Major Class Item Costs

[KouklaGirl]

Why is it that the Putrid Slime of Helchgam and the Rune of Winged Dominance are 1,000 - 1,300 SM more than most of the other class items? This hurts Hunters in the long run because they specifically need both of these items. I would need to get 5,200 skirmish marks just to get those two items, which I doubt I will ever achieve unless I do nothing but play skirmishes for the next several weeks (and I'm already burned out on them). Most other classes pay 910 to 1,950 SM, at most, for their major class items.

Sure, I could find a group to hit Carn Dum, but I spent the past several days in Angmar, and never once did I see a call for a CD group there or in GLFF for that matter. Additionally, chances are if there was a group, the other five people would be rolling for those items too.

[Varenthor]

I don't know dude but just do a couple skirmishes a day and you'll have it in no time. I took the skirmish mark route over CD and it didn't take too long.

[Yula_the_Mighty]

Why is it that the Putrid Slime of Helchgam and the Rune of Winged Dominance are 1,000 - 1,300 SM more than most of the other class items?

It is because these items are very difficult and time consuming to acquire the old fashioned way.

Some classes are lucky enough to need the troll unique from the big troll near the entrance to URU. Simple 10 minute sortie with a group six 50s and its done. Uru does not have locks. You can get six of them in well under an hour. Back when people were doing Uru trolls for the kill deed. This unique could be bought for under 50 silvers on the auction hall. Of course, these days you can only get five because Turbine only allows five instance starts in an hour.

Meanwhile the Slime was going for 12 gold if you were lucky enough to find one on the auction hall at this price. I bought some of these items at 12 gold. Based on my analysis, it was less time intensive to earn 12 gold than it was to run CD six times.

[StiofanGA]

Why is it that the Putrid Slime of Helchgam and the Rune of Winged Dominance are 1,000 - 1,300 SM more than most of the other class items? This hurts Hunters in the long run because they specifically need both of these items. I would need to get 5,200 skirmish marks just to get those two items, which I doubt I will ever achieve unless I do nothing but play skirmishes for the next several weeks (and I'm already burned out on them). Most other classes pay 910 to 1,950 SM, at most, for their major class items.

Sure, I could find a group to hit Carn Dum, but I spent the past several days in Angmar, and never once did I see a call for a CD group there or in GLFF for that matter. Additionally, chances are if there was a group, the other five people would be rolling for those items too.

Getting the rune was amazingly easy. I think I did about 3 skirms daily over 3 or 4 days and it was mine. This included spending some of my marks on leveling my protector up. If I had to spend another 3 days to get the slime ( I don't, I have a Min) it wouldn't bother me too much. I think I spent more time grinding for the Loth leaves and branches for my Beleriand/+orc scroll a few weeks ago. Now that was a pain. Doing the skirms was not.

Just my opinion of course. I'm not sure what you are looking for here, validation of your complaint maybe. I just don't see it that way. It's so quick and easy, and I'm hardly one of the uber l33t kids playing this game. Give it another go, it will be over with in no time.

[Silverangel]

I would need to get 5,200 skirmish marks just to get those two items

I agree with you, the total mark cost for the worst case scenario class items is pretty crazy. I was lucky; I had five other 65's with thousands of marks accumulated who could buy the items and help my lowbie, and even then I also had to buy a some things off of the AH. If someone thinks that grind is easy, I would suspect they are already L65 and not L40, have unlocked everything, and are getting max marks for their efforts.

[Ulrek]

Run the new Rift Skirmish... I find it gives me the most marks per hour... I average around 500 or so marks an hour on that skirm not counting trade ins.

[forusrname]

Run the new Rift Skirmish... I find it gives me the most marks per hour... I average around 500 or so marks an hour on that skirm not counting trade ins.

At level 45-50? How did you get it unlocked?

Yea, I think the nay-sayers are using alts at 65 to earn the marks, or waited until 65 to do the class quest (recommended if you plan to skirmish them) or something. At 40-50 you get very few marks and probably want to use some of them for gear and soldier leveling, there just are not enough marks to go around.

My advice is to ask your kin for some high level help or, with any luck, someone has some of the items in their bank. Its much easier to get a high level walkthru group to help you than to earn marks. Or, find someone who has excess marks who loves to skirmish and bum the items, promise to repay with empower scrolls in a couple of months.

But the easiest thing to do is skip these quests until you get to 65 and can farm your own marks, then finish it up rapidly at that time -- 1k marks in an hour is easily doable at 65 where at 45, its easily 2-3 times as long to earn the same amount.

[KouklaGirl]

Points taken, but why should I have to wait til L65 to do a L45 quest when other classes can get theirs done at level 45 ~ 50?

If anything, the top items that all classes are required to get should be the same price, not based on how hard they are to get.

Like I said, it's highly unfair to Hunters just because they happen to need those two quest items.

Oh, and I'm not in a kinship.

[Kyrv]

Why is it that the Putrid Slime of Helchgam and the Rune of Winged Dominance are 1,000 - 1,300 SM more than most of the other class items? This hurts Hunters in the long run because they specifically need both of these items. I would need to get 5,200 skirmish marks just to get those two items, which I doubt I will ever achieve unless I do nothing but play skirmishes for the next several weeks (and I'm already burned out on them). Most other classes pay 910 to 1,950 SM, at most, for their major class items.

Sure, I could find a group to hit Carn Dum, but I spent the past several days in Angmar, and never once did I see a call for a CD group there or in GLFF for that matter. Additionally, chances are if there was a group, the other five people would be rolling for those items too.

I think it's awesome that we can get class and rep items from skirmishes. Just...awesome.

I don't feel the cost is too high at all, they are giving you a new optional way to get some good stuff and it's painless.

[KouklaGirl]

I don't have a problem with that.

The problem I have is that my Hunter would have to pay 5,200 SM to get the two final items he needs (Putrid Slime of Helchgam and Rune of Winged Dominance), whereas other classes pay less because their items are "easier to obtain".

Personally, I think it should be the other way around...if an item is easier to obtain, it should be more expensive when it comes to skirmish marks, not cheaper.

I can get some items for 510 SM (x5), and yet I can farm that stuff all day. But it would take an act of Congress for me to get a group together to get the PSoH and a RoWD, and on top of that I'm sure the other 5 people would be rolling on the items as well, so I would only have a 17% chance of getting it, which means I would have to do multiple runs with multiple PuGs, thus my chances would go down even more.

And it takes a lot longer than "just a few runs a day" to get the SM's you need. I'm already at the burnout point with Skirmishes, and I only have about 1700 SM's. I really don't feel like running the skirmishes over and over and over time and time again just so I can get to 5200 SM's.

IMHO, 2600 SM's each for the two items is way too high.

[Golledhel]

I don't feel the cost is too high at all, they are giving you a new optional way to get some good stuff and it's painless.

I would say it's more painful to run hundreds of Skirms at Lvs 45-50 to get the Putrid Slime of Helchgam and Rune of Winged Dominance, than it is to run Carn Dum.

[SpankyPenzaanz]

We did a full clear of CD (3man) last night and it took about 3 hours. I took a toon I hadn't done CD with and I ended up getting almost 15k rep with Council of the North made about 1.5g straight cash and a bunch of nice drops for alts and class items for the people that needed it. Definitely easier and faster and more fun to run CD than fart around in skirmishes for weeks. Not only that but you see an instance that on level makes the entire DG cluster and area look like an area befitting an incompetent Cobra Commander before Serpentor came along.

Why is it that in (spoiler alert!) the Memories of Mithrandir instance that Gandalf comes running out of there so scared sh*tless that he leaves his staff behind and here we are just tooling around looking for khazad-copper, mithril flakes, and black badges?

[Kyrv]

I would say it's more painful to run hundreds of Skirms at Lvs 45-50 to get the Putrid Slime of Helchgam and Rune of Winged Dominance, than it is to run Carn Dum.

It takes over 200 skirmishes? Are marks that low at 45-50?

Then I don't know, wait until later or do CD?

Over 200 skirmishes? Really?

[LewsTherinTelamon]

Personally, I think it should be the other way around...if an item is easier to obtain, it should be more expensive when it comes to skirmish marks, not cheaper.

I personally don't agree with that. If everything were the inverse of the cost on the AH/effort put in to find it in the landscape it wouldn't make sense. Scrolls of Empowerment by your theory would be the same.

Now yes hunters do get screwed over on the level 45 class quests needing both the slime and the rune but that's been a hunters life since SoA, and back then you only had the options of CD and the AH so personally I'd be thankful. I know I got my rune for my RK through the skirmish system.

[Eliel]

The devs specifically commented that they chose to price the class items based on their difficulty to obtain and their AH price history. Trying to balance the class quest items to be equal costs for all classes, when multiple classes needed the same items, proved to be just about impossible (especially when some items could be easily obtained from a 5-minute jaunt into CD or Uru).

Really, the problem is that Hunters need two of the toughest class items to get. The class quests ought to be rebalanced by requiring different items. Unfortunately, the quests can't be changed without making everybody start over and collect their Unyielding Drake Scales and Bubbling Droplets all over again, which the devs don't want to do. So, we wind up with the current system.

Yeah, it's unfair to some classes over others, but really, it was always unfair. The game itself just hadn't put a number on the imbalance.

[KouklaGirl]

It takes over 200 skirmishes? Are marks that low at 45-50?

Then I don't know, wait until later or do CD?

Over 200 skirmishes? Really?

At 45, you have the option of four skirmishes. Shire, Gondamon, Amon Sul and Bree. You average ~ 100 SM's per skirmish (mol). So, that's about 400 SM's a day if you run the daily quests (although I think that number may be high). So, if you do each run every day, you're looking at two weeks of non-stop runs to get those items, or a total of 52 runs. Of course, in that time you'll be locked down on any other purchases because you have to save up for those items. Oh, and turtle beaks...that's another 1,600 SM's because those can't be solo'd either. So, we're looking at a total of 6,800 skirmish marks now (68 runs, or 17 days).

Now, I'm not saying "it's too hard", because it's not. I will say it's a grind though. I'm already burnt out on the skirmishes. Having to do four runs a day for the next two to almost three weeks doesn't look appetizing to me at all (and Turbine said that the skirmishes were never meant to be a grind...yeah, right).

My main complaint here, again, is that I think 2,600 SM's for each item is way too much. I'm just humbly requesting that all the high tier items (PSoH, RoWD, etc.) be brought up or down to the same price across the board. Again, it seems a little unfair for Hunters to have to pay 5,200 skirmish marks when other classes are paying under 3,000 total (or less) for theirs.

Although, if that happened, every other class would complain that their prices are too high...but, then everyone would understand what Hunters are going through.

[Jilla]

I can sympathize with the OP... it took me months of running CD to finally get the Rune of Winged Dominance... (lol my kin finally had to make a special CD run just for me to get that one item... it was pathetic. I just never won a roll for it and in PuGs people wanted it to sell). On the bright side OP, at least you'll get it eventually. But like I was, you'll be sick of grinding to get it.

By any chance are you on Vilya? I bet I can gather a few people to go to CD and you are welcome to come along. Maybe we can get at least one of those items for you.

[KouklaGirl]

I can sympathize with the OP... it took me months of running CD to finally get the Rune of Winged Dominance... (lol my kin finally had to make a special CD run just for me to get that one item... it was pathetic. I just never won a roll for it and in PuGs people wanted it to sell). On the bright side OP, at least you'll get it eventually. But like I was, you'll be sick of grinding to get it.

Oh, I had a Hunter before as well, and a Rune-keeper too (both were deleted at 65). I gave up on ever doing CD because I could never find a group, and I was in a kinship to boot (a small one at that). They never got their level 50 quests completed.

I do have some characters on Vilya, but play mainly on Landroval.

[Golledhel]

It takes over 200 skirmishes? Are marks that low at 45-50?

Then I don't know, wait until later or do CD?

Over 200 skirmishes? Really?

Lv 45 skirm gives around 54 marks, plus another 50ish from the daily. With the very few number of skirms you have available at that level, plus all the marks you also have to spend to upgrade your soldier, since you're still leveling and not stuck at level cap, it takes a long time to get the marks required for the class items. Much longer than if you were Lv 65.

I think the Skirmish barter NPCs should follow the same philosophy the Skirmish Trainer takes, but backwards. Items should cost less marks at lower levels. I think the problem with the Curiosities Vendor is that the item costs are balanced for higher level players.