The new Solo-able incarnate drops

I am totally fine with the rate. Its great. I love it and its great fun and these are the best missons i think you ever put out.

I wonder what you all think. yes it could be higher but its high enough for me.

Yes it could be shorter but its just long enough for me.


please let me know your thoughts.

No opinion on drop rates yet. I'm just enjoying the new content in DA. I'll try to get my 46 Widow to 50 to test the drop rates later (all my other 50's have all their slots open already, so I can't really test with any existing toon.)

I-XP rate seems fine to me.
Thread drop rate is not affected by enemy level and is too low. This should be changed for all drops so those running at -1 aren't rewarded for it.
Component drop rates are at 80% common. I'd be fine with this if not for;
Being locked down to one component a day sucks a butt.

the 20 hour cooldown on the rewards table is only for repeating the arcs in Ouro. The initial run through DA let's you snap up a component roll every time. It could be better obviously, but even 6 commons is 2 T1s at least.

My thoughts:

• IXP gains are acceptable.
  
• Drop rates from mobs seems ok enough... could be a bit better but its not excruciatingly low like shards.
  
• Daily rewards from the ouro run arcs are fine imo.
  
• The repeatable mission thread rewards is... stingy.

I guess I kind of fall to the middle ground here. I think the iXP rates are ok, thread drops are alright, could be a touch faster but I can live with it as is. Thread arc/repeatable rewards need to be higher, it's pretty weak as is.

The per day limit combined with the HORRIBLE chance to get anything other than common is painful. T3 will be a chore and T4 is just a crapshoot hoping to get lucky on a random reward. That sucks, a lot. I don't mind putting in some time but the way it is now makes T4 pretty unlikely to happen.

I am the target audience for this content. Before this patch I had a couple characters with T1 or T2 alpha and that was it, 0 iXP on all my characters, never ran a single trial. It's nice to have some more options, but at the same time very aggravating to have t4 really put out of realistic reach.

Did you guys voice these concerns in the beta? Or did they change the rates from beta to live?

So far, I've been lucky. In 3 days of playing one character has received over a hundred threads (drops and converted components and merits) and was able to open Lore and Destiny and slot a T1 pet into Lore. There will be good drop days and bad drop days, and the past few days were exceptionally good.

My expectations are low for Tier 3 slotting - I really don't care if it happens or not. From this point on, I'll just be a collector of threads, components, merits and see what happens down the road. I'm certainly not going to get into a snit about it - it's simply not that important to my enjoyment of the game.

Good question! No idea.

IXP seemed low to me. I ran all the arcs and I think my percentages went up by 10. However, I'd have to roll through a few repeatables with a full team to get a better feel for the progression rate.

The thread drop rate didn't seem too bad to me, but the 20 hour limit on the meager thread reward in the repeatable missions seems silly.

And given that running at -1 was giving me all level 50 enemies, I disagree with Bill that running at -1 should void the chance for drops.

After a short discussion tonight in game, it occurred to me what seems to be one of the primary differences between the "all is well" and "this sucks" crowds.

Someone asked me what my end goal was and explained to me that theirs was only to hit the three level shifts. When that's your only goal, DA isn't all that bad. Get alpha to T3, save everything else that drops while gaining IXP, slot nothing in judgement and interface when they unlock, then T3 lore and destiny. Done. Three level shifts.

But that's not my goal. My goal is 5 T4s. I have to get 10 T3s and 5 very rare components and whatever else it takes.

The time discrepancy between those two goals is incredibly vast.

My goal is getting Tier 3s in all or most slots. I don't know if I'll ever get there at this rate, but that's my goal.

Also, I'd like to unlock all the Astral/Empyrean costume pieces, but given the ridiculous costs relative to the rarity of said merits I doubt I'll ever achieve that.

Here's my advice, based on experience, for people wanting to make the most of what DA offers (I'm the guy that on beta actually *did* spend a month trying to get a character to Tier 3 in Alpha, Lore, and Destiny, so this is my "if I'd known better when I started, this is what I would have done differently):

Do make sure you do one run of all of the major rewards a day (or however often you can) - one component, one merit roll, 10 threads.

Don't: Spend your threads to craft commons or uncommons - The drop rates are actually going to give you about twice the number of commons you need (relative to rares and very rares).

Don't: Convert your empyreans to threads. Save them up for a rare.

On average, you're going to get about one uncommon for every six or seven commons. (Again, on average - that's subject to the vagaries of the RNG), which is pretty close to what you need anyway. That's why my advice is not to waste threads on uncommons.

In about two weeks, you'll have the threads (and astral merits) to flat out craft directly a rare. By week two you'll also have about a 50-50 chance of having had one rare actually drop. So at the very least you'll have one Tier 3 power, and a 50% shot at having two. On the other hand, if you've been using your threads to craft commons and uncommons, you'll be several days away from having enough to craft the rare.

By around week three, on average you'll have the empyreans for a rare. So you'll have two Tier 3's crafted for sure, and there's a decent (65%) chance you'll have seen a rare drop by then, and have your third Tier 3 crafted.

No disrespect to Bill intended at all, but in my experience, it *is* a good idea to craft powers for Judgment and even Interface. By the time you've got your hands on what you need to make rares for Lore and Destiny, the drops alone are very likely to have given you an excess of commons and uncommons needed for Tier 1 or Tier 2 in Judgment and Interface.

And to be honest, I found having the Judgement nuke available really did measurably speed things up.

Anyway, that's my two-cents, for what it's worth.

EDIT: And getting anything to Tier 4 using DA is something you should consider a very long term goal. It's doable, but you need to be prepared for it to take a while. Specifically, on average, you'll need to save empyreans for about three months to have enough for a very rare. In that same three month time, you've got about a 90% chance of having seen a component roll give you a very rare as well.

I've play pretty much casually, but when I do play I pretty much jump on a big PUG iTrial every chance I get. I have 4 level 50's, and only one has one Tier 4. It's not that big of a deal. You characters will feel fine at Tier 3. Tier 4's are pretty much small incremental improvements. Nice to have, but not required.

In truth I haven't done a lot of UT or TPN, so I've missed a lot chances for a Very Rare. But I don't see that DA is actually all that much of let-down for soloist. It might seem like it, based on what you imagine everyone else is getting, but I don't think it actually is.

Yea, nobody cares about incremental improvement. It's not like I use Mids to check everything so that I can get as much HP and regen possible while making sure I stay above the defense softcap. It's not like anyone actually works towards getting a specific value of recharge in their attacks for pauseless attack chains. Surely no one is going to spend the hero merits or inf necessary to get a paltry 3% buff to defense from a pvp IO.

You know what's unnecessary? Any enhancement at all. I can solo from 1 to 50 with an emp/ene defender without ever slotting a single enhancement. Might take me a year to do it, but this game ain't rocket surgery. (No, I won't be doing this. I don't like having my time wasted.)

I'm not imagining what other people are getting. That data is being documented right here in these forums.

As stated in this thread, turning up your difficulty definitely improves the rate of iXP gain. I ran through almost the entire arc on kind of a squishy team at base setting. Today I ran some of the arcs with my brother while playing one of my better tanks. We ran at +2 and the iXP was very noticeably improved. iXP rate seems fine.

Rate of thread drops seems in the ballpark of okay. I haven't really run enough of the content to have a good feel for it. Mainly because my first run-through was on a toon that's all tier 4 so I was completely ignoring the drops.

I wasn't aware that there was a timer across all arcs and that it was 20 hours. That seems a bit harsh. Not draconian, but 'somewhat' stingy. With 6 arcs, I think a good solution would be to have arcs 1, 3 and 5 on a timer and 2, 4 and 6 on a different timer.

As for the content - A#1. Very nice.