Holey rusted metal batman.

[uncus]

Pandorae - LOL
next post will have to state how much better WoW and EQ2 will be....

Seedyman - Please ellaborate on post #8...
One concern I have is that post-patch harvesting will not be as effective as pre-patch, because many more bricks will be needed [harmful 10, 25, 50 ,100 = 4 vs 10,20,...= 10!] <will those 10 "cost" the same as the previous 4?>

Also OT but maybe someone can answer - How does one get on the Test server? I pre-ordered but do no see it as an option?

[seedyman]

Pandorae - LOL
next post will have to state how much better WoW and EQ2 will be....

Seedyman - Please ellaborate on post #8...
One concern I have is that post-patch harvesting will not be as effective as pre-patch, because many more bricks will be needed [harmful 10, 25, 50 ,100 = 4 vs 10,20,...= 10!] <will those 10 "cost" the same as the previous 4?>

Also OT but maybe someone can answer - How does one get on the Test server? I pre-ordered but do no see it as an option?

If you pre-ordered you can download a test server client (i.e. a whole new install) and play using it, I don't recall the specifics, but there's a thread around on it.

The different skill for harvesting are less expensive in SP, supposedly balanced, but the action cost for them has gone up significantly.
Today they copied people live chars over to the ATS (or last night) and I played with my live chars (Write down your stats people!) I found my 72nd lvl harvester could only get a q50 mat about 25% of the time. That's one mat! The explosions from q50 pulls are in the 350 HP range, and the gas is ~65 a tick.
You automatically stand on top of the mat while harvvesting, so you WILL get gassed.
You cannot change the souce mode, that I have found.
Sometimes it just changes by it slef though.

Bleh.

[uncus]

The different skill for harvesting are less expensive in SP, supposedly balanced, but the action cost for them has gone up significantly.
Today they copied people live chars over to the ATS (or last night) and I played with my live chars (Write down your stats people!) I found my 72nd lvl harvester could only get a q50 mat about 25% of the time. That's one mat! The explosions from q50 pulls are in the 350 HP range, and the gas is ~65 a tick.
You automatically stand on top of the mat while harvvesting, so you WILL get gassed.
You cannot change the souce mode, that I have found.
Sometimes it just changes by it slef though.

Bleh.

So essentially, they have decided that harvesting is too easy and are nerfing it? I'm only L71 and generally only pull 1 mat at a time anyway [trying to keep source alive], but to now go to 1 mat every 4 attempts!! That's ridiculous! Next patch will probably have mat sellers with mats to 100 or 150 to keep crafting by more than highest level person in each region viable...

[aelvana]

They pretty badly mangled harvesting by now.
example:
Harvest credits have a progression of
7, 10, 13, 24, 64, 82 for the first six

gentle extraction q50 costs 20
harsh extraction q50 costs 16

with 2 points each for the first aggressive rate and time you can't add anything else, unless you go with 64 point harvest action.

Doesn't this also, consequently, produce other numeric ranges that work to people's benefit?

[tetra]

Doesn't this also, consequently, produce other numeric ranges that work to people's benefit?

The only real time that it works to your "advantage" is when you are forced to move into the next credit brick. At that time, you can pile any addon bricks like the landscape specs or mat specs... but at the same time, you can't actually really afford to be using the huge credit brick yet and wind up burning a ton of focus. It wasn't until 100+ that I could come close to even filling the 64 credit brick and I have maxed focus and focus regen. To use the 128 focus credit and be able to afford it, I'm going to need another hundred++ levels.

[seedyman]

So essentially, they have decided that harvesting is too easy and are nerfing it? I'm only L71 and generally only pull 1 mat at a time anyway [trying to keep source alive], but to now go to 1 mat every 4 attempts!! That's ridiculous! Next patch will probably have mat sellers with mats to 100 or 150 to keep crafting by more than highest level person in each region viable...

Oh I can usually get one mat, just at q30-q40 using a q50 extraction stanza. If I don't die. (630 HP is what I'm at btw)

[thanakar]

If you pre-ordered you can download a test server client (i.e. a whole new install) and play using it, I don't recall the specifics, but there's a thread around on it.

The different skill for harvesting are less expensive in SP, supposedly balanced, but the action cost for them has gone up significantly.
Today they copied people live chars over to the ATS (or last night) and I played with my live chars (Write down your stats people!) I found my 72nd lvl harvester could only get a q50 mat about 25% of the time. That's one mat! The explosions from q50 pulls are in the 350 HP range, and the gas is ~65 a tick.
You automatically stand on top of the mat while harvvesting, so you WILL get gassed.
You cannot change the souce mode, that I have found.
Sometimes it just changes by it slef though.

Bleh.

Oi vey..just spend 30 minutes on the test server trying various plans and it is plain that leveling harvesting is going to be three times as hard now instead of just twice as hard.

I went down to upper bog to test my extraction plans. First with the new extraction stanzas the maximum q I have access to for harmful is q180, whereas before the patch I had access to q200 extraction.

The prospecting plan I used includes terrain specialization.

First thing I tried was Aggressive Rate 3, Aggressive speed 2 Harmful quality 180 + Mat spec. Using this plan requires a -82 counterpart with is 75 focus per tick. Prepatch I was able to use a 436 plan requiring onl 50 focus. I alternated between extracting and caring (source time 5) and the end result was 3x q174 for 1203 exp, while burning up over 1200 focus in the process.

I then tried an aggressive 1,1/180 plan with both mat spec and terrain spec
and was rewarded 3x q152 for 657 exp. An aggressive 11/180 plan without terrain and mat spec yielded 2x169 for 939 exp.

The best results I had were with an aggressive 55/180 plan. This plan has a costr of 114 and the nearest counterpart is 145 so I added both terrain and mat spec. This plan yielded 6xq180 for 1654 exp and used all 1850 of my focus since I was alternating between extracting and caring.

One thing I noticed is that even when using terrain prospecting, mat extraction spec and terrain extraction spec, when using aggressive plans I had failures which degraded the quality of the mat during every extraction.

[eschiava]

just playing in ATS ...Eeek. Monsters are bigger and tougher (except sucky yubos)

don't get complacent about knowing what you can kill, you won't be able to kill the same name of critter as before.

Sorry about this on-topic response *grins impishly* but nobody ever mentioned that the change in creature toughness was actually part of the story. Not saying whether the change is a good or bad thing, but it seems like this change was planned, not just a re-balancing or whatever.

Miy's player