Higher looting chances.

[Earowo]

thats what i never understood, you kill a rogue, and you have enough time to take his armour, but not enough to take the dagger, that isnt even in its hand anymore?

[LigH]

Oh, there was a bug that removed the wielded weapon from the hand of that NPC if you looted the same type, so the next time it respawned barehanded... But that should have been fixed long ago.

Still ... I heard that developers lowered the loot rate because they are afraid that players are getting rich by looting.

Rich. Hah. By looting. Hah. Ridiculous. They don't know what training can cost. And ... why should get one rich if he can't buy anything from it? Not even guild houses are sold anymore...

[Sarva]

I just ran a test on some one eye rats. I killed 20 rats and I got 37 lootable items. Of course if you are trying to loot a specific item like an eye or a tail or a hide you aren't always going to get one of those items but I was clearly getting something lootable on most of the rats I killed and many times got 2 or 3 lootable items per rat. Overall it looks like the loot rate is fine. It is ust that rats can loot a lot of things so the specific thing you want to loot isn't going to come up as often as you want it to.

I did a second round of one eye rat looting. In 20 rats I got

6 hides
3 tails
9 feet
5 eyes
1 meat

so again more than 1 item per rat

[LigH]

Tuathanach killed 70 Maulbernauts to get 6 Talons. -- Happy helm crafting.

What do Maulbernauts do that they have so few Talons left to be looted? Eat them off their own extremities?

Not to mention the risk of life killig a Maulbernaut. Or that half their hitpoints already eath all the mana required for the magical attacts required to hurt them at all.

[Maisent]

Tuathanach killed 70 Maulbernauts to get 6 Talons. -- Happy helm crafting.

What do Maulbernauts do that they have so few Talons left to be looted? Eat them off their own extremities?

Not to mention the risk of life killig a Maulbernaut. Or that half their hitpoints already eath all the mana required for the magical attacts required to hurt them at all.

Wait wait, yuou can crasft helmets now?? oh my i missed a lot

[kaerli2]

Yeah, low-level mobs such as Rats drop like crazy; however, looting Tefus/Ulbers/... can get somewhat more frustrating...and the Expert Gladiators and Dlayos never want to drop anything even decent for me lol.

It seems that many of the more difficult mobs provide a negative reward for slaying them, even!  (In that the opportunity cost compared to easily killed mobs that are worth a lot (aka Tlokes) is greater than the reward you get for taking on the more challenging monsters!)

[Earowo]

i remember, in 4.03 almost every single monster was diffrent, some rogues were weaker or stronger, some trepors were weaker or stronger, some tefus were weaker or stronger, and even the loot rates were all diffrent, one rogue would give me nothing at all after 20  kills and a diffrent rogue would give me somthing almost every time,

I miss how things were back then, when it comes to the monsters, becuase you had strong ones for strong people, and you had weak ones for weak people, and medium ones for your average joe..

mabey it should be like then.

[not sure if the loot rates were as diffrent as the sstrengths, but it sure as hell seemed like it.]

[LigH]

@ Earowo:

In version 0.4.x, NPCs were even too different. And their skills were not part of the calculation for the opponent rating (Tefusang appears weaker than you - according to its strength, but is so skilled in its attack style that it deals 400 damage). To get rid of the rather unfair very randomized samples, they were rather normalized recently. Randomizing them slightly again would take some developer-work time again, because it will require much testing that the changes won't compromise the balancing again. So it may come, but not earlier than "soon™"...

[RlyDontKnow]

Still ... I heard that developers lowered the loot rate because they are afraid that players are getting rich by looting.

Rich. Hah. By looting. Hah. Ridiculous. They don't know what training can cost. And ... why should get one rich if he can't buy anything from it? Not even guild houses are sold anymore...

where did you hear that? o_O

What do Maulbernauts do that they have so few Talons left to be looted? Eat them off their own extremities?

really... they don't have that low drop rates. they even drop more often than diseased rats

I think the general issue is that stronger monsters *seem* to drop a lot less as they're harder to kill.
if it takes a lot longer to kill a certain monster than another, you may get the feeling they they drop a lot less.

as for prices... I agree, the loot of high up monsters isn't worth enough compared to their strength at all :x

[Hangatyr]

...I think the general issue is that stronger monsters *seem* to drop a lot less as they're harder to kill.
if it takes a lot longer to kill a certain monster than another, you may get the feeling they they drop a lot less....

It doesn't *seem* to be less, it *is* less. To get the amount of Talons to fullfill the request of Kelicha, I had to kill 150 Maulbernauts .. Getting 15 perfect talons and 5 or 6 hides. As some of it was 'multi drop', the drop rate is about 10 to 13%. But 10 out of 150 is a different story. It got proved last night as I helped Tuathanach to get his last Talon. Again I killed 15 to get one (1) single Talon.

... What do Maulbernauts do that they have so few Talons left to be looted? Eat them off their own extremities?...

Yes, seems they prefer to eat themselfs or cannibalize their own breed. 

[LigH]

@ RlyDontKnow:

Of course there may be a discrepancy between "Any loot per kill" and "Specific loot per kill" (counted and averaged over ~200 kills of not too dangerous NPCs); might be that species with more different kinds of loot have more summands to sum up their overall loot chance. But still, there are also groups of opponents with less loot than others. I remember a day when it took more than 100 kills of Weaver Arangmas to get 2 pieces of Arangma Silk. Just for roleplaying purposes, mind you!

Just one example (I hope it is not too specific and rated as spoiler): Tlokes (Drones, Warriors, Queen) and Forest Arangmas are similar in strength and in diversity of loot, I believe. Still, the loot chance for Forest Arangmas just outside Akkaio used to be about 1/10 or less, while the loot rate of Tlokes near Shindrok's Crater seems to be between 1/3 and 1/5. And the loot rate for Clackers in a specific part of the arena shall be even higher, I was told...

So it probably takes a while for players to find optimal opponents. But the optimum depends on many factors: Stats, weapon skills, armor skills, weapon quality... The less experienced a player is (and I mean player rather than char), the harder it is for them to find their optimum. And new players who die too often or fight too many opponents without any progress (no damage on both sides) may not find this game worth playing already before they learn to roleplay...

[RlyDontKnow]

well, of course theirs a big difference between "any loot per kill" and "specific loot per kill", you do get the feeling it takes ages if you just look for something specific

also it's true that some monsters drop generally less than others, but I think that's not such a big issue.
the bigger problem imo is that some parts just aren't worth enough (especially those of the very strong monsters like maulbernauts and maulberlords)

for the "die too often" - that's very true and we've been discussing this a bit. generally agreement was that monster strength should increase the farer you get from safe zones. e.g. if you just take a step into the sewers, you should only encounter one-eyed rats. if you then go deeper into them, they should become stronger the deeper you walk into the sewers.
however that requires - again - a big relocation of many monsters which isn't realistic given we only have 1 rules dev atm :/

[kaerli2]

Frankly, you should get more valuable loot off of the higher level monsters:

* Maulber parts should be worth more than Ulber parts for one (and why are Ulber parts worth an utterly measly amount wrt Tloke parts?...in general, the pricing for the "old" mob parts needs to be adjusted wrt the "new" mob part prices)
* Expert Gladiators should drop more valuable weapons than Ojaveda Rogues when the random loot generator is invoked...this'll take some work though.

[verden]

I've thought the same thing about the animal parts that was mentioned above. With the prevalence of animal mobs now, those values could be balanced a bit higher to give a better step up to players. IMHO.

[novacadian]

It seems that many of the more difficult mobs provide a negative reward for slaying them, even!  (In that the opportunity cost compared to easily killed mobs that are worth a lot (aka Tlokes) is greater than the reward you get for taking on the more challenging monsters!)

No question, however my experience is that it helps to avoid the non-RP grind a bit. For tria and for stock in her wine brokerage business Venorel hangs with the Rogues of Oja for a while; then when delivering new cases of wine to Hydlaa she stops off at the Eagle Gobble settlement to hone her skills. If they all had everything she needed she would never leave Kisatol Gathoji's tent!

- Nova