tradeskills with luck/bad-luck drop rate in Pofire... hmmm, which is the lesser evil for a boxer?

Ornate, yeah that's always been the cruel joke of armor on the server.

Not worth the 5100p or the materials to craft them.

Its Kael > ToV (425 Hp / Mp) > Sleeper (500 HP / 500 MP) > PoFire Elemental (Powerful) (25 Hp / 25 mp upgrade with class specific focuses but sometimes significant AC loss)

Time spent to farm a full suit of ToV? 3 to 4 East wing clears depending on drop rates, then wait for armor molds in west. Roughly 6 to 8 hours of killing for orbs. Factor in respawn rate: 12 to 16 hours. A week and change to gear up as a 6 boxer in ToV, though you might struggle with Dozekar without assistance or at the very least LTK.

I think its for the most part a set that got completely overlooked and never really should have been implemented. (Ornate).

So once you have Kael armor and are somewhat organized just work towards getting into ToV as that armor holds up well across the board. With so many new boxers on the server that joined very rapidly, taking 3 or 4 people who box and doing raids isn't all that bad even with very odd playtimes.

LDoN will always be the most evil for boxers as most people will find the quickest Normal difficulty task and run it until they need a break.

Smithing Tradeskill isn't bad at all, but tailoring requires a bit more effort at the moment.

I'm of course bias toward the raiding route, but almost all of the content can be accomplished with 3x 3 Boxers or something similar. The way it was explained to me is the initial raid content is tuned to 18 characters with gear under progression content and about 200 AA. Donator weapon's alone give you a huge advantage on DPS, these were never factored into raid balancing as they are optional. You might have to grind more AA and run a zone until every individual character is geared, but its still the quickest route. The non-instanced SSRA to get into ToV is the toughest part. And, of course, the drama-infested Sleeper Key mobs.

Then, when you don't feel like raiding sometimes there's the option of LDoN to stock up on points for that next big upgrade.