So far, best place I’ve found to get scrap is in the Disturbed Earth. It’s the rocks that are highlighted purple like a treasure. They’re somewhat easy to spot when gliding around. And they seem to respawn after some time, though I don’t know what.
It does feel like they should drop from mobs at some point, but haven’t found any yet; though they only drop if you have engineering - and I only started playing with it recently.
It is ludicrous we even have to discuss that in order to level a profession.
Please keep in mind that the professions are nowhere near ready.
We are missing Aqirite in the open world. There are no EZ-Mine nodes. My warband bank is duplicating items. All concentration computations are incorrect for crafts whose max rank is Rank 3. Ingenuity buffs are NYI. Mining overloads aren’t working. My warband bank is glitching by swapping tab 3 and 4. Values (that the OP probably tested with) are just placeholders. They are adding and removing items with every build. They don’t have the pvp items ready for crafting. Crafting orders don’t work. Crafting orders when they glitch are giving skill ups when the craft can’t be completed. Tailoring has no starting items on eleven server since Tuesday. Tailoring has no reasonable source for weaver cloth. Enchanting has no reasonable source for dust. Etc. etc.
This is beta so please expect things to be quite broken…
The changes so far have been great. Sounds like all they need now are dummy prototypes which can’t be learned but can be scrapped into notes. That way even if learn all real prototypes you still have a source for notes.
That is true. However, most of the issues people are raising with engineering are design choices, not something that can be attributed to bugs.
Even if they fix the bugs (the minimum expected) and make scrap exceedingly plentiful, it wont address the core issue of RNG stacking on top of RNG being the way you learn most of the schematics.
The core philosophy needs changed if we are to have any hope of engineering being competitive and not exceedingly frustrating.
A mechanism to find missing recipes is common to alchemy and engineering. it is luck the order in which you find them. In alchemy its a 2 day cooldown. In engineering its a scheme designed to cause repetitive strain from clicking. I prefer the alchemy method.
To get the epic gem recipes for JC it’s world drops from a particular area. I loathe that method most of all - can see they’ll be on ah for 1.000,000 gold depending on the drop rate.
I understand why they might want to gate recipes and give a random order of discovery. But it should be i) not time intensive and ii) not have lots of built in failures.
There are a couple key differences that make the engineering design even worse, even if we assume Scrap will get buffed to be as reliably available as herbs.
The biggest: Alchemy is not stacking RNG on top of itself several times over. Engineering you have RNG determining if you even get Disassemble Invention. Then you have RNG on IF you get prototype. Then you have RNG on which one. Then you have RNG using the Prototype to determine if it works and you learn it. If you scrap the prototype it is RNG how many notes you get. Then when you use the notes it is RNG which schematic you can learn.
Second, Alchemy gets useful items basically immediately from the trainer. Even if you don’t get lucky for the best recipes right away you can be making useful items right off the bat. Where even the engineering parts are locked behind RNG.
And that is before you even consider that experimenting with concoctions is thematically fitting for Alchemy. I would argue it is not for engineering.
Apologies Meringue, I should have quoted the other fellow to clarify what I was addressing. I was only referring to the previous post about finding scrap and that is all. I was making no comment about the “core philosophy”.
I was trying to encourage this person not to assume that there are no reasonable sources for scrap since many other professions are also missing their resource gathering methods and there are many systems not yet working correctly.
Sorry for the confusion.
Fair.
And I might have assumed a little. Lots of people play this ‘just wait, it isn’t done’ thing during betas as a way of dismissing complaints. And I may have read a little of that into your post. So, my apologies. With only typed messages, it is easy to misunderstand.
Based on what we have seen. I think Blizzard’s intent is for scrap to be farmed from mobs and treasures. Which, I feel is poorly thought out. But quantity certainly needs to be significantly more than what is there.
My feedback for Blizzard on scrap is: If they are not willing to redesign the insanely bad system, then scrap needs to be at least as plentiful as cloth, probably more so. Because most of it is going to be wasted on the RNG.
I think this is where the pilfer ability comes in. Being able to get scrap from previous expac engineering items is huge, especially if your toon has half a bank full of old stuff because… why wouldn’t you! And if you know this prior to it won’t be hard to just use all the DF base mats on random eng mats before the expac ends to have a large stock of things to pilfer. The only problem there is the “Pilfer All” button doesn’t work, clicking “Pilfer” 2k times is not ideal.
That is likely going to be the best strategy. I am actually planning on spending several days stockpiling DF mats for just that reason.
But that is a VERY bad design. The best strategy for leveling a profession should not be ‘farm the heck out of a previous expac resources.’ Depending on how prevalent scrap is, it is possible that going back to DF zones and farming mats might be the best way to farm scrap even well into War Within. I certainly hope that it isn’t. But, that could be were we end up.
Having a use for old expac mats and parts is a good idea. But it shouldn’t be how you progress the new expac profession.
This is also a key part to remember. Not everyone is on the forums or beta to see this is a thing. Most players wont actually know about it.
For sure. It should be a bonus, not the REQUIRED way to do it. You could also stockpile and AH the old mats, and I’m sure you’d make a killing at the start of the expac. I do hope they fix the RNG stack they have going on. Its about 5 layers too deep to make this profession worthwhile on top of all the other issues.
Agree. Personally, I don’t think it should be even a part of progression. It should be things like turning DF screws into War Within screws, etc. Or just using as a replacement for ore or other parts, etc.
Fully in agreement.
I personally think they need to allow you to pick the schematic you want to work towards. And each time you progress it the RNG component is how much it progresses. That should be the only RNG part.
Make it so the player knows what they are working for. The more powerful schematics can take more combines to get, but you know you will get the one you are after. Imagine if you know you can get X recipe in 10 combines and if you get lucky on combines it will only take 6-7. If you get lucky on a combine it would feel good. If not, that is okay since you made some progress towards what you are after.
Are you talking similar to an archeology progression except you get to pick from say 3-4 prototypes, then “Invent” it using x number of notes? I think that would really fit the profession.
I was thinking more on something like:
For all recipes not learned from the skill tree directly:
When you click on them in the Unlearned section of your professions you have an Iterate option, costing scrap. Simple recipes, like screws might only take 2 points of iterate. Others might take 10 to 20. Or big ones might take more. When you iterate on the recipe you are trying you get 1 point of iteration plus a chance to for 1-2 extra points from being inspired. When you fill up the iteration on a recipe you learn it.
Then you can do things to add depth and variation.
Etc, etc.
That would allow players to choose if they want to beeline for a specific recipe. Or mix it up to get all the recipes overall faster. Giving players choice.
It would also allow balancing out of the recipe cost. More valuable recipes take more time. It wouldn’t all be entirely random where one player can get the most valuable recipe first and another will get it last.
And more, it would feel like actual engineering. Where you progress towards something with time and iteration. The random throw things together to see what happens feels MUCH more in line with Alchemy than engineering.
Hey everyone, just gonna put in an update since there was a new build that brought massive changes to engineering. From what I have seen, we have been heard and most of the issues have been fixed with engineering. I will go off a list based on what was originally posted and say how it was fixed.
What used to feel off about engineering?
• Time Consumption : The amount of time needed to invest in this profession has been cut dramatically. Issue points like having to scour one at a time have been fixed with new items if you have a unique prototype in your bags already. Scrap comes fast from pilfer which has also been removed from specializations and made baseline which helps speed it up even further.
• All Recipes learned through Notes : The specialization bonuses were put baseline into the notes as well as cutting down the amount of notes needed to learn new recipes. This is a wonderful change and speeds up learning new recipes by a fair margin.
• Invent : Cut from a 3-day cd to a normal 1-day cd. It no longer provides nothing if you already have a unique prototype in bags. The scrap cost was also cut down from 75 to 25 which is incredibly fair and now a more reasonable cost.
What were the current problems associated with the profession?
• Limit 1 Prototype: As mentioned above in the first bullet point. You can now let scour through scrap just continue passively and not face any real penalty. Of course, if you still want to learn the unique prototypes, you will want to use them up so you don’t get spammed with generic prototypes when you overcap. But that is a minor fault and a good fix to the original problems.
• Pilfer through parts: Now learned baseline through the first invent cast. Instead of being a blocker in advancing the profession. Now it acts how it should feel and as an example. Pilfer used on 5 chaos circuits gives on average 6-7 scrap per craft.
• Learning Prototypes : Can no longer run out of prototypes, the way to brick the profession and inability to use invent no longer apply.
• Inventing Specialization : Changes to this specialization now just make engineering feel better. It’s no longer mandatory but will make the entire profession easier in the long term to unlock eventually. You will get more scrap from all sources, the mount, toys, and cogwheels are located here but no longer is it tied to the key functions of the profession.
• Time: As talked about above, the time required to invest in this profession has more than halved. The changes from this build have greatly improved the feel of the profession.
Thank you to everyone who helped provide feedback to make the issues noticed and thank you to the developers who listened and implemented quality changes that dramatically improved the quality of life with engineering. Have a great day everyone!
The addition of pilfer through parts is a huge improvement BUT does come with two clear challenges at present in that the mass pilfer option does not work (to get enough scrap to push engineering up into to 30s you would need to pilfer a minimum of 200 times and likely more) and engineers who have not been on the beta wont realise that they need to stockpile thousands of parts from previous expansions (optimally im guessing serevite bolts given how cheap the DF mats are at present) to be ready to go when TWW launches.
So I decided to see how engineering works now.
I went onto the level 80 server and it works much better than it did - all mats supplied.
So I decided to go on the levelling server and see how it felt to level. As you recommended I copied a toon that had stacks of serevite bolts. The immediate problem is the first 5 levels requires you to scour through the scrap which means you need 25 piles of rusted scrap. Besides some very limited supply on the engineering supply vendor I assumed you had to go out into the world to get it to drop. Wowhead showed it dropping off kobolds. I killed a heap and got no drops.
If you do get to level 5 on the level 80 server and start pilfering you get as much scrap as you need - the piles of rusted scrap are supplied. But on the levelling server getting to level 5 seems impossible.
Why are the toys from “Scour Through Scrap” the same as Dragonflight? That’s just so lazy.
The info text changed when Pilfer moved from a talent to baseline. This might mean this functionality will be removed, as it no longer mentions “ages past.”
If not and it stays how it is, people will know because this type of information is quickly disseminated through WoWHead guides and youtube videos.