Discussion: PC Gamer Incarnate Trial interview with Nate Birkholz

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Fortunately, no one needs to do them hundreds of times, except maybe the most unlucky person on earth. I've done about 22 Lambdas and 18 BAFs across three characters so far. One has tier 3s in all four slots and still lots of threads, merits, and components left over. One has 1 uncommon and 1 rare slotted, and is 93% done with Destiny and 10% into Lore - with more than enough threads and astrals to unlock both if I wanted to. The other is a bit of a slow poke: I'm still deciding what to do so I have nothing slotted, but Judgment is at 81% and Destiny is at 85%, Interface is currently empty. However, its not that I lack the ability to slot Interface: that character currently has 64 threads, 46 astrals, 6 empyreans, 2 common, 11 uncommon, 3 rare, and 1 VR component. I've also been specifically experimenting with ways to manipulate that character's earnings *downward* (because I think it would be unethical to experiment with pushing my rewards upward if there is a component to that experiment which drives everyone else's rewards downward) so she's actually earning rewards *slower* than everything else I play, the VR lucky drop notwithstanding.

That's 40 runs across three characters, all of which are making serious progress on the system. I'll almost certainly be completely rare slotted before I get anywhere near a hundred runs. I'm actually considering starting a fourth once the second unlocks Destiny (I'm inclined to unlock Lore with iXP conversions).

I doubt I'm significantly far from average when it comes to drops. If anything, the average player is likely progressing faster.

I don't know where this "hundreds" notion keeps coming from, but neither actual calculations nor actual experience comes anywhere near that value. I have to believe that at least part of the problem with some estimates is that not everyone knows Empyrean merits can be converted into rare and very rare drops even in the worst case scenario that a player never gets either, ever, which itself is unlikely over the long haul of doing on the order of a hundred runs.

So do I - and we're getting them too

It's never too late for catgirl humor

Virtue-bashing? You make it sound like being in the presence of large populations of catgirls is a bad thing

There is a joke that ran through my mind about bashing the virtue of catgirls. But, I think it would be modded.

--Rad

Well, it would absolutely destroy my allergies, for one thing. I doubt I'd make it to the street corner, let alone the hospital.

Aside from the fact that a number of us are allergic, there's also the fur on all the sofas, the barf in your shoes, the decapitated mouse and bird-based characters on the door step, the smell of the litter box in Pocket D... I could go on.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

First of all, I was referring to fully decking out a character with the top tier incarnate powers. Sure, you don't have to do that, just like you don't have to level a toon to 50, but if you're shooting for the top, that's what I was talking about.

I just did a successful lambda, and I got 3 astral merits, which converts to 12 threads, and five threads. Almost enough to make one common component...

Granted, you can get up to 2 empyrean merits per day and rare/very rare drops every once in a while, and that will drastically reduce the time to get what you need, but I doubt you're getting 4 top tier powers in 40 runs.

If you don't get the rare drop you need once every 5 runs out of your 40, you'll have to craft one using 4 uncommons, 100 threads and 100 million influence. And if you don't get the very rares you need once every ten runs, get ready to grind 4 more rares and 400 million influence.

This may not seem excessive to you, but I bet it does to a lot of average players, as evidenced by the many posts that seem to suggest just that.

Maybe '100's' is an exaggeration, maybe not, if you look at my post you'll see I was responding to someone who made that estimate, though I doubt 100 or so is far off the mark. I'd take one of my 50's through the process again to figure out exactly how many trials it would take, but I'm already bored of grinding the same two trials over and over again, one after another. So again, I wish the devs would have allowed these components to be obtainable in other level 50 content so there would be more variety in terms of paths to the incarnate abilities. I'm not saying you need to feel the same way, but clearly I am not alone in having this opinion. So if the goal is to keep as many people happy as possible, the devs should consider expanding these rewards to other lvl 50 content. It would eliminate the problem many of us have with this limited path.

If I focused all 40 runs on a single character, I would have tier 4 powers in every slot with resources to spare. I would rather have three characters with major progress in the system, so that's why I'm spreading out the effort. Three characters with tier 3s is better than one with tier 4s in my opinion, because the power difference between 3 and 4 isn't commensurate with their 3-4 times the cost. Those are for people with lots of time and accumulated runs on their hands. But clearly, if I wanted to do that, I would be there or in striking distance of there in only 40 runs.

The system is really designed so even casual players can get commons, mere mortals can get uncommons and rares, and people who want to pursue the system to the ends of the earth can get very rares. That's why the costs escalate so high on VR but the power level doesn't. Go for it if you want. If you don't, that's also fine.


Suppose you got nothing but uncommon drops consistently, which is what the average player seems to be getting. After four runs you'd have 4 uncommons and 68 threads. Almost enough to craft a rare component. Suppose your luck really sucks and you get 50% commons and 50% uncommons. After eight runs you'd have four uncommons, four commons, and 136 threads. If you did one each per day that's also 8 empyreans. That's enough to craft two rare components with resources left over.

That means while your way of looking at that Lambda is that its not even enough resources to craft a common, my way sees each run as being 25% of a rare component. Quite a disparity. The question is: which one is more accurate?

Since a very rare component takes four rares, it takes basically six rares to make a very rare incarnate power. At 2 per eight runs, that's no more than 24 runs. Within about 25 runs you would have everything you need to craft the Very Rare power for one Incarnate slot. That means given these very low drop table proportions, you can do it in 100 runs. If you get even 1 rare or very rare drop, the number of runs drops commensurately. As a practical matter, the average amount of time will likely be half that, perhaps 50 runs. So even 100 runs is a very high estimate, because it requires *never* getting a drop above uncommon, in a hundred runs. That's unlikely.

And that's to max out to tier 4, which is something no one should assume won't take far above average levels of effort to acquire.

Both? Neither? Based on my experience, a decent run is around 4 Astral, 6 threads, an Uncommon, and a fraction of an Empyrean. Occasionally you'll instead luck out and get a Common or a Rare.

To equip a Common in the first two powers, and a level-shifting rare in the second two, takes a total of 20 Commons, 2 Uncommons, and 2 Rares. The Uncommons are easy, and chances are good that during the process you'll get at least one Rare, and will have enough Empyrean to build the other; the limiting factor is the Commons. Each costs 20 threads; a typical run is therefore 6 direct threads plus 4 Astrals at 4 threads each plus one Uncommon at 8-10 threads each; rough average of 31 threads, or 1.5 commons. That's around 12 runs to get baseline configuration on a single character (assuming you luck into getting a few commons), if you're willing to take the risk of burning all of your Merits on stuff now instead of holding them for whatever they're actually for eventually. Getting to four rares adds maybe six runs if you're on the lucky side getting rares or commons, and possibly considerably more otherwise.

So in round numbers, getting a single character reasonably well kitted out (four rares, no VR) takes 20 +- about 5 runs. Given that there are only two things to run, that's 10 repetitions of the *same* content... I consider that poor design at best even for people with only one character; I'm reasonably certain that I've never repeated the same rehashed piece of plot that many times on any character prior to this. For people with several or many 50s to incarnate or who want even one Very Rare, it starts looking like an insane soulless grind very quickly; the upstream poster was talking about five characters, so 75-125 repeats is about right, and mindbogglingly bad. There are plenty of players that have been around for ages with dozens of 50s...

Personally, I have two 50s, and after getting my first one to four Rares (~19 runs, but I had parts left over, could have probably done it in a few less if I had planned better and been more willing to burn Uncommons down to less-than-half-a-Common early), I am sick of it enough that I'm having to take a break not only from the Trials, but that character, normally my favorite.

To put things in a different light: It's roughly five times as many iterations of grind per character as the long-despised Baby New Year, except that it takes far longer per run and requires vastly more logistics to make each run happen.

Inclusive of Astral and Empyrean merit breakdowns, it's certainly something that can throw more thread-styled chips in your pile, certainly. The splendid thing they coded right in about the Alpha slot is that you don't need to run anything but a relatively short and, for a good few AT's soloable (And may I add, pretty cool) arc in Ouroboros; no grind required to unlock the Alpha slot at all.

Present breakdown of Shards -> Threads is a 1=1 basis every 20 hours on the time gated option, or 2=1 on the non-gated. Could you, without touching a BAF or Lamda trial, secure and break down enough shards to unlock all four i20 slots? Sure you could, and they've got a beautiful inf sink built right in; nothing wrong so far.

However, just where are you going to get Astral or Empyrean merits? Only one means of generating those presently, and that's by completing phases and objectives in the BAF and Lamda. Or, in the case of Empyreans, completing them period on a daily time gate.

Attempting to rely on shards alone can, in fact, be a perfectly acceptable means of unlocking the slots; that was never exclusively contested, or even inclusively focused on as a matter of concern by at least myself. I could perhaps have been clearer on that specific.






I'd almost be willing to bet every inf on every character I have that your conversions of shards was a near-irrelevant contribution to the fabrication of those t3's, unless of course you had an improbably huge stock of shards to break down. As it is, the cost in threads to fabricate a t3 is statically calculable.

t1 = 3 commons = 60 threads

t2 = 2 commons + 1 uncommon = 100 threads

t3 = 2 commons + 1 rare (4 uncommons + 100m Inf if you're relying on shards) = 280 threads

Total thread cost for a t3 crafted with shards via conversion alone = 440 shards + 210m Inf, if you're exclusively converting shards at the 10=10 for 2.5m rate on the time gated option.

Additionally, this will take you a minimum of 36.6~ days. Maybe there's some trick I'm unaware of for generating shards at a fantastic pace, but my personal absolute best day of farming for shards on +0/x8 maps and hitting the WST and nailing down both Tin Mage and Apex TF's in a single day as well as participating in three RMS raids saw me close the (long) day of (constant) bashing out with 16 shards. Obviously, that figure is largely RNG-variable where kill-drops are concerned, but I remember that day.

It was the 18 hour day of non-stop bashing that, while it was I certainly had fun burning that whole day to non-stop thing-bashing, wasn't something I especially wanted to replicate.

Nor was it something that was particularly replicable every day. In reality, I'd suspect that most people gunning for shards on a daily basis that're able to throw 4-6 hours at this game per day wouldn't have results too terribly different from mine.

Some days, I'd have a whole 5 shards to show for my trouble, including the one scored for trading Vanguard Merits for G'rai Matter and scoring drops to break down from ITF's and/or other TF's. Some days, the RNG gives nothing, other days that fickle mistress bestowed me with 9 or 10 or sometimes 11.

The days of logging off having acquired the minimum (or near to it) were rather more common than the lucky days. So, relying on shards to break down into all your threads for unlocking the i20 slots as well as crafting things to stick in them?

I'm sorry, but that's just not a viable alternative for anybody that doesn't essentially live on this game. It's a nice little perk, exactly as I said, but could only be exclusively relied on as an alternate path to doing anything especially meaningful with the i20 slots if one basically never logged off, hit everything that gives alpha component drops as often as possible and did all of this on the imaginary server where people were doing what one wanted to do at any given time, at all times, by way of TF's.

37 days as a minimum also hinges on already having the i20 slots unlocked, too. Nailing down enough shards to convert to threads and then convert to ixp would double-whammy one on the inf-sink front and soak a number of shards I don't really want to go calculate right now.

Converting at the non-gated 2=1 rate will ultimately take someone even longer, as they'll have to generate up to twice as many shards for the same result, and extend the inf sink's reach into their pocket by up to an identical margin.

In short and sum? Converting shards requires generation of shards. Generation of sufficient shards to both unlock the i20 slots as well as craft even just t3's to stick in them will almost certainly take you so long and/or cost you so much inf that you are basically being forced by functional reality to farm the incarnate trials.

That's functionally forced, not literally. You either take the train on the rails provided to get where you want to go, or you walk. In this case, my perception is 'or you walk on your hands across vast expanses of terrain that's largely unfriendly to your interests in the first place', and is the comparison really inaccurate?

I'll not even get into the costs of time and inf and sanity associated with trying to craft t4's for the i20 slots out of shard conversions. The terms 'prohibitive' and 'insane' and 'ridiculous' and a fair few colorful expletives too swiftly come to mind for me to comment reasonably in that direction.









She did what's already been done to death on this here forum-at-large by way of casually waving at shard conversion as an (and forgive me if I've misinterpreted the apologist context of most such posts, not only hers) entirely acceptable alternative to farming the BAF and Lamda.

I suppose it's acceptable in the framing of that nobody, including (almost certainly) the devs really care if you're doing it one way or the other or doing your best to synergize them both. By logical attrition, the acceptability of the disparity between the means of advancement hinges exclusively on service to personal agenda.

Is there technically a means by which people can experience the i20 shinies without ever having to touch a BAF or Lamda trial? Why yes, yes there is.

Is it an equivalent system, or even vaguely implied in its deployed construction as being one? No, and fait accompli for the Devs, it was not meant to be that.

So what, exactly, is the sum and whole of the problem that GG handwaved?

Breaking down shards is not a viable alternative. A nice perk that can supplement the very clearly intended course's yields? Sure. Could it occasionally provide a nice little supplement when you find yourself sitting after who knows how long of doing whatever on some shards you could convert?

Yes, but not realiably or consistently, and not in any even remotely economical fashion where the resources of inf, and most importantly time, are concerned to make it consistent.

That's the problem with it being referenced as any kind of viable alternative. It isn't, it cannot be, no amount of deterministic effort will make it be and handwaving the concerns of those that are basically saying "What the heck? We either grind until our eyes bleed for rewards that are doled out on some participation-weighting that seems pretty plainly to favor irresponsible teamplay or we grind until our whole body ruptures like in an anime bloodspray? Some options, guys!". is trite.


It does nothing to broaden anybody's understanding of the current situation, moreover, or that the current situation is likely strictly that; the current situation.

I've washed the salt out of quite a few peoples' eyes on my home server in a multitude of leagues I've both run and participated in by taking the time to, instead of handwave them or insult their intelligence by pointing at shard conversion as any kind of sane person's alternative to anything but ever, ever, ever logging out again by encouraging them to consider that we're not playing in a vaccuum.

And that this system, being quite new and deployed in what I can only call a bare-bones fashion, will only improve with time. Options will come. Alternate paths will flesh out around it in some shape, form or fashion or another, and if they're patient enough to wait the growing pains out, they probably will not have to grind the same two things over and over like mad hamsters on the wheel of shiny dispensation for all of their characters present and future.

Believe me, it works a lot better than mindless parroting of rubbish. Shard conversion is 'an alternative path' for the devs. They've provided it, you can do it, it's there, their hands are washed of immediate responsibility to provide 'an alternate path', they've bought themselves a half inch of breathing room to get other needful things done in, and something to wave at as a technical provision made in the meantime between 'The Current Situation' and actual, viable alternatives I, for one, see as being inevitably on the way.

When? Soon™, of course.

Just like all else worth waiting for 'round these parts.

Perhaps.

I does seem, however, that there is a qualitative difference in the way Very Rare IO's and Very Rare Incarnate Abilities are viewed, at least by a decent chunk of the playerbase.

The 'Very Rare' label on purple IO's is an explicit statement by the Devs that they are, well, just that - very rare indeed. As in: not widespread - as in: not all of your characters will possess them in numbers, if at all. Yet when approaching the Very Rare Incarnate abilities, the feeling seems to be - at least for some players - that if your character doesn't have a full set, they are somehow doing something wrong. I was just trying to determine if there was some basic reason behind that, beyond Gotta Catch 'Em All.

Regarding the whole of your post, neither she nor I claimed that shard to thread conversion was a viable alternative to slot completely. Just a reminder:

GG is talking purely about iXP. No slotting; simply unlocking. And that is what I mean by referencing the hand-waving. It does exactly what she claimed. By using shards, we can reduce by not having to run the trials to unlock (or at least not as much) but, not avoid the grind.

My reply was to you in the context of unlocking with the addition of slotting; to show the reductions in runs it took me to slot without conversion. I didn't convert shards to build components, I did it to convert them to iXP so that I could begin to slot. I simply used the leftovers I had after building by tier 4 Alpha. That was my point.

Would I call it a viable alternative to slotting? Probably not beyond a tier 1.

--Rad