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Ekcin

Improve (and remove probable stealth nerf) on Valrei item missions

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When Valrei item missions changed, it was a sensible patch. It sadly removed the convenient opportunity to sac just any Valrei item from any previous source, but that was tolerable.

 

But since a few months, Valrei item missions appear badly nerfed. Retrograde had once told that on RNG average, an item could be found after 45 fragments or 120 times digging. That was a reproducible result for long time. Sometimes, the item appeared after a few fragments, mostly between 50 and under hundred.

 

Lately most times here no item is found below 100 frags, 200 not unusual, often search must be aborted due to mission termination or just bedtime. It is an intransparent and incomprehensible change. And it is highly frustrating. I can say that I lost any fun of archaeology due to these unnerving searches.

 

Generally, search is done under stress, Anytime the mission may terminate, and any item found in the wild after that is wasted other than for rarity window. A good idea would be when the item names would be significant, e.g. a "shadow corpse" or "holy strand" etc. from previous finds to be used in one of the next missions too. If necessary, the amount of findable items in the wild may be reduced for. Alternatively, only undamaged Valrei items (of the same name) would be valid for missions so that those found later in the wild could be used for rarity bonus only.

 

Additionally, there should be transparency about the average number of searches or digs needed to find an item. Stealth nerfs are a bad move if there was one.

Edited by Ekcin

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Haven't tested this myself, but my personal approach to these kinds of missions on freedom is to grab a boat and just sail. Within 15 minutes I usually find about 5 items. Using a spyglass is most helpful since you can spot them from a distance, especially at night. It's kinda weird now that I think about it, just how many of them spawn in the ocean. But from a recent trip when we had a "sac 49 items mission" I can honestly say that doing a round trip around Deliverance, I found 35 of those items. So the number of them spawning on the oceans is quite high and usually no one picks them up. 

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Update, just tested it on Deli for a mission with 36 items to sac. I used investigate with a rare trowel (hoping for a better % chance ? ) and took roughly 150 actions to find one item. The price is kind of steep for a missions that requires so many items to find. 

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Update: I had 2 missions in sequence now where I found an item after 37 and 12 fragments. So I cannot rule out that RNG screwed me the five to eight times before, and the ratio was not nerfed. As to sailing out, items in our lake are fairly rare, and it is about 1700 tiles just to reach the ocean.

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Make sure you're searching off your deed and on an old deed. 

 

 

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I know, Retrograde (you remember? 😎) told that from the beginning.

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12 hours ago, elentari said:

Haven't tested this myself, but my personal approach to these kinds of missions on freedom is to grab a boat and just sail. Within 15 minutes I usually find about 5 items. Using a spyglass is most helpful since you can spot them from a distance, especially at night. It's kinda weird now that I think about it, just how many of them spawn in the ocean. But from a recent trip when we had a "sac 49 items mission" I can honestly say that doing a round trip around Deliverance, I found 35 of those items. So the number of them spawning on the oceans is quite high and usually no one picks them up. 

I haven't done it for a while, but a sail around the roughly eastern part of Release would turn up 10-15 in the water.  I don't do missions, so was mainly collecting them to pass on to those who wanted them, but the last couple of times I couldn't find anyone who wanted them so they were just funny looking nightlights for a while and I stopped bothering to pick them up.

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