Medium sized hides are uncommon

[bilbous]

It seems to me that medium sized hides are excessively uncommon with the greatest quantity coming from riverlings. Some people could have moral qualms about hunting sub-humans. Trepor warriors and queens most common drop is nothing and training in the tefusang(ling) room of the arena will get you vastly more tefusang hides than tefusangling hides.

Is this just my bad luck or is it possible my impression is accurate?

[Bonifarzia]

I have the feeling that hides from medium sized creatures are not quite an uncommon thing to obtain.

[LigH]

For beginners, Tefusang(ling)s may be way too hard to survive, because they are often quite well armored already. To be true, I have no character who is able to kill an adult Tefusang, after playing more than 6 years now. It was never necessary to level that much, now it is.

For the more experienced players, Tefusang(ling)s may have had too little value, so they already went for other opponents like Maulberlords. Who knows. Ask the "hunters" out there. The best reason was probably getting lard for baking...

But now that leatherworking becomes famous, I could well imagine that hunters of guilds may start on Tefusangs again. It may just take a little more patience...

[Cello]

Bilbous doesn't seem to be the new one ..old Kra knows almost everything ..; but he's right, riverlings nor velnishi don't drop the hides too often (;-))

[bilbous]

I fought a bunch of trepor warriors and queens 25 or so in total on my way back from Ojaveda last night and only looted one thing and it wasn't a hide. I later spent an hour or so in the tefusang pit and despite fighting the tefusanglings twice as much as the tefusangs looted three times as many tefusang hides as I did tefusangling's. Total number of hides was a little over 10.
More often than not a velnishi will drop something other than a hide, when it drops anything at all.
The riverlings drop rates seem to be fine as is, I get that you don't want to flood the hide market.

One thing I do not know is what effect npcclient fluctuations have on the drop rates. I would expect them to be unrelated but I just do not know. A lot of the instances I have related have occurred during periods when the critters would not move or fight back and that is the reason I have mentioned it.

The reason this apparent lack of medium hides concerns me is because training with small hides gets progressively more irritating as you transition between small and large  hide capabilities. I see no dearth of small hides to train on and I see no lack of large hides to train on it is only the middle ground that is problematic. Added to this is the current small amount of workspace. If every one has to work small hides until they are able to work the large ones then there will not be enough space for everyone.

Another factor that should be taken into consideration is that a new supply of hides is always needed because unlike metal work you cannot reclaim your raw material once it has been used. I can make as many strings I want from hides but I can never make a patch from strings. Thus once I start cutting my options are reduced.

I have been considering this subject for some days and it is not just whim. I really consider this a problem.

[Gilrond]

In general I think getting hides should have different rules comparing to other loot. All creatures with hides have hides, unlike some rogues who might have some random loot or not. RP wise, it's the question of the skill of removing the hide. I don't propose to introduce yet another skill (like skinning or something), but success of getting the hide can depend on leatherworking skill. The higher is the skill, the better are your chances of looting the hide (or RP wise, removing it undamaged). Current loot rates for hides don't reflect anything really, and are just random, with better chances for some creatures (rats), and much worse chances for others.

[bilbous]

5 hours hunting riverlings - 1 hour dicking around and travel = 16 hides = 15 minutes leatherworking. I could have spent more time with the leather but I chose to make the most difficult item in my armour book, leather arms pieces. Hard to say what would have given me optimal practice, making gloves or boots would have definitely taken more steps and probably given more practice. Converting all the hides to strings might have taken the most steps but wouldn't have done anything for the armour skill.

I suppose what I should really do is start from scratch with an new character but I know that a new character would be schlepping rat fur interminably due to the inability to hunt these larger creatures. In a sense my whole issue here is invalid because I started with 11 leather skill and would not be at 28 now if I was not an advanced character. Leather working has increased much faster than the armour skill, partially because I initially just made string. I have done some helmet work in the past few days but not enough to be significant.

I think it might be helpful if others would describe their experiences. I still feel that the trepor warriors reward particularly poorly, nearly every other creature I have hunted gave something more often than this creature. I do not know why it is particularly bad, maybe some problem with its loot table or some item on it. As I said it could just be bad luck on my part.

[novacadian]

Someone just bought about 80 tefusang hides from me tonight for about 500 tria per hide. Tefus drop hides for me all the time.

For the love of the gods don't start messing with them, too, now that trained hunters finally have a pay day.   

- Nova

[bilbous]

Tefusang hides are large hides not medium. I'm not complaining about them.

[Baruden Etawack]

i have more or less given up trying to get med hide none of the mosters that ment to drop them give very little for the time you spend hunting them.i have been useing rat hides to i can get to a point that i can work with large hide that seem to drop a lot more which can be cut to med size.

[Gilrond]

This issue simply wasn't addressed earlier, because leatherworking didn't exist until now.

[bilbous]

I think the optics of the situations is 'Look at all these critters that provide medium hides, that ought to be plenty' without actually looking at drop rates. Since the last loot refactor some of these these creatures have some of the scarcest drop rates of any critters I have seen.

From a players point of view, Gilrond, I think you are exactly right. Nobody complained about missing item drops of things they did not need, we, as a class just didn't really notice. If this critter stopped dropping enough 'money' we just moved on to a different creature that did, forgetting to report the discrepancy.

Nobody thinks the development team is deliberately trying to pooch the drop tables. We just think we are pointing out something that has been heretofore overlooked. It is entirely likely to happen again and again as new skills such as alchemy and herbalism get developed and loot requires change.

Nobody really cares now if they get a sand arangma quartz or a tloke queen jewel because they are currently useless except for sale to a merchant. Once they are used for crafting expect people to care how they drop. This is just an example but if these items become very common crafting raw materials you can expect people to want them to drop more freely. If they are only used sparingly current rates will suffice.

It is all about supply and demand.

[Gilrond]

I don't think I ever got a sand arangma quartz On the other hand I didn't hunt them in hundreds either. As I said before, I think animal parts should have different loot rules, in comparison to other types. Because they normally should always be there, and it's a question of whether you can remove them or not.

[LigH]

Different tribes (or let's say, groups, as long as tribes are not really active) of NPCs in different areas can have different looting probabilities, just as mines of the same material in different areas can have a different richness.

[Gilrond]

I'm not sure exactly how looting probability works, but some items are obviously looted more often than others, which means that each item can have its own looting factor. So can that factor be simply increased for hides?