Posts by Guild Cape

Death blossom's AoE hits aren't actually attacks and are flat armor ignoring damage to begin with. The concise description sort of leads you to believe that, but the long description seems a lot closer to what it really does.

Edit: To be clear, no.

I've only ever seen the new mods be generated on gold rarity items, but you can happily salvage and stick them on anything. The mods themselves are +4 or +5, both of which appear on golds.

I suspect this "you see it on them, they drop it" thing is common to quite a few enemies. Some of my observations:

• Star Sentinels that produce nonphysical hit sounds (their arrows sound like elemental wanding impacts) always seemed to drop a bow with the appropriate elemental mod on that matched the sound, though I didn't have a means to test the actual damage type on me. These are not necessarily gold rarity either.
• Star Tengu wielding celestial items seem guaranteed to drop them. It's like they don't exist in their pool of "normal" weapon skins that they can wield, at least in NM.
• Torment Claws that wand you (I did record a gif of this somewhere or other) seem guaranteed to drop the wand - though my sample size is tiny, the two in NM Veil I had wanding me with chaos projectiles both dropped Quicksilvers when I killed them with heroes flagged out of range.
• WiK Mantle that normally have strike as one (these usually hold scythes) can randomly equip bows, and seem quite likely to drop them when killed. Same deal with the Escape dagger bar. I've wondered the same about Peacekeeper Goons and shields. Same comments about not-always-gold-rarity also apply here. I imagine that non-gold drops can be eaten by loot scaling/high kill rate type effects, though.

I'm now wondering if I'm the only one who clicked this thread wondering if it was asking if people like Dhuum's soul reaper or soulbreaker more...

Just noticed - it does holy damage, restoration magic items don't normally do that...

Hourglass Staff (q13 resto) from Destroyer of Hordes in Destruction's Depths 1st floor, NM.

(Haven't seen one of these in NM before)

I have killed a few tens of thousands of WiK mantle in NM, and never had a fellblade from them.

I unfortunately don't think I have a screen (maybe I do?) or remember if HM/NM, but I do remember getting a (white rarity unremarkable) fellblade from a jade construct in battle for LA - if it's location locked, that doesn't make much sense. It was most likely NM as I couldn't really solo up to the point of jades coming in HM before losing, though I will say I did quite a lot of this to try to conclusively decide whether the green weapons can drop here (and some pretty simple probability work with a few assumptions says no).

I'd also point out that as far as I'm aware, the best "pattern" for predicting things that drop the new skins as of the anniversary seems to be that they have to be level 22+ in NM, or any kind of HM locked chest, and wonder if the same logic could apply to some other stuff like this...

... but I'd be at a loss as to why that'd be different wherever the above inscribable dropped.

Since the answer to the glacial blade mystery seems to lie at the bottom of a bunch of lockpick stacks, I figured I should probably share the angry cow setup I talked about a while back.

I suspect someone can probably optimise this a few degrees further (I'm not exactly experienced with these things) but maybe this helps someone looking for what is hopefully a passable farm for Hourglasses or other inscribable new skins, or anyone else who wants a change of scenery. There's probably better things out there still, though! (Spoilered because some people won't care about a wall of text describing how to kill cows)

I also couldn't get anything off mantids, but I didn't try very long there.

Besides the questionmark on that one vabbian beetle, I still don't think we've seen a report from anything below 22 in NM (of which there have been several, both berserking animals and the dune burrower).

I'm also not sure if we've had a single campaign specific drop reported outside HM...

Mallyx waves in NM finally dropped a Black Hawk's Lust, so I guess I can say I've seen a bow now!

It seems plausible to me that new stuff may only come from chests there and not the charr. Raptors were sorta like that, even before the new skins get involved - I'm not sure that raptors+boss are capable of dropping starfish foci, saurian scythes - the chests that spawn in the nest definitely can though.

I knew the anniversary update brought back players and more players get more titles but this seems a liiiittle bit much!

(Somehow or other I guess I got an underflowed response by checking right as it ended, looks like they used unsigned int32 and count in seconds...)

Not sure it's THAT weird - there's definitely other cases of enemies wielding items that they then go on to drop as loot.

• The same thing happens with the rare case of enemies that do vampiric lifestealing when they hit you - they seem very likely (possibly guaranteed?) to drop something vampiric, though obviously it could get assigned to anyone.
• Recently when soloing Nahpui Quarter, I also noticed that all the tengu that were holding celestial weapons seemed to drop them.
• Same deal with enemies with ranged weapons that have elemental mods - you can tell, as bows with elemental mods have their physical impact sound changed to the wanding impact sound of that damage type.
• When in WiK, the Mantle rangers that have Strike as One normally wield scythes - but occasionally will switch to a bow instead (when soloing this was pretty terrifying!) and more often than not will drop some kind of bow...

I've no idea if torment claws could do this before (someone who's big on DoA could prolly answer that), but if not it might be an unintended side effect of adding the new skins! It has possible farming implications I guess, but not sure how useful it is for that?

Today I had two torment claws (Stygian veil) start wanding me.

Decided to go back and kill both with heroes out of range, and they both dropped quicksilvers...

Seems my gif won't upload, but: https://i.imgur.com/V0WnXkA.gif

I'd have thought that the energy implications of crit strikes or soul reaping would do more than 5% AP for your attack skills or 5% crit rate, seeing as both of those operate only on weapon base damage (which for daggers isn't a gigantic thing to begin with).

Not sure which is better though.

Probably useful for first post info: hourglass staffs can be resto.

Level 24 Skale Lasher, Dalada Uplands, NM.

Pretty much all conjecture because we don't know the facts about the game behaviour or motives behind writing notes, but:

1. Given how many random dervishes there are running to chance encounter all the time, the rate of killing of things that drop Japan shields could well be many many times that of glacial blades. Right now we have no way of knowing how the actual drop rarity of the shield and the glacials compare - for all we know the shield could end up having a lower per-kill drop rate than the glacials. Given how much time was "lost" on raptors/vaettirs which seem to be pretty big dead ends on the promotional skins (except the raptor boss, but the item rate is way worse than angry cows) this probably also works against the glacials.
2. Leaving extensive details out of the update notes is possibly deliberate to encourage people to have things to work out for themselves. That, and if they had everything spelled out in painstaking detail and the drop info for absolutely everything listed, it'd be way way too much info for people who haven't touched the game in 5+ years and are coming back because of the update.

Hey, GW is being kind to the solo iron!

I mean... it could "just" be obscenely rare still.

I can't be the only one who has quite a list of skins - including all the hammers and bows - that they still haven't seen, despite being a few hundred gold items into killing angry cows. The caster stuff on the other hand isn't too hard to get (both here, or in the other good places) if farming for it. I think in all the farming I've done I've had only four shields, yet I must be well over 10 hourglasses now.

I'd also point out that we haven't had a Soulbreaker yet either, and the only reported Sunspear I know of was from a chest. If Chance Encounter wasn't as good as it is, I wouldn't be surprised if the Japan shield proved equally elusive.

If you exclude the Tolkano swords (which are clearly different, dropping at non-gold rarities etc) we haven't identified any location specificity for subsets of the promotional items that "might" drop in that campaign - it's like a creature either drops none of the new items or gives a whole heap (potentially all) of them.

There is also Johon Oxflinger outside EotN which is a norn boss and probably much easier/faster to farm rather than Avarr in the back corner.

Gave the farming a rest to play a solo character a bit more, and this character's first new drop was from a Level 22 Dune Burrower in The Scar, NM.

It is q9 SR and has only 19% inherent HSR.

Anyways, this one has an unidentified value of 43g.

Not entirely sure what that means, but maybe Red would like to know

I've put quite a few hours into killing the angry cows outside Olafstead as well, am up probably a couple hundred gold drops there (and possibly into double digits of hourglasses at this point) but no sign of darksteel or glacial anything.

FWIW I found a setup that doesn't need pcons and that blows up Asterius as well if he spawns close enough to keep aggro. Not sure how sharing this stuff goes and whether it's just asking for bots to jump on it, though.

Quote from Paulie Gualtieri

Killed thousands of HM minotaur in Elona reach during favor and dozens of Hydra and Desert griffons, nothing. I did get the new items from chests, some of them linked to minotaurs. I don't think I'm gonna bother with Cantha and Elona since based on our data the drops work the same way there.

It seems likely at this point that in proph/fac/nf the new items function much like the Fellblade in proph, in NM only high level foes and chests can drop them, while in low-level areas in HM only locked chests can drop them. Unfortunately this would exclude the possibility of q8 or lower in proph/fac/nf. For whatever reason eotn doesn't follow this rule since we've seen low q golds from raptor nestlings.

The HM Istan chest should (I think?) also be level 22, which matches the NM berserking eotn creature drop a few days ago.

I'd point out that the low req items from raptor nestlings are the Tolkano type swords which behave differently to all the promo-type items (some drop at non-gold rarity, can be salvaged for mats, are much more common). So far I don't think anyone's shown a promotional item drop from a nestling, only from the raptor boss. If nothing else, the ratio of general gold weapons to promotionals from here seems really really bad compared to other things (like chance encounter).

I'm wanting to figure out why some creatures drop promotionals/preorders and others don't, though. Level might be important, but if it was the whole story it doesn't explain why some places apparently refuse to produce drops even in HM, or why 26 chilling wisps do drop but spectral vaettir don't. The idea of heavily farmed stuff being specifiically excluded seems pretty out the window with more of these observations of things that seemingly don't drop promo items. I'm not sure what to do at this point except throw ideas out and see if anyone has thoughts/ideas on it...

Questionable theory #1: natural weapons?

One idea I've since had is that creatures with might be called "natural" weapons can't drop the new stuff - but that still has issues. Raptor boss? Beserking animals? That screenshot of a simian dervish dropping one? Could be that most EotN "animals" are somehow different internally and technically wield weapons - spectral vaettir however always have their earth damage nibble, and maybe nestlings could be forced to do wet noodle damage, or some reason that excludes the boss. I should probably try those wisps - the wiki implies they all wield the same scythe skin which is a little weird. I haven't paid any attention to what Ministry members are holding, either.

If anyone knows more things about enemy weapons/damage, it might be interesting to put that pretty tenuous idea to bed. If nothing else it'd maybe be useful to pay more attention to how much damage things crit for when farming them and whether there's any variance or other evidence of randomised equipment at play. The only resource I ever stumbled upon that touches on this topic is this: https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User:Prai…tile_NPC_Damage

Questionable theory #2: something to do with loot pools?

I know basically nothing about this, or about the topic in general.

If you go to raptors, why is it that virtually every single gold item you get is one of a pretty limited number of skins? Stuff like Great Conches, Sage Blades, Jagged Reavers, Piranha Hammers, Glyphic Mauls, Turtle Shell Bows, the very occasional Elemental Sword, and now the two Tolkano sword families as well. What's also curious is that the nearby chests give items that killing the foes seemingly can't, or if they can they're much much much more easily obtained from the chests (eg Starfish Focus, Saurian Scythe). For some reason, in other places there's what feels like a heavy bias for gold items to be "for" the profession of the foe that drops them, but the raptors don't seem to care so much. Also, the new promotional items seem to ignore that more or less completely.

That said, Vaettir feel like they can drop a much wider variety of stuff, and yet they're apparently still off the menu for promotionals.

Arced may be from EotN undead in general - pretty much the only wiki drop research entry for the new skins notes one from the prophecies entry quest.

Not sure what else that and SoO have in common...

Quote from trademeimfamous

well the wiki does state:

Quote

Notes

• Reiko's speech is reduced considerably in the hard mode version.

so that would be a valid reason imo

As someone who also has farmed the NM version in HM, when you go back to it the dialogue starts around "Your anger betrays you..."

Not sure what the HM quest looks like though.

The wiki has a logged quicksilver from a destroyer in NM destruction's depths: https://wiki.guildwars.com/index.php?titl…r&oldid=2705014

Quote from GhostKairi

Storm Ember from Berserker Bison in Bjora Marshes NM.

Outside of the Tolkano swords, this one I think takes the cake for lowest level foe to drop a new item.

(Though if Shing Jea HM chests are level 22 then that is equalled I suppose).

I'm still at a loss as to a pattern behind those creatures that just don't seem to want to drop them though.

I think there have been multiple reports of glacial blades (dagger type) from Boreal Station chests. Unclear on NM/HM, at this point HM chests seem much safer than NM ones.

I don't think anyone's reported anything about the singular glacial blade yet.

Quote from Shaya

Not personal, but ive seen a q8 15-21 etched sword drop in a thread here i think, which can only be dropped by lvl 20 or lower afaik

Thanks - though this is a Tolkano sword skin, and those seem pretty different to the promotional/preorder exclusives. Both vaettirs and raptor nestlings seem to drop their respective Tolkano stuff pretty frequently.

Quote from Master Shadowkiller

We can also mention that the known farms in Cantha (mantids and dragon moss) got the same loot table as before.

I tried a lot, and ATM I never saw a new skin.

Someone else have the same conclusion?

I also tried some kaineng mantids and got nothing, but not nearly enough to feel very confident about that.

If dragon mosses (NM/HM level 24/26) also aren't dropping new skins then that would throw the NM level theory out the window. I'd sort of lined that farm quest outside Anjeka's shrine up as one of the next things to try.

But then... why else could the Drakkar djinn be able to drop them, but not vaettir or dragon moss? There's not much between these enemies except that vaettir and moss are going to be much more heavily farmed, and if that's the criteria then the fact Chance Encounter is as good as it is seems pretty messed up.

Quote from Pwr Up

Was chest running nm in Tasca's Demise and this dropped

That this was NM seems interesting. I don't know much about chests, but digging up an old Red post has it sound like anything that both gives TH points and isn't a Shing Jea/Istan/Ascalon HM chest is 24 RE: Chests with Q8 Max Drop Possibilities

That list also has that EotN NM at 24 I think. Maybe if I'm feeling like doing something brainless I'll go break some picks at Boreal NM and see if anything interesting happens! I still don't have maxed titles after all...

Some observations around enemy levels:

• Nobody's mentioned getting any new skins except etcheds from vaettir (20/26).
• People have reported promotional/preorders from raptors - but are these dropping from nestlings (15/25), or only from the boss (28/30)? Peter Kadar's vid has an hourglass from the boss, and the only promotional skin I got in a couple hours there was too.
• Chance encounter is clearly effective at getting new skins (24/26, 26/28).
• Multiple promotionals in this thread from Chilling Wisps (24/26)
• I have killed a slightly unhealthy amount of HM istan skale (4/22 and 13/24) and seen absolutely nothing new.
• Despite being NM and sharing with a full party, Mallyx waves (28/30) continues to drop me promotionals at a reasonable rate.

I'd be a little interested to hear more observations/ideas about the apparent discrepancy between raptors/vaettirs and chance encounter. Maybe it's time I started recording some actual numbers (ie % of golds that are new skins) too.

At the moment I the best I can come up with is that level a foe would appear in NM is the thing - has anyone had a new drop (except the Tolkano swords) from something that would be level 23 or below in NM?

I'm probably seeing patterns where there aren't any, but...

I must be somewhere around 10 or so weapons (all promo drop-anywhere type, none of the NF preorders) from NM afk mallyx now, and I think every single one has been some kind of Me/N/Rt/Mo item (listed most common to rare).

Incidentally, these are the professions in my party for the setup I'm using.

I think I need to start keeping proper data.

Mallyx waves, NM

At least shows that Dragon's Envy can drop Communing and not just primary attributes (first post is maybe suggestive of that)

Mods - no, seemingly any gold drop can have the profession mods of professions appopriate to the campaign. I seem to remember someone saying the zaishen chest loot has them on as well.

Items - probably insufficient data to be very sure at the moment. The swords that used to be pvp rewards only seem to have clear region preferences in EotN though.

Some more thoughts and seemingly open topics:

• The martial type items have been mentioned here less. Some, in particular both Nightfall preorders, glacial blade and glacial blades (daggers) haven't been mentioned at all, yet this thread has several mentions of hourglasses. Are they weighted evenly on a per-profession basis or something?
• On profession specificity (I see you edited some into the OP): it's going to be very hard to be sure, but based on my own experience and some of the screenshots in this thread there is little if any correlation between enemy profession and which of the new items they are dropping. Unsure about casters and attribute requirements, there are clear patterns with this in "old" drops (eg silver boars seem to require the attribute of the profession that dropped them from mallyx waves).
• Minimum level requirement still isn't very clear.

I've spent a bit of time in the Charr Homelands (seeing as it is sort of the "obvious" missing counterpart to tarnished coast and far shiverpeaks) looking for any flavour of arced blade but left emptyhanded. Maybe just need more luck/time though...

I also got them from Vaettirs.

Randomly did the Glacial Griffon (Cold as Ice) a bit later and it dropped a white lesser too.

I'm pretty sure I could salvage various kinds of etched swords into iron/steel. Haven't had any other tolkano type skins yet.

All the /bonus type skins I've had have not been salvagable for mats.

Besides the rehomed tolkano skins I've yet to see any of the new stuff that isn't gold rarity, which if running canthans in NM isn't gonna be favourable.

I've since had some more from mallyx waves in NM (quicksilver req insp/FC, unicorn's wrath req FC) to go with the smite wolf's.

I had a Wolf's Greed drop for me in NM (Mallyx waves afk).

Forgot to say, it weirdly had no option to salvage for mats...

I've killed a lot of the WiK flavour of these (tracked into 5 digits of them, with a large amount not tracked) and not had anything much of value other than the WiK specific drops. Maybe it depends on what you're after though.

Yes, as of most things of this level they can drop q8. I've not had a single one worth talking about though - I only ever remember getting one max q8 gold shield (was a single mod) and a max q8 FDS with increased sale value...

Their skin pool is pretty small, and I found myself getting way more martial stuff than caster items. I don't really know what to say about it other than it seems pretty unremarkable besides Shining Mauls and White Reavers. Oh, and they seem to want to drop a LOT of hornbows for some reason.

There's also a few quests that add mantle enemies to EotN where they can drop inscribables.

Okay I admit this wasn't today and I actually got this a couple weeks ago, but in the interests of topic change:

All three in Riverside Province, but that's my preferred area for mass murdering Mantle.

It's a little curious how I went ~30 weapons on the mesmer without seeing a mini and then come along with a necro and get three in the space of 10 weapons or so. Not that I'm complaining, of course! There's a bunch of differences just in WiK progression itself (mesmer has battle for LA available, necro did bare minimum to get to LA keep), and that the AP approach is anything from 30-100% faster than what I was doing on the mesmer, or it could of course just all be in the fickle RNG.

Since the mini peacekeeper is the only WiK enemy drop I haven't got yet I thought I should try to get it despite the fact I think he's ugly, and very rough numbers are making it look like maybe Peter Kadar's numbers for peacekeeper green drops might actually not be antifarm and they really are 3-4x suckier at dropping green weapons than Mantle. Plus it's not just one enemy profession that has no green to drop. Or maybe I'm now also antifarmed to heck. But, I'm getting about as many Mantle greens in areas which have 4-5x as many Peacekeepers as Mantle...? More data needed!

Quote from Shaya

u farm that with a sos build or a derv? and in nm right?

Yes, NM. I should add that I don't think farming this is at all worth doing from a financial perspective, my estimation would have the mini droprates into the realms of 1 in xxxxx. Certainly both me and Peter Kadar got to somewhere in the region of 30 green weapons before seeing a mini. It is however way more interesting than farming other things to me because of the sheer amount of variety in the things that can happen and that to be successful you really benefit from thinking about what the correct way to deal with each group is.

I haven't really explored the full range of things that might work to farm this, but I suspect derv is going to have a bad time: some of the healing bars have really quite a high output, there's a huge variety of stuff that makes melee sad, and not even spell targeting preventers will save you from some of the things they have (eg dark apostasy, signet interrupts, signet of humility) - Peter Kadar farmed one peacekeeper group with predictable comp over and over on a derv, but comparing his data to mine suggests put his green weapon drop rate as 1/3 to 1/4 of mine, which I think suggests he got bodied by antifarm really hard.

I've just been running around and clearing whole areas, the bars I've tried and had some success with are:

1. SoS: it works, it's the easiest thing to work with on this list by a fair margin, but its bad matchups (eg SoD divine peacekeeper) are really bad and trying to direct spirits to shoot something in particular is painful.
2. PI/wastrels mesmer: This can kill pretty much everything solo, including all the primary questline up to battle for LA. If you want to try hard mode, this is without a doubt the best thing on this list.
3. Assassin's Promise based stuff. It's harder to unpick the really problematic multiple healer/resurrection groups with this but if you try to avoid them, this is the fastest killing approach I have found. You're still at the mercy of EVAS deciding to wake up and act completely braindead for little discernible reason, but it is what it is.

Battle for LA can give you some really high kill rates but as far as I can tell does not drop greens: I got 3 stacks of orders here without seeing a single one - which at 10% drop rate means I got a kill count of ~7500, way way beyond the 1/300-400 droprate I'm seeing for green weapons elsewhere.

I have no idea if HM affects green/mini drop rates. It's really quite a challenge to get solo kills at all there, but it might be able to make the nongreen loot actually slightly more exciting than the complete and utter garbage you get from NM.