8.1 Islands reward system

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/island-rewards-update/36759

Most relevant part here:

So it would seem that we won’t have to hunt for specific mobs on Islands in order to aim for specific battle pet rewards. It will be entirely up to chance what creatures the Island starts with, and your loot will be based off RNG from that list of mobs. No idea what that means if you miss out on an invasion or whatever.

Trying to sort out how I feel about this updated reward system. Will probably need to play through it for a week+ before I can make up my mind.

Here’s hoping the difficulty level of the Island impacting your chance at rewards is actually noticeable in 8.1. Right now they are not, even though harder is supposed to = greater chance.

PS: Would appreciate it if Blizzard “turned on” a murloc IE week starting this Tuesday (tomorrow), as it was kind of Blizzard’s ‘oopsies’ that the Coldlight Surfrunner wasn’t dropping to begin with… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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I think it’s a double-edged sword. Now you won’t be penalized for playing with randoms who only want to kill crocodiles, vultures, enemy faction, and azerite elementals while vacuuming up every sliver of azerite, but at the same time it completely removes player control over rewards.

On the pre-update system there is at least that thrill of anticipation when an invasion of elementals matching the one pet type you’re missing hits or when you discover that small patch of murlocs; is this the game where I finally earn X reward for slaughtering X mob?

Once the patch hits, there will be no difference between killing any given mob on an island beyond the shape of the bad you need to move out of. It just adds another layer of RNG.

I’m not sure that I like this, but I’ve also assumed the watch-and-see stance.

I found that the “Thrill.” died in a fire for me around the 2000 island completion.

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This doesn’t seem like a fix or an improvement to me. Now the least fun way to do island expeditions has been reaffirmed.

Instead of having a feeling of searching and exploring everyone will simply spam the island and AoE down all the trash before invasions come up.

This still wont fix the issue that when people kill all the extra stuff invasions don’t spawn before the end of the island. So maybe more efficient as in getting another roll of the dice but maybe less so because the invasion mobs won’t be on the loot table.

I just don’t understand why they chose to make it an AoE fest. We already have M+ for that. Why not just make the special mobs the focus and remove a lot of the trash?

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I’ll take RNG rewards over the no rewards current system. Well over one thousand islands in, and only half the pets, no mounts, a couple handfuls of rep turn ins which have been useless for me for quite a while, and most transmogs I see in AH I haven’t seen in my bags. Sitting on over 800 dubloons waiting for a vendor. I’ve probably spent around 300 on island buffs only to have most of them clogging my bags until I made a point of going out of my way to use them.

Targeting mobs and bosses doesn’t seem to make any difference at all. For a couple weeks it did, but that was clearly nerfed a few months ago. Almost every time I have gotten a pet drop, the type has been baffling as to why that pet. I have a bag full of duplicates nobody seems to want as well.

I’m with you but I don’t think removing player agency and making the approved way to play be AoE all the crocolisks as fast as you can will actually fix anything for our chances.

All they talked about was making it easier to spam them quicker. How does that help people trying to farm the cosmetics? From what I can tell the drop rate will still be horrible and without a way to directly effect your chances.

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I don’t think that they are going to go that generic, at least I hope not. I’m expecting more along the lines of, you kill murlocs to gain a chance at murloc loot rather than you must kill this specific murloc, who only spawns one in ten times when the conditions are right (which are one in seven or so, as well as having the proper island up and the moon and stars are perfectly aligned.). I believe I read somewhere that there’s going to be more than just crocolisks to aoe, lol, if not they better add a crock mount.

If what I believe is coming actually is what’s coming then loot will be more targetable than it is now. If it isn’t what I think, then RNGesus help us all.

I looked up some PTR video from preach and the way he explains it seems pretty good actually.

Video is called 8.1 new islands - much improved

I tend to avoid anything that I can regarding ptr. I like to be surprised when new content comes out. I have gotten far too many spoilers, as it is, just from GD. I know they want islands to succeed, so I don’t see them shooting themselves in the other foot on this one. I’m a pet collector, and battler, and let’s face it, I’m there for the pets. Not the mounts, not the mogs, and certainly not the Azerite. I’m just hoping to not come up empty handed 25 times in a row again, and when I get dubloons to not say ho hum and then chuck em on the pile.

I run them for mogs and pets. I think I have half the pets so far. Somehow I have never gotten the elemental ones barring 3 laughing stonekin

Think I have three of the elements, three different ones that is. I have three air ones alone. I’ve had five Capt nibbs.

I use the word thrill as a relative term here. Frankly, I’m very disappointed that they afforded Island Expeditions any more attention at all. I think they should’ve just added the dubloon rewards for players to cash in on their hundreds of runs, made all the pets tradeable, and chalked it up as a failed experiment to go focus on other content.

I would’ve loved to see a Pandaria Raiding With Leashes more than extra pets being crammed into IE even if it meant getting less pets overall.

I think most of the expanded works we’ll see in 8.1, for islands especially, was already in the works. I see the expeditions as the least of BFA’s failures when it comes to new features. With the right attention, and tweaks they could be immensely better, more varied, and enjoyable. I’d much rather see effort to improve the islands than see effort into improving that which can’t really be fixed, such as azerite armor. Frankly, I’d like to see development into a whole lot of things that make the game a richer, more varied place. I think that the islands add to that richness. I also think azerite armor could have been something good to add to the game as another way to customize, but not at the expense of other core features of previous expansions.

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Side note: If you didn’t farm as much as you could last week for the Coldlight Surfrunner, you’re SOL.

No naga or murlocs as main mobs this week (naga was last week), and Patch 8.1 will be out next week, removing nearly all player agency from the loot system.

What you see on each island is what you will have a chance to get. Unless there are some hidden vendor mechanics, targeting specific cosmetic rewards won’t really be a thing anymore.

The more I think about this updated reward system, the less I’m looking forward to trying it out.

It’s ok, at least the islands themselves should improve significantly from what I’ve seen

We still don’t really know how the loot pools work, what determines how many rewards you get from islands. My luckiest one so far I got like 5 drops at once. Are you less likely to get a 2nd item after you get a first? The new system doesn’t allow specific targeting of mobs you want to kill for their rewards. Somehow, I always end up with the deer pet if I even kill a single deer on an island; in the new system I will just constantly get it for there being deer there. So there are definitely problems with the new system, especially if you have been grinding hundreds or thousands of islands already.

I been saving mine up for when the paragon system makes a return (next week?). 250-500 rep is not much rep in total in the overall scheme of things, but still… every li’l bit helps.

Wouldn’t have mattered. I never saw any murlocs on the Naga island.

If anything, farming this week is better, because Naga invasions can’t happen on the Naga island, and Naga invasions always contain 4-6 Murloc slaves.

That said, the new loot system might actually increase the amount of Surfrunners on the AH, as now any time a naga invasion spawns in Heroic/Mythic/PvP, everyone participating has a chance at a Surfrunner, even if they dont have time to kill the Murlocs that spawn.

I’m not sure this update will help the drop rates for those of us that were already targetting rares and themed chests, but there probably will be a lot more pets on the AH from people just getting the weekly cap or leveling alts.

Yeah, then we will just have to look at our gold and decide that it would still be better to farm it because the economy is tanking due to lack of raw gold generation this expansion.

Crafters are sunk this expansion.
They took our jobs! (Or rather under developed them) Where does my tax (subscription) go! Where are the job (profession) creators at blizzard!

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