Shard queries

Hello good people of incarnate disposition. Just got a few queries.

If you are doing a TF and you set it to +1,2,3, or 4. Does this affect the liklihood of shard dropping?

If you are level shifted from your existing alpha enhancement, does that affect your pickup rate?

What about Incarnate shifted from Judgement, Interface etc...?

Im just wondering because myself on an unlocked but unslotted Tanker last night in the Lady Grey TF picked up 9 shards, a friend on a Defender with level shift and an incarnate shift got 1.

Or is it the same answer as always... random?

Short answer : yes, it is random. Sucks for your buddy, but it happens.

Long aswer : it still is random, but you can do some things to help them drop. Namely, the more mobs you off, the higher your chances. According to Paragon wiki, testing so far indicates that shards have abysmally low chances of droping on minions (I think 1 in a thousand or so), low on Lts (one in 250) and reasonable on bosses (1 in 50, give or take). So the more mobs in your mission, the more bosses you kill, the higher your chances. Each mob has a chance to drop a shard for everyone in the team, but the drop chances are calculated independently for each team member - so you could get 4 shards in 4 bosses while your team leder doesn't see one in the whole mission. Infuriating, I know, but that's how it works.

What doesn't shift your chances, AFAIK, is the con level of the mob. So long as it cons white or higher, it can drop shards, but an orange-con boss and a purple-con boss seem to give the same chances (AV and EB might have higher drop rates, but it's unconfirmed. Still, from my experience, they do). So the best way to "farm" threads is to set the mission so minions are at +0, and up the number of players you're worth. Setting the con level higher just makes it harder and longer to defeat the mobs, so in a way it hurts your drop rate.

The level shift from Alpha is screwy in this case. Technically it sets you up so your damage, HPs and such are that of a level 51 toon, but supposedly doesn't affect the rewards from mobs. Still, with it a +0 minion cons blue to you, and just to be on the safe side, I always set my missions to +1 when I look for shards. It supposedly has no other direct effect on shard drops.

As for the incarnate shifts, since they only activate in Trials, there's no way to change how they'd affect shard drops there even if you wanted to. And just for info, shards now drop on any level mission so long as the mob cons white to your exemplared level, so no need to do only TFs or even just level-50 stuff. I got 3 on a Caven of Transcendance Trial two weeks ago off level-15 mobs. And one of the best places I found to get shards in the Rikti Mothership Raid, since you're swimmingin high-con mobs (including swarms of EB Magi) just begging to be shot. I got 13 once on one Raid.

Hope that helps.

That was lovely, thanks very much! The more mobs the merrier essentially, and as long as they are at least white, we're good.

And I exemplar loads on my characters anyway. I think doing that lends quite a hefty advantage to your team mates who are not high level. As I understood it, what powers you have that still work while exemplared or malefactored, are slotted with how many slots you have prior to exemplaring, and the enchancements you got in them, function to what level of enhancement you could use at that level. I find exemplaring kind of cool as well. Makes you think before you strike.

Well I was certainly happy to have picked up 9 shards in that TF but Im gonna need to do a whole lot more to get my alpha sorted out!

I'll just have to let me mate know that he just had rotten luck.

You can get your alpha sorted out with iTrial components as well. There are more recipes that include the Trial components, just need to scroll down.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Yeah, there's also the matter of the 400 million price tags to create some of the very rare things using threads.

Shards may take time but its free!

Inf costs were reduced in I20.5 -- they're still quite steep in absolute terms, but I think the VR conversion is now 100 million.

100 million? That's not so bad. Darn sight better than 400 million.