Bullroarer Update 19 - Preview 3 and Phial collection question

[Cordovan]

Hello! Bullroarer will reopen shortly with a new preview of Update 19. This update includes a bunch of polish. You can find the updated Release Notes here.

We also have a specific target for this preview that we would appreciate your feedback on:

How quickly are you acquiring the North Ithilien endgame phials? Please include information about how long you collected, what areas you were in, how many other people were collecting in yoru area, and how many phials of Verdant, Umber, Crimson, Amber, and Sapphire extract you acquired.

[Angel_Baby6]

Will do ! Any news when BR will be up? Dying to see the changes from this build

[Tybur]

Will do ! Any news when BR will be up? Dying to see the changes from this build

The server is back up and available.

[Angel_Baby6]

The server is back up and available.

Thank you !!!

[Mar-Evayave]

Can we sticky this please?

[Sylence]

Sad to see Burglar changes are still falsely described as fixed. Off-hands and Location is Everything have not been fixed at all. Nothing has been changed.

[Gandalphor]

10 minutes of running around on the patch of land that's named Aelinveren or something like that. 0 flowers.
Only found 2 near the road, the rest has nothing.
Same goes for the part of land where Henneth Anun stable is. Only here not even next to the road.
Bar Tarnaher is very poor in flowers. There are some on a terrain that is seamingly hard or impossible to walk.
Very few at Bar Aroth. A few more at 'The' of The Crossroads.

It's a little denser at Cirith Negen.
Torngoth is also decent.

I've seen 0 people around when I was collecting these. Still, with the ammount of people doing landscape on live servers with population such as Arkenstone and the ammount needed for one piece of armour or anything else, there would need to be much more of these. And less for the barter.
And the competition won't be only raiders who will eventually want to upgrade the armour, but also people who want housing and other items, etc.

Here are the screenshots of before and after phials after 45 minutes of riding around the whole map.

[DiogoVP]

Hello! Bullroarer will reopen shortly with a new preview of Update 19. This update includes a bunch of polish. You can find the updated Release Notes here.

We also have a specific target for this preview that we would appreciate your feedback on:

How quickly are you acquiring the North Ithilien endgame phials? Please include information about how long you collected, what areas you were in, how many other people were collecting in yoru area, and how many phials of Verdant, Umber, Crimson, Amber, and Sapphire extract you acquired.

Please, no dismounting when collecting phials. We've just said goodbye to dismounting when collecting from crafting nodes, I don't wanna go back to that again.

[Valamar]

How quickly are you acquiring the North Ithilien endgame phials? Please include information about how long you collected, what areas you were in, how many other people were collecting in yoru area, and how many phials of Verdant, Umber, Crimson, Amber, and Sapphire extract you acquired.

Only had a brief amount of time available earlier this evening. The results were:

### Chat Capture: General 10/07 08:37 PM ###
You will now be known as Valamar Centurian, Weatherstock Wayfarer to those you meet in your travels.

* Traveled from The far marshes of the Nindalf (Quest: One massive Problem) back to Aelin Veren and passed no collectible flowers along the way#- taking essentially the same root back as I took out on the quest.

* Arriving at Aelin Veren, in the front I harvested the following in a single 2-3 minute pass with no one else present, and knowing where the spawn points were from Beta build 2.
* The first 4 were individual plants; then 5 phials of Crimson from one Rock-rose plant; then another single.

You have acquired: [2 Phials of Verdant Extract].
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Umber Extract].
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Umber Extract].
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Umber Extract].

You have acquired: [2 Phials of Crimson Extract].
You have acquired: [Phial of Crimson Extract].
You have acquired: [Phial of Crimson Extract].
You have acquired: [Phial of Crimson Extract].

You have acquired: [2 Phials of Umber Extract].

[NeebPlayer]

Wanted to do a full north-south run but the guests arrived too early. So 15m in Bâr Transfer, the area immediately south of Aragorn's camp in the north, yielded about 20 phials. Flowers seem to be plentiful, except when I went down to the area where the Keeper warband is, there was none there. Warband also doesn't drop a gift box, nor phials. I will do more testing when I can later.

[Hallandil]

The two key herb nodes to search for seems to be Bell O' Dale and Drakewort, which both contain 1 sapphire extract and 1 amber extract respectively. Bell 'O Dale seems to spawn near water sources on the northern parts of the region and Drakewort I found around the Easterling camp while completing the last few parts of the Jarl Guthilm quests. Sapphire extracts are also awarded from completed the region's deeds, but I only saw if for the explorer and the quest ones correct me If I am wrong. Meanwhile the Amber extracts are awarded throughout stages of the epic story, only 3 in total but that's better than nothing.

The rest, ones like Larkspur, Horsetail, Oxfly, Vetchling, Rock-rose (and 1 other that I can't recall) all give mixes of the smaller Verdant, Umber and Crimson phials. There is also a repeatable daily on the western slopes around Cair Andros from a ranger that the North Ithillien quests with eventually lead you to. You collect 9 quest flowers and receive 5 of the 3 smaller ones.

There was mentions in the first build that there was meant to be jewelry with this system as well. Was that the teal jewelry in the Update 19 boxes? I guess they're now intended for a later update, say U19.1/.2 and the North Ithillien world event to go with it?

[Belechael]

I spent less than an hour questing in the first part of the area, doing the quests of the first ranger, and gathered 112 simple extracts and 2 rare.

I was completely alone, not another soul around, which will most certainly won't be the case after U19 goes live.

If you take into account that with the current build you need 4 amber and 2 sapphire extracts per piece of armour, for a total of 24 amber and 12 sapphire, which means a grand total of 24x125+12x250=6K simple extracts (not counting any rares from gathering or deeds/quests), that is approximately 50 hours of flower picking ALONE. No idea how that will play with other players around.

I forgot to check if the Ithilien essence boxes are still for bartering and if yes for how many extracts, 'cause that will give incentive for everyone, regardless of the armour available and obtained to keep gathering extracts ad nauseam.

Personally I don't mind the 50 hours for the armour, but it would be nice to have flowers all over the area and not just in specific places, so that the players will disperse.

[Fegefeuer]

I've checked a bit the flower thing and when it goes live it will be horrible. I have only found a few flowers near two ruins. Flowers should be over all the landscape of North Ithilien. This also kills the exploration. I thought I would be able to explore the landscape to collect flowers, but nop, since the few ones that I could find are near the road and near ruins.

[NeebPlayer]

Wanted to do a full north-south run but the guests arrived too early. So 15m in Bâr Transfer, the area immediately south of Aragorn's camp in the north, yielded about 20 phials. Flowers seem to be plentiful, except when I went down to the area where the Keeper warband is, there was none there. Warband also doesn't drop a gift box, nor phials. I will do more testing when I can later.

I did a second 15m gathering run. After a total of 30m, the result as seen below.



Bell-O-Dale seems to be the flower to look for if you want sapphire extracts. It always grows close to water.

In the below image:

green circle: area I searched
red circle: absolutely no flowers
blue circle: plenty of flowers



The whole time I saw nobody else.

[Theozor]

Since the release notes thread is locked, thank you for this:

• NEW: Hunter's Purge Poison now removes 2 PDFW's instead of 3 poisons.

That was the one skill that stuck out like a sore thumb for my hunter.

[PKCrichton]

So I was going to sit and play at picking flowers to add information about how Flowers were spawning for me but I realized at this hour when I was going to do it almost noone was on Bullroarer so the information would be utterly wrong of how it will be on live given how these are now 'needed' for end game rewards and even housing items.

This did however get me thinking about how how limited the region is for these flowers to be picked and also about Ithilien in general. Why is it that these flower spawns can't be added to South Ithilien 'before the battle'? Having that second landmass with nodes would I think greatly help players and spread out the load of where players are sitting beyond a single zones. Single landmasses of nodes like these were the real problem whenever a new Craft Tier was added and the more land we got with those nodes the less stress this put on the playerbase as people hunted for the nodes.

[NeebPlayer]

So I was going to sit and play at picking flowers to add information about how Flowers were spawning for me but I realized at this hour when I was going to do it almost noone was on Bullroarer so the information would be utterly wrong of how it will be on live given how these are now 'needed' for end game rewards and even housing items.

This did however get me thinking about how how limited the region is for these flowers to be picked and also about Ithilien in general. Why is it that these flower spawns can't be added to South Ithilien 'before the battle'? Having that second landmass with nodes would I think greatly help players and spread out the load of where players are sitting beyond a single zones. Single landmasses of nodes like these were the real problem whenever a new Craft Tier was added and the more land we got with those nodes the less stress this put on the playerbase as people hunted for the nodes.

There is plenty of space in North Ithílien where there are no flowers, like the Field of Cormallen. I would prefer they put flowers into more places in NI before they go over to another region, because... (wait for it)

I can't wait to play in an area again that is full of people running around. I believe the beautiful NI will have such a perfect atmosphere when it is full of life.

[PKCrichton]

There is plenty of space in North Ithílien where there are no flowers, like the Field of Cormallen. I would prefer they put flowers into more places in NI before they go over to another region, because... (wait for it)

I can't wait to play in an area again that is full of people running around. I believe the beautiful NI will have such a perfect atmosphere when it is full of life.

If its true there are these areas w/o them then great put them there. I was just trying to think of how to spread things out a bit and add more places for us to get what is the current end game grind.

[Beastnas]

I'm just worried about what this is going to look like on live servers, assuming they disappear when someone else grabs it.

[NeebPlayer]

I'm just worried about what this is going to look like on live servers, assuming they disappear when someone else grabs it.

This will sound weird considering we are getting really close to Mordor, but I think this content and this area requires a more laid-back mentality. When you go into the garden of Gondor to pick flowers it should not be done in a hurry, trying to be faster than others and trying to get the grind done asap. The scenery is nice and relaxing + thee is nothing much to do in this update outside of picking flowers + this is likely to be the thing for months and months to come. Presonally, I will just run around semi-afk with my hunter, finding what I find when I find it. There will be time to explore what spawns where and how often so the second time you do this it will be already much better.

[Knight.]

If you take into account that with the current build you need 4 amber and 2 sapphire extracts per piece of armour, for a total of 24 amber and 12 sapphire, which means a grand total of 24x125+12x250=6K simple extracts (not counting any rares from gathering or deeds/quests), that is approximately 50 hours of flower picking ALONE. No idea how that will play with other players around.

Come on turbine, we worked hard enough to get the armour in the first place and many still don't have it.
I'm all for a bit of flower picking but please reduce this grind by a) increasing flowers & re-spawn rates b) lowering barter prices

Already have people on live who have made up their mind that they simply aren't going to subject themselves to this, which is unfortunate.

[Valamar]

I'm just worried about what this is going to look like on live servers, assuming they disappear when someone else grabs it.

"Ninjaing" has always been a problem for crafters. However today, that tends to only be true in the lower level areas. Once players hit the 40s and 50s, they spread out and the "stolen node" problem tends to resolve itself.

This same problem existed with specific Quest targets --people hanging around a spawn-point waiting to be the first one to hit the Mob.

Remember -- that problem was what "Open Tapping" and "Remote Looting" were created to solve; way back in about Update 7 around 2012. (I didn't look up the relase notes to see.)

Today, we are going to confront this problem amongst the PvMPs and Raiders - who are the ones who are going to go gaga over the ability to upgrade their Dread Terror Armour.

It is true, by the simple fact that this is a level 105 area, the absolute number of players present will be low -- but the ones present will be the ones who always complain the loudest on the forums!

And yes, at least at the moment, Flora nodes do appear to disappear when someone else grabs the node. So far, I haven't found anybody else harvesting while I have been, so I can't say for certain which game mechanic is being used. I assume it is the same one as used for crafting nodes. However, Flora does appear to re-spawn consistantly in the same place eventually, not being rotated with some sort of place-holder, like a creature. Some nodes just sit there "looking pretty" until they light-up again sometime later. There are in-fact, a few situations where Flora types do rotate. You harvest the node, it disappears and the re-spawn in that location will be of a different type.

[Gandalphor]

I honestly do hope for 3 things:
1. There will be more area covered with the flowers.
2. The numbers needed for barter will get reduced
3. The upgrade will be more significant than only 5 main stat and 25 morale.


I min-max my toons and like to give them the best edge I can with the latest gear I can get. So even unwillingly I will probably do this for 3 toons, maybe not the 4th. But many people are not really motivated to even do this.
Given the ammount of griding and skill this takes: running raids, getting the item, then picking up the flowers... it's tedious.

[Valamar]

So far, what I have observed up through Build 3. Flowers are fairly dense in the following areas basically describing a North-south axis in North Ithilien:

Bâr Aroth
Aelin Veren
Cirith Negen

And all of those areas Flora are with about 10 meters of the Road.

So far I have found no flowers anywhere in the Field of Cormallen - even while completing the quest leading through that area (One Massive Problem).
or around

Henneth Annûn
Cair Andros
Bâr Tarnaher
Torngroth
Tuntham

All while wondering around on foot with my Hunter and "Floaty Names" turned on. Flora are invisible otherwise, unless you specifically mouse over them.
Many different flora (especially Larkspir and Elfspear) spawn INSIDE clusters of other vegitation, making them only visible and accessible by "Del-U" unless you are lucky!
A couple of varieties, notably, Drakewort, seem to spawn in very isolated locations making them easy to spot.
Horsetail and Oxlip tend to be visible because their lighter color stands out against the darker bacground.

So far, I have found only one instance of Bell-o-Dale.

[Valamar]

Summary: Elapsed time 30 minutes
Path: Aragorn’s camp down to Cirth Nagen - starting on the East side of the cut,
and circling back down the west side before looping back up the East side.
On the loop back up the west side, there were only one or two Flora visible.

Note that the Flora in this area did NOT include either Larkspur or Rock-rose,
both of which were plentyful back around Aelin Veren, and to a lesser extent at Bâr Aroth.
(Times are EDT)

Amber = 12
Saphire = 1
Crimson = 30
Verdent = 24
Umber = 2

Details:

### Chat Capture: General 10/08 08:12 PM ###
The current time on your machine is 10/08 07:40 PM.
*** Aragorn’s camp, headed south ****
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Verdant Extract].

You have acquired: [Phial of Sapphire Extract].
You say, 'bell-0-dale'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Verdant Extract].
You say, 'oxlip'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Verdant Extract].
You say, 'oxlip'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Umber Extract].
You say, 'Horsetail'

*** Cirith Negen - West side ****
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Crimson Extract].
You say, 'vetchling'
You have acquired: [Phial of Amber Extract].
You say, 'dralewort'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Verdant Extract].
You say, 'oxlip'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Verdant Extract].
You say, 'oxlip'
You have acquired: [Phial of Amber Extract].
You say, 'drakewort'
You have acquired: [Phial of Amber Extract].
You say, 'drakewort'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Crimson Extract].
You say, 'vetchling'
You have acquired: [Phial of Crimson Extract].
You say, 'Southron's crown'
You have acquired: [Phial of Amber Extract].
You say, 'drakewort'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Verdant Extract].
You say, 'oxlip'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Crimson Extract].
You say, 'vetchling'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Crimson Extract].
You say, 'vetchling'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Verdant Extract].
You say, 'oxlip'
You have acquired: [Phial of Amber Extract].
You say, 'drakewort'
You must face target.
You say, 'vetchling'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Crimson Extract].
You say, 'vetchling'
You must face target.
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Crimson Extract].
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Crimson Extract].
You say, 'vetchling'
You have acquired: [Phial of Amber Extract].
You say, 'drakewort'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Verdant Extract].
You say, 'oxlip'
You have acquired: [Phial of Crimson Extract].
You have acquired: [Phial of Amber Extract].
You say, 'southron's crown'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Verdant Extract].
You say, 'oxlip'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Verdant Extract].
You say, 'oxlip'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Crimson Extract].
You say, 'vetchling'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Crimson Extract].
You say, 'vetchling'
You have acquired: [Phial of Amber Extract].
You say, 'drakewort'
You have acquired: [Phial of Amber Extract].
You say, 'drakewort'
The current time on your machine is 10/08 08:02 PM.
You have acquired: [Phial of Verdant Extract].
You say, 'elfspear'
You have acquired: [Phial of Verdant Extract].
You say, 'elfspear'
You have acquired: [Phial of Crimson Extract].
You say, 'soouthron's crown'
You must face target.
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Crimson Extract].
You say, 'vetchlinkg'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Crimson Extract].
You say, 'vetchlnkg'
You have acquired: [Phial of Amber Extract].
You say, 'drakewort'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Verdant Extract].
You say, 'oxlip'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Verdant Extract].
You say, 'oxlip'
You have acquired: [Phial of Amber Extract].
You say, 'drakewort'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Verdant Extract].
You say, 'oxlip'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Crimson Extract].
You say, 'vetchling'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Verdant Extract].
You say, 'oxlip'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Crimson Extract].
You say, 'vetchling'
You have acquired: [Phial of Amber Extract].
You say, 'drakewort'
You have acquired: [2 Phials of Verdant Extract].
You say, 'oxlip'
The current time on your machine is 10/08 08:12 PM.