Since the “hotfix” to make rares the “Non-focus” of the caverns, the supposed drop rate increase does not seem to have been applied. At all.
Let’s take for an example the rare Karokta. The mount it drops (Cobalt Shalewing) remains at an abysmal .08% drop rate. This is the lowest drop rate of any mount from a rare within the games history. This is like Pre-Boost Pandaria World boss mount drop rates from a rare that is not easily farmable. Shadowlands rares dropped mounts at a 2% drop rate per kill.
Why is the Cobalt Shalewing so low? You have multiple threads in general discussion complaining about this specific rare as well as the drop rates of things like drake customs and toys that dont seem to have changed even with the hotfix that made Zaralek Caverns a literal ghost town.
We also were never told what the primary focus of Zaralek Caverns is if it’s not to kill rares. So what IS the primary focus of the new zone? And why does it feel like the drop rates were not increased at all?
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Not only that, they said that the loot dropped by all of the rares would be increased to compensate for the decision to limit how many times you could loot them. But from what I can see, loot is exactly the same. One drake crest fragment, maybe a little gold. . … very rarely something else like a drake manuscript or toy. Pretty much exactly the way it’s been the whole time. Why? Whelpling and drake crests are the bottom tier and whelpling crests are quickly useless . .I have 33 in my bags, nothing to use them on and can’t send them to alts.
I totally agree the drop rate on the mount from Karokta is just depressing.
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I also don’t understand; if Rares were not the primary focus of the Caverns, then why put all those things on them in the first place? Why do we even have rares down there if they aren’t meant to be farmed?
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Well I guess they are the secondary focus. . .loam niffen reputation I guess is meant to be first… . but why have all those rares otherwise? It’s just like forbidden reach, had to farm the rares endlessly for keys (which I really didn’t like at all, and now I doubt it’s very easy to farm keys), and in ZC it’s the drake fragements on the rares, you had to kill 15 to get one crest, prior to the hotfix to change it. It’s mind numbing, but they still wanted to slow people down, which I don’t understand the only other loot was greens and an occasional blue or a toy/pet/cosmetic. Drake fragments only go up to 424ilvl. . . .which is just average. Whelpling fragments are even lower.
Now it’s hard to get them done since it’s mostly a ghost town most of the week. I was in there yesterday and nearly all the mobs were up, no one really killing them.
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If that’s supposed to be the primary focus then they did a poor job at making it known with rep not dropping from rares; Zaqali Elders World Boss doesnt even give ANY rep unless the reward for completing the World Quest is a measly 100 rep token. If it’s not you get zero rep for doing them compared to last expacs bosses giving rep on kill, even though the World Quest itself is tied to Loam Niffen reputation.
I knew this was going to be an issue the moment I saw the Hotfix post go live as I was lying in bed reading up on hotfixes. The General forums is just rife with post after post about this hotfix.
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I had not seen this hotfix note until just now, and it totally explains why when I logged in this weekend the Caverns seemed like a ghost town with every single rare up on my map.
Why is this zone receiving a different treatment than, oh I dunno, all the other zones that have rares within them? If you’re going to crowd up my map, and have them displaying, then I should be able to farm them constantly.
This expansion is trading one ghost town for the next ghost town. You currently cant complete some of the dragon isles “group events” because nobody wants to do those either. Yet these events have not been adjusted to not be group events.
If you’re going to do this ghost town trade off mechanism thing, than the “town” we are departing should be adjusted to be able to be done by the solo player.
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I totally agree. The loam rep earned is abysmal. Mostly from meager tokens for 100 from the events, none from the bosses at all usually or the world quests. The digs provide some, but they are limited.
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Hard agree with the confusion of the primary focus. Seems the only time players are greatly present is weekly reset for “Researchers Under Fire” to knock out the weekly Loamm 1500 rep quest.
Slightly more transparency here or confirmation things have had drop rates increased as compensation would be nice. Currently have a fellow collector guildie doing Karokta on 15 alts bi-weekly(daily since zone released) and hasn’t seen the mount yet. I myself try to get 7-8 characters through Karokta and 2-3 through each rare bi-weekly for toys/tmog/manuscripts and still missing a very large number. And now the zone is pretty empty making it hard to solo on my not 440+ characters.
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I know a lot of people are just now starting to get to the caverns and have no idea how it was before. Well let me say that the drop rate “increase” doesn’t feel like it happened at all and rares are now 50 times worse to get groups for. Before the hotfix you’d have at least 30+ people on med-high pop realms at rares, every day. Now you’re lucky if you get 10.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this hotfix damaged the collecting community.
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Just wanted to let everyone know that the Cobalt Shalewing’s drop rate has been hotfixed and has been brought in line with other similar drops.
Thanks to everyone for pointing this out!
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Thanks for listening!
You feel inner enlightenment as the words “Playable Ogres” drift through the wisps of your mind.
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While we have you, (unless you’ve already dipped) Could we get clarification on what the true purpose of the Caverns is if it wasn’t to farm rares?
Could we also get an idea on how much of an increase % wise that other drops aside from the example I used got boosted? Toys and Drakewatch scripts still seem to have been left out of the boost increase.
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