Ha. What a joke.

First of all, the Incarnate Thread rate-of-income in Dark Astoria is garbage. It really is; takes forever.

And we've got these Incarnate Abilities that take three Components to craft. Three Commons for a Common, two Commons and an Uncommon for an Uncommon, and two Commons and a Rare for a Rare.

The Rares, as you know, are chiefly useful for level shifts in Lore and Destiny. But what does it take to get them?

Well, Common Components are 20 Threads. Not too bad, you're guaranteed at least that in the daily arc bonus and it's quick enough to get that many through the repeatable missions.

Uncommons are 60. Eh, it's a bit more, but not too out there. I mean, it's like three Commons all on its own, plus the two more you need to actually craft an Ability, but it's still something you can knock out in a day with a mix of the arc bonus and some repeatable. It's just 100 Threads total if you do it all from scratch.

Remember, the drop rate for Threads is laughably low, and you can only get one per repeatable mission after the first one each day (which awards a grand total of two).

And then there's the Rare Components, which in addition to costing 100 Threads, also cost 25,000,000 Inf and--get this--four Uncommon Components. This is 380 Threads from scratch. Doing the math, this makes a single Rare Ability equivalent to 3.8 Uncommon Abilities, in addition to the Uncommon you need to craft it!



But wait!

That's not the joke!

As you can see in the picture, I have everything I need for my last Level Shift, and I didn't get it in Incarnate Trials. It was easy sailing to just wait it out and grind the Threads and Components I needed in Dark Astoria.

The joke, which you're probably curious about by now, is that the progression in Dark Astoria was made as pitifully slow as it is for the very purpose of pushing players to run Incarnate Trials. Ha! As if!

Sorry, devs, but it didn't work. Solo progression may be absolute rubbish, but it's a long shot from convincing me I have to run Incarnate Trials. Nice try, though!

You show em man.

So funny I forgot to laugh?

*Directs you to the beta forums where there are a few large threads about this*

Edit: Personally im finding the thread drop rate ok as it is.

the joke is that you are playing a level 50 which is dull and tedious

when you could be playing a level 16 and having a ton of fun

Seeing as how I don't care about Very Rares, my personal schedule would look like this... Assuming the worst of luck just running 3 arcs a day for the various bonuses, this is what you can expect:

Option 1: At least a Common component or, if you choose, 4 Incarnate Threads (by breakdown)
Option 2: At least 2 Astral Merits, which become 8 Incarnate Threads (by conversion)
Option 3: Always 10 Incarnate Threads

Daily income: your choice of 18 Threads and a Common, or 22 Threads

Let's see, in order to get a Rare Ability, you need...

* A total of 7 Common Components (no Threads are needed for this)
* A total of 5 Uncommon Components (you'd need 60 Threads each)
* A total of 1 Rare Component (which itself takes 4 of those Uncommons + 100 Threads)
* A total of 340 Threads, including those needed for the Uncommons and Rare

So after 7 days, you'll have all the Common Components, plus 126 Threads. This means another 10 days at 22 Threads each to push you over that 340 boundary.

This means that, if you are as unlucky as I am, it will still not take you more than 17 days to make a Rare Ability from scratch. And in all likelihood, the following will happen:

* You will get many Threads from enemy drops by the time you save 'em all up
* The Component reward may not be Common. I wound up with a Very Rare yesterday and had to take a screenshot for forensic investigation.
* The Merit reward may be an Empyrean, and 8 of those will net you a Rare by itself.

That was my intention, yes. I had to do the misleading build-up for the dramatic change in direction!

But nobody thought it was clever. )-:

changing direction from complaining about solo incarnate content to complaining about team incarnate content did not seem like a dramatic change in direction. It seemed merely like expanding the scope of your incarnate content complaining.

...it was meant to be clever?

Don't forget you also have 10 threads and an astral from doing the weekly SSAs. And you can score 5 threads from dropping Adamastor, which so far has been pretty easy to pull together a small team to do. And there's the repeatables for the 2 once a day and then repeatedly 1 thread.

Given that your alternative before Dark Astoria was -just- the SSAs for any kind of solo incarnate content beyond shards, I'd say the system is not that bad off. And we know for a fact it is only going to go up from here, the least of all with the tweak to the repeatable's daily reward coming in the pipes.

Besides, it's the incarnate xp needed to unlock the slots that's really horrible. The thread rate when compared to what is needed for the powers themselves is extremely generous in comparison.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

Okay. Let me get this right...

You never ran an itrial.

You just got your last level shift today, which is a week after the new Dark Astoria and solo path was released.

And you start the thread of with...

"First of all, the Incarnate Thread rate-of-income in Dark Astoria is garbage. It really is; takes forever."

So either you're really bad at showing sarcasm over message threads, or you're idea of takes forever is skewed.

I went from 49 to 50+3 with one ITF and a day and a half in trials, including tier 4 on alpha and judgement. (granted I had some "threads" in e-mail, as I always do.) Compare that rate to DA soloing. Hilarious.

I love jokes! ...but I think I missed the punch line somewhere.