Making Rare farming more Accessible

I’m going to be brutally honest I am not a big fan of how Rares work in Dragonflight. I wasn’t a fan of how they worked in Shadowlands as seen by my post here: Shadowlands Rares: Easing the Restrictions

As it is now 10.0 Rares; like 9.0 rares, have a daily loot lock out and an excessively long respawn rate. With dragon riding you added customization options that drop of specific rares. Some are more annoying to get than others. I’ll use one particular customization/rare that is annoying to get as an example below after the point of the thread.

The point I’m trying to make is do rares REALLY need the excessive respawn timers when you can only loot them once a day per character? Many people in this game play to collect and when a rare takes upwards of 2 hours to respawn its upsetting when the item doesn’t drop. Some people will spend their entire day trying to kill one singular rare for a drop they want and not get it. When you put a shiny cosmetic drop behind a rare with an long respawn window it prevents players from participating in other content that they might enjoy doing.

Legion Rares were the pinnacle of how rares should work in this game. Short respawn time with a daily loot lock out. Having a low drop rate, long repawn time, and potential spawn conditions for some rares is asking too much of us.

When we play WoW we want to feel like we’re making progress, not get upset after waiting 2 hours for something and not getting a thing. Having what I call the triple disaster set up (Long respawn rate, spawn conditions and low drop rate) is doing more harm than good for the long term health of the game.

For me if I could kill one particular rare on 5 different characters in the span of an hour I’d feel more accomplished despite not getting that drop because the rare is more accessible and I can just try again tomorrow. You don’t have to change the drop rate on the item just make rares more accessible and easier to farm. (aka lower respawn rate) There is no point to make a rare be on a long respawn rate while also having daily loot lock out. I see zero reason with this.

You’ve changed respawn rates before while the game is live (See breezebiter) Please don’t wait til the expansion is retired to make such a change.

Now for an Example of Frustrating Rares/Items to farm:
The Rare: Shadeslash Trakken This rare is either bugged or its spawn conditions have yet to be made public. This particular rare you have to touch three items in order for it to spawn. The only issue? Sometimes it does not spawn despite all three items being touched. Another annoyance is the items do not always spawn at once and you can be left waiting over an hour until you see one item respawn.

The Customization: Highland Drake: Ears. This customization drops off Shadeslash Trakken and two other rares. These two other rares have certain conditions. Sparkspitter Vrak which is on a rotation of potentially spawning every 2 hours and Tikarr Frostclaw that only spawns in Primalists Future (which everyone leaves after the event is done and the rare has 1 million HP). Cosmetic Drops should not be this annoying to farm.

23 Likes

Time to bring this thread back because it’s still relevant. I shouldn’t have to sit here for going on what looks to be 4 hours for a rare to respawn after someone killed it before I got there.

This is peak stupid design and its frustrating because I could be doing other things but no, you slap customizations, toys, pets, and mounts behind obscenely long respawn rates on rares that you can only loot once a day anyway.

8 Likes

Second this.

My experience farming the outdoor rares for mounts this expansion has been less enjoyable compared to previous expansions. Even Shadowlands requiring certain covenants and other special conditions for some rares (looking at you, Tahonta) didn’t feel bad to farm once it was understood how to get them.

I believe mount-dropping rares should either be:
A) Challenging to find / LONG spawn timers with 100% drop rate: WoD rares / Time-lost proto / Frightened Kodo / Voidtalon / Uldum Camel / Aeonaxx / etc.
or
B) Quick respawn (1 hour or less) but low drop rate 1-2%

These rares that have 2-8 hour respawns AND low droprates or multi-day loot lockouts are just reprehensible. Breezebiter / Karoktra / Soundless / etc.

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Bane of everyone’s existence right here. It’s not even classified as a rare so only 5 people can actively tag it per spawn.

How I’d like to see rares in Dragonflight work:

Keep the drop rates as they are but make them respawn sooner than what they’re at now. 10-30 min respawn time is reasonable if you don’t want to make it truly like Legion rares that respawn after 5 minutes.

You already have them at only lootable once a day per character; why make the customization/collection grind worse?

Do the Dev’s and Blizzard not want people to experience the game? Because as it is right now some people are still parked at certain rares waiting for a toy/mount/pet/customizations to drop.

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Bringing this back because tomorrow is a new patch with new rares and I’m hoping and PRAYING they changed them to spawn more frequently while keeping them at once a day loot lock out.

There is ZERO reason for them to be on 2 hour+ Spawn timers AND have a daily loot lock out.

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You may not think it’s required to be in the game.
I don’t see a reason why it’s such a detriment that it can’t be in the game.

It takes a little more patience. Time. Any person who wants it, will get it. Has got it.

I don’t think you should have 1 or 2 systems in place for every rare item/ mob / event in the game. That’s boring. It has no power progression. It’s not even on the hypothetical heel of “needing” an item in game.

While this may be a small point to the overall conversation. I respect a player that gets something like Breezebiter, immediately. I understand what they went through for that.

I revel in those moments.

Where is the power progression in a cosmetic item? Thats generally what rares are for now a days is a cosmetic loot pinata. If you want “power progression” you aren’t going to be killing rares, you’ll be doing mythic + and raids.

I’d also like to add as an expansion is sunset, the rares become harder to farm because you will likely never find them up/called out because they die in one hit. This is the case for late BFA, Shadowlands, and will be the case for Dragonflight rares because no one will throw up a PF to say they are up much less wait for anyone else to arrive before they kill it.

There is no joy in wasting 2 hours for something to respawn after someone else killed it before you got there. Only frustration that you could be doing something else. And before you come back with “Then why aren’t you doing something else?” Because any collector through and through will not want to miss the next spawn to try to get something they’re after to complete their collection.

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I am not having too much fun farming the ones for the new Druid forms thats for sure. I have limited play time though so I dont know if I am the best sample size. In my windows of play time I am lucky if I find one or two.

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The “rares” in Emerald Dream aren’t even called Rares they’re called “Special Encounters” which throws out peoples argument “Rare means hard to get”. And guess what? NO BODY is calling them out when they’re up, they die faster than you can get to them if they are called out, and they have too stupid long of a respawn rate. Why blizzard? You said you want to respect the players time well this is quite frankly a slap in the face and an insult to our time.

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It has been 3 days. These events or special encounters arent designed to be completed in a week.

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It has been over 2 weeks now and to no ones shock and surprise; Many people still hate these encounters, Especially Druids.

I managed to get all the rare drop druid forms the sunday after patch but only because I was afraid that they might do something horrible to how ED encounters work like they did Z.Caverns shortly after it’s release.

We need to look at the long term picture, aka those who have yet to begin the content, those on haitus during the patch who may not return til next expac, and those who have yet to consider joining WoW. These types of people are going to come in and see how unfun the special encounter system is because they will look up what they drop, see they want something, and have to sit there and alt hop to spawn camp the encounter until they get the item. This could take up their entire day of game time. How is this fun and engaging content?

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I’d like to add a partial quote to someone from the GD that I’m in a discussion with. While some of their sentiment I do not agree with I do however think the idea is good:

This is a decent compromise to the system and something I have already been advocating for in Shadowlands and beyond. If we can’t have change during the expansion at least change it when the expansion is no longer current going forward. (but don’t forget to do this to all past expansions as well!)

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More reasonable feedback from discussions on GD about Rares:

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