Purple Drops

I've played this game a long time now and I've only ever had a handful of purple recipes.

What am I doing wrong? It seems plenty of others get them, and I do a lot of TFs and such so what can I do to increase the rate of Purply Goodness landing on my head?

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Let me add to what he said, HOURS of farming. lol. I've never gotten one on a TF. 8 man team, = less chances for drops to land on you.

I run 2 accounts and don't get but like 1 or 2 a week. Also, don't stay in AE. (if you do)

Take into concideration also, that the enemies must be level 50+ to drop purple(to my knowledge)

lvl 47+ Critters in non AE mishes drop purples and the drop rate is 1/5000 chance - according to Paragon Wiki and I'm sure that information is buried here on the boards.

If I increase diff on a smallish team will that increase my chance?

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

If it gives you more enemies to defeat, then yes. The ONLY factor is how many enemies you defeat. As long as they are high enough to drop a lvl 50 recipe, it doesn't matter if they are 49, 50, 51, 52, whatever.

Wait for I16, then solo missions set for 8 - you'll find your drop rate goes up quite a bit

It's unlikely that you're doing anything wrong. They are, as described, very rare.

On average, they appear to drop at something like once per five thousand mobs defeated. Note that this is not entirely accurate, as different ranks of mobs have different chances to drop recipes, and the metric above was across at least a mix of both minions and LTs. However, it's a decent rule of thumb.

And of course its important to bear in mind that a 1:5000 probability doesn't mean anything like you're guaranteed one purple every 5000 mobs.

Finally, if you team a lot, each mob drop only goes to one person. Teams certainly defeat a lot of mobs, but not enough to make up, for example, for a team of 8 meaning that 1/8th of the drops goes to each player (on average). Sadly, the best way to ensure good drop density (in general, not purples specifically) is to defeat stuff solo.

I play solo a lot, and do what I'd call "light weight" farming relatively often, and I have gotten maybe 20 or so purples across all my eligible characters. Given how many things I'm doing "right" to optimize my odds of getting them, I think that shows how rare they are.

It really doesn't matter what the number is. I went months without seeing any purples and got 4 this weekend.

Villianside, the Reichssman Strike Force is the way to go. If you stay to defeat all the ambushes after defeating Reichsman, you'll wind up defeating over 1.5k foes, which, on average, means that a purple will drop each time the Strike Force is run. Of course, then its a roll to see who on the team will get it. So, you'll get a Purple from this SF once every eight times you run it... on average.

I've seen one or two Purple drops from this SF every time I've been on it.

I thought the Rikti during zone invasions dropped like lvl 30 recipes/2nd tier salvage?

People have been complaining about the Inflated in-game economy lately, but the best way to get purples is to play the market. Crafting and Selling certain IOs will earn you a lot of money, with which you buy purple recipes. Plan on spending about 10 minutes or so per login session to make sure you're steadily moving stuff thru the market.

Yes, purples are outrageously expensive right now, but guess what, so is everything else. That means you're selling stuff for a whole lot of Inf, so it evens out. (all prices will drop with I16, buying and selling, so it'll still even out then)

Finally, you don't have to farm to get good IOs - just play.

Why am I qualified to say this? Because a few months ago, after AE was already out and the market prices were going up. I decided to take up the challenge of purpling my main toon (A Human Only Peacebringer). In that inflated economy, I've managed to slot 28 Purples in a few months.

And I don't farm (except the Cimeroran Wall occasionaly, but that's so much fun it doesn't feel like farming). No mishes set aside for farming at all. I just played: solo or teams, missions or TFs, whatever was available, and then did the market as I said. I got my share of purple drops, but a good chunk came from the Market.

Essentially, if you don't enjoy playing a single toon for a while and/or simply detest playing the market, I wouldn't bother with purples. They're nice and shiny, and you certainly notice a performance difference when you have them, but they're not worth grinding for if you're not having fun. Even if you don't like the market, it's only a few minutes per play session. Otherwise, stick with other IOs - they work splendidly too...

IMO, of course..