shard and thread quantity per mission

[cohRock]

If one is trying to get incarnate shards and threads, does mission level make a difference?  For example, would a +3*4 mission yield more incarnate salvage than a +1*4 mission?

[Lex Talion]

Difficulty doesn't directly affect drop chances. The answer to your example would be 'No'.

However, enemies with higher rank have higher drop chances, so increasing numbers and allowing bosses and AVs indirectly affects drop chances.

A noteworthy (and irritating, to say the least) drop restriction is that shards do not drop from incarnate content or in incarnate areas in general. So you won't have any shards dropping from random enemies in DA or from any missions given by incarnate level contacts.

The Alpha Strike TFs (Apex & Tin Mage) do not count as incarnate content, nor do any SFs/TFs that reward incarnate components of the shard category (ITF, Khan, Barracude, etc).

 

[srmalloy]

Actually, that's not true. They have an abysmally low drop rate, but I've been able to address a shortfall of one or two threads by a bit of street-sweeping in DA. Shards, though, seem to drop even more infrequently from street mobs than threads, so you're better off going to Ephraim Sha for repeatable missions to get shards from the mobs you defeat in them.

 

Of course, what I'm doing when I street sweep DA is to find the groups of a BP Shaman, Elder, and random minion, snipe the Shaman down, hit the Elder with an AoE, which kills the minion and almost destroys the Spirit underling that the Elder summons when the Shaman goes down, finish the Spirit, then finish the Elder, so it's taking out a boss each group, which would affect the drop rate a bit.

[cohRock]

@Lex Talion and @srmalloy , thank you for the information.  I appreciate learning stuff I didn't know enough to ask about.

[Lex Talion]

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

Actually, that's not true. They have an abysmally low drop rate, but I've been able to address a shortfall of one or two threads by a bit of street-sweeping in DA. Shards, though, seem to drop even more infrequently from street mobs than threads, so you're better off going to Ephraim Sha for repeatable missions to get shards from the mobs you defeat in them.

 

Of course, what I'm doing when I street sweep DA is to find the groups of a BP Shaman, Elder, and random minion, snipe the Shaman down, hit the Elder with an AoE, which kills the minion and almost destroys the Spirit underling that the Elder summons when the Shaman goes down, finish the Spirit, then finish the Elder, so it's taking out a boss each group, which would affect the drop rate a bit.

I didn't refer to threads, only shards. If shards happen to drop in incarnate content now, that's a HC change.

Quote from hcwiki   "Note that Shards do not drop from enemies defeated in the streets of or story content of Dark Astoria." (Note that missions from non-incarnate contacts that send you to DA are just normal missions.)

I'll be happy to learn that it was changed, if anybody can point me to patch notes or has a screenie showing a shard drop.

[Dazl]

Shards should just be removed from the game in general.

[Bill Z Bubba]

30 minutes ago, Crimsonpyre said:

Shards should just be removed from the game in general.

Shards and shard related rewards all get converted to threads. I have ZERO use for them as shards and have yet to craft a single incarnate anything with them since HC went live. Shards are simply more useless junk.

[Hedgefund]

Personally I find using shards to create ONLY the t4 alpha (not t1-t3) allows for some parallel crafting so I can complete all t4s faster.  

 

That is, threads for alpha t1 to t3, move on to the other iPowers.  Usually before I'm done t4ing everything else, I have enough shards to create the t4 component for alpha, that is as long as I don't just have tunnel vision completing Heathers. 

 

So no, I oppose a notion to remove shards absent a commensurate boost to threads.

[cohRock]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Shards and shard related rewards all get converted to threads. I have ZERO use for them as shards and have yet to craft a single incarnate anything with them since HC went live. Shards are simply more useless junk.

( and @Crimsonpyre ) I believe the reason shards may seem extraneous now is Homecoming "streamlined" the original design, making part of it (the shards) seem confusing.  IIRC, shards used to drop in non-incarnate content, while threads and incarnate components would drop only during incarnate content.  Shards were the gateway to the new end-game content system.  The Homecoming mods seem to have crippled the end-game system.  No one seems to be running incarnate missions any more.  They'd rather just keep running AE farms or PI scanner missions over and over and over...

 

In making threads drop anywhere, many assume now that shards are close to worthless.  That's a silly thought, IMO.  You can still use shards to build alpha-slot abilities. Think of them as extra freebies.  1 shard is equal to 5 threads in building components, so their relative rarity makes sense.

Edited September 30, 2020 by cohRock

[Heraclea]

Getting your alpha to t4 requires a trip down the path not taken to t3.   By the time you're ready for that step, you probably have enough.  This is also the chief use for Notices of the Well. 

[Lockpick]

3 hours ago, Hedgefund said:

Personally I find using shards to create ONLY the t4 alpha (not t1-t3) allows for some parallel crafting so I can complete all t4s faster.  

 

That is, threads for alpha t1 to t3, move on to the other iPowers.  Usually before I'm done t4ing everything else, I have enough shards to create the t4 component for alpha, that is as long as I don't just have tunnel vision completing Heathers. 

 

So no, I oppose a notion to remove shards absent a commensurate boost to threads.

 

I need to look at this as I usually only use the shard to craft Alpha T1 to T3 and mostly the T1 and T2.  At T4 I go the thread and EMP path.

[srmalloy]

5 hours ago, Hedgefund said:

That is, threads for alpha t1 to t3, move on to the other iPowers. 

That can depend on your circumstances. Just yesterday, for example, I ran my Arch/TA Blaster through a Hami raid, having earlier run him through a Posi 1 to get a Notice of the Well. He had three shards and 18 threads going into the evening's raid, and with the 4 Emp merits from the first downing of Hami, plus the 120 threads he got for dinging his first vet level, plus two shards and a few threads during the raid itself, I was able to build T1 and T2 Intuition with threads, go to the Vanguard base and buy a G'rai Matter, spend four shards on a common, and use them and the Notice to craft the T3, giving him his first level shift. It just happened that the Alpha I wanted used a purchaseable shard-based component, so I didn't have to accumulate eight shards, allowing me to step up to a T3 much faster than I have been able to on other 50s.

[Dazl]

Sure you can find useful ways to use the shards, but they add a layer of complexity to incarnates that's not really necessary with Homecoming. Just look at the examples by @Hedgefund and @srmalloy. Homecoming could simply up the thread drop rate to offset the shard removal.

[InvaderStych]

Admittedly I could be doing it wrong, but by the time my (comparatively few) incarnate toons get enough Shard tree salvage to meaningfully craft up the Alpha tree, I'm already sitting on both of the T3's I need to build a T4, rendering the Shard tree moot.

 

But more importantly:

 

16 hours ago, Crimsonpyre said:

Shards should just be removed from the game in general.

 

This.  If we're interested in the longevity of the game and possibly even gaining and retaining new players, then we need to get rid of the parallel currency trees.  There are already so many freaking currencies in this game, we don't need two salvage trees that do the same thing.

 

Even having played through the incarnate system during the Long, Long Ago when I discovered HC back in March of this year and started looking at the Incarnate crafting system I was extremely confused why there were two salvage trees, but one of them had an atrocious drop rate and stopped being useful for the later tier iPowers.  Even now, there's now way I'm able to memorize which events drop which "Notice of the Well" or whatever other Shard tree salvage and how I might make use of such things.  I'm willing to devote mental energy to learning 1 salvage tree to build powers with, not two parallel ones that really aren't parallel.

 

Yes, the Maestros and the Elites can work out ways to make the Shard tree useful.  For the rest of us Normies the Shard Tree is just "Yet Another Currency" that we have to spend "The Original Currency" (Inf)  converting into "A Useful Currency" (Thread Tree)  in the event we stack up enough of them to turn into something else.

 

I get that others will disagree with this, and that's cool.  I respect your ability to adapt to in-game currency creep.  I don't have that ability, especially as I get older.  I got other stuff to memorize and limited storage capacity to work with! 🤣

Edited October 1, 2020 by InvaderStych

[Vanden]

3 hours ago, InvaderStych said:

If we're interested in the longevity of the game and possibly even gaining and retaining new players, then we need to get rid of the parallel currency trees.  There are already so many freaking currencies in this game, we don't need two salvage trees that do the same thing.

Man, no. If we really want longevity, nobody’s gonna be driven away by some scary, redundant currency. What actually hurts longevity is how easy getting all t3 and t4 incarnate powers is thanks to veteran levels.

[InvaderStych]

3 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Man, no. If we really want longevity, nobody’s gonna be driven away by some scary, redundant currency. What actually hurts longevity is how easy getting all t3 and t4 incarnate powers is thanks to veteran levels.

Also a fair point, although conflating the two things doesn't really address either issue. 

 

Having two sets of currency that do the same thing functions only to make the process of getting to those T3/4's easier for the most knowledgeable of the player base while simply serving to confuse and frustrate the new players or the (like me) players who were around back in the day, loved the game, but still kept it pretty casual by comparison.

 

Honestly, how many types of merits do we really need? Reward, Hero, Villain, Astral, Empyrean, Transcendent ...  To this day I still don't even know what a Transcendent Merit is, why I would want one, where I would get one, or even how I would use one once I had it.

 

I'm certainly not against pulling back on the rate of endgame progression; I'm all for finding a happy balance between being forced into trials or handing out Empy's like candy for Vet levels.  But if we're going to do that can we please simplify the process at the same time by ditching the redundant currency tree?  Even just not needing to scroll past the irrelevant crafting choices when creating iPowers that still have Shard based recipes would be an improvement. 🤣

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, InvaderStych said:

Honestly, how many types of merits do we really need? Reward, Hero, Villain, Astral, Empyrean, Transcendent ...  To this day I still don't even know what a Transcendent Merit is, why I would want one, where I would get one, or even how I would use one once I had it.

Convert 50 Emp Merits to a single Transcendent Merit so that you can easily email it to another character on that same account.

[nihilii]

On 9/30/2020 at 2:37 PM, cohRock said:

If one is trying to get incarnate shards and threads, does mission level make a difference?  For example, would a +3*4 mission yield more incarnate salvage than a +1*4 mission?

While the question has been properly answered, I feel it's worth noting due to veteran levels giving you 120 threads per level at first, and then 20/15/10 empy every 3 levels, (which equal 400/300/200 threads, even if you convert them to threads instead of the more valuable rare and very rare components), playing on higher difficulty might very well yield you more threads even though you get less thread drops.

 

This varies widely based on your teaming habits, because everyone gets a chance for shards/threads whereas XP is shared (even if there's a multiplier). But if you solo, it's a no brainer. Soloing gets you maybe 10 or 15 threads as drops in a level, so even when you get into the veteran levels 20-25ish, those 10 empys every 3 vet levels are the meat of your incarnate gains.

[Ukase]

Here is the pure, unvarnished TRUTH about shards. 

They are not useless. They drop, and they drop fairly often, given you only need 12 for a t-1 vs  60 if you went the thread route.  So, the big question is - do threads drop 5x more than shards? Hard to say, when folks do a variety of things - like iTrials and lower level task forces. Vet levels 1,2,4,5,7,8,10,11 give 120 threads - but no shards. UGT and TPN both give 60 threads midway through the iTrial. 

Shards don't drop at all during incarnate content, but threads drop during incarnate content and normal content - so clearly, odds are threads will drop more than 5x than shards. 

But shards DO drop. And they drop a fair amount, particularly during MSRs and Hami Raids. For every 18 mitos, (1 run of 3 per night)  I get about 3-4 shards. So during the excelsior nightly raids, I tend to get enough to craft the t-1. 

You can only use what the rng gives you. Some of you are in different time zones and/or don't enjoy msrs or hami raids. You like the iTrials, so you rarely see shards. That's fine - use your threads. 

Me, I recognize that only one incarnate slot can use shards. It makes perfect sense FOR ME to run Mender Remiel's arc to unlock the alpha slot, use a transcendent merit, break it down to emps, and use threads to make the t-3 alpha immediately. But - to get to t-4? FOR ME - it's shards the rest of the way for alpha. 

Your game experience will certainly vary, as will your rng results. But if you are using threads to go from t-3 to t-4...I would encourage you to consider changing your ways. It makes no sense, because unless you're ONLY doing iTrials and incarnate content and never do weekly TFs, you're using resources for alpha that could be used for the other 5 slots.  And please, stop telling newer players that shards are useless, when CLEARLY they can be used, if you get enough of them. And if you play often you WILL get enough of them. Perhaps not all in one day, for each character, but you will get them. They are not useless. For me - they are quite useful and they drop as often as I would expect them. 



So clearly, it's not a redundant currency. It has a purpose. BUT, I do get the point about newer players being confused by shards vs. threads. Candidly, it's amazing new players get to understand this game at all, given the overwhelming information on IOs, different drop rates of recipes, etc. 

Instead of removing it, maybe the shard recipe should be at the bottom instead of the thread recipe. If they did opt to remove it, then the weekly Notice of the Well ...would be replaced by what? Nothing? An emp merit? 4 emp merits? 

Edited October 3, 2020 by Ukase