Why Is Grinding So Unrewarding?

For me Neverwinter has a major problem. I log into a game that is all about fighting monsters and getting loot while the loot doesn’t feel rewarding and the whole process to gear up feels like a horrible grind without the hope to get somewhere other than running into a lot of paywalls.

If I grind, I often go for one certain item until it drops and any other drop I get is like the drop in the ocean. For example, one mandatory item is the Lostmauth’s Horn. To get it you would need to participate in about 50-100 eLOL runs until it drops (even then it isn’t guaranteed but the chance is pretty high). If we assume a regular ELOL run takes about 20 minutes of time that would mean you need to farm 16-32 hours to get one single Horn drop. While doing it you get also some loot but it is basically worthless.

People doesn’t even bother to pick up green unidentified gear because it is worth nothing. Of course you can get Gold out of it but no one is in need for Gold as currency. Then we have blue gear drops but they are also basically worthless and I personally don’t understand why people picking them up for the same reasons. Add green and blue enchantment drops.

To clarify why it is worthless let’s go into math a bit:
Green gear can be sold by 20-50 AD and has 100 RP.
Blue gear can be sold by 170-200 AD and has 300 RP.
Rank 4 enchantments/runestones are sold for 8-10 AD per enchantment/runestone and have 270 RP.
Rank 5 enchantments/runestones are sold for 52-55 AD per enchantment/runestone and have 1,080 RP.

Salvage Vendor in PE
Your only source of income

To get an artifact equipment piece to epic you need 571,200 RP. That’s 5,712 green gear parts or 1,904 blue gear parts (or something in between those two numbers if you mix them to rank up your gear). To get to legendary you need 4,645,200 RP. That’s 46,452 green gear parts or 15,484 blue gear parts.

To refine the green and blue parts into the artifact equipment they need to be identified as well. If you are VIP you should basically not have big trouble to identify them, but if you don’t good luck with your scroll drops, because it limits the amount of gear you can refine. It’s simply another cap. But even if you have enough scrolls, blue and green gear is still worthless. Selling it on the Auction House nets you about 0,01% of your daily AD refinement limit and a blue part is worth 0,06% of your daily AD refinement limit (numbers are rounded).

That means to double your income you would need to sell 640 green items or 160 blue items. That is something no one can do because there is a drop rule that you only get a certain drop X times (internal drop cooldown).

Same about Enchantments and Artifacts. To get to Legendary (and 50% of the stats the artifacts has) you need 3,847,635 RPs and Mythic is 10,469,635 RP. That means to get your Artifact to Legendary you need 14,250 Rank 4 Enchantments or 3,562 Rank 5 Enchantments. For a Mythic Artifact you need 38,776 Rank 4 Enchantments or 9,694 Rank 5 Enchantments.

That means to pick them up as a player is basically as worthless as green and blue gear. Of course it has a better AD to RP ratio and can stack, but as a regular player 3-4 stacks are the max you can get in between double RP events, a time span of several weeks if not months.

The regular drops aren’t worth anything. Even if we consider their worth in AD, as regular player your basic AD income by refining RAD to AD has a bigger impact than any regular drop until you luck out and get a rare drop that is unbound.

That concept can be applied to other areas of the game as well. Demongorgon and the new skirmishes for example. Why should I participate in it after i have my rings and weapons? Of course I can spend the Ichor later for a Dravite, another refinement item at the shop that costs 10 Ichor. You can however get only 2 Ichor from a chest with a gold rating and you basically only get one key per day. And the Drasit has only 5.000 RP and can only be used for the Twisted Weapon set, nothing else.

The whole time investment in Neverwinter is currently broken. Playing the game virtually rewards you with no items. Of course it grants you RAD that can be refined into AD, but it’s capped. There is simply no reason to play beyond the cap because 90% of your ingame wealth comes from this mechanic.

To get certain key items you must spend a huge amount of AD to get them. A Coalward is 300,000 to 400,000 AD. Your monthly income of AD is about 960,000 AD, or 2-3 Coalescent Wards a month. To progress on an Weapon or Armor Enchantment to the max you need up to 16 of them. That’s 5 months only to get the Coalescent Wards for ONE Weapon/Armor Enchantment. And this doesn’t even include other necessary items like RP and reagents.

It also means experimenting out of the mainstream and test another Armor/Weapon Enchantment is not possible, because it is too costly. Bringing up an ALT feels painful because you need another half a year to get it to a certain level of quality. Of course you can always spend money. But the pricing is ludicrous high. A Coalescent Ward will cost you 10 bucks for basically skipping two weeks of grind and a bit convenience. An account wide unlocked epic mount costs you 25-40$ while there is basically no chance to earn it ingame.

You can get everything with ADs, but instead of playing the game and earn certain items you must rely on a capped mechanic that is only there to limit you. There are limited ways to speed up progression with grinding, which has developed as major issue over quite some time now.

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6 thoughts on “Why Is Grinding So Unrewarding?

  • March 23, 2016 at 8:38 am
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    Reason why people picking green/blue loot is SH mimic now (beside fresh players who just want their gold for kits).
    Im playing 8 toons now (main and one alt of each class), all behind 2.2k il (most 2.5k) and main near 4k il. It was fairly easy to get alts to 2.5k il. Having them really help with salvage limit and allow to run DR lairs for marks = more AD per week.

  • March 23, 2016 at 10:31 am
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    @puchaczysko
    Not really.
    The Mark Of XY are basically RNG drops and you still need key components that doesn’t regularly drop in the game (For example Coalwards and Green Wards).

    • March 23, 2016 at 2:36 pm
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      Sometimes I get gm on almost all toons, sometimes on 1-2. Its additional AD, and very nice even with lowered prices. Rest is salvaging and some random lockbox (vip) and dungeon (horn) drops. Dont forget there is still tiamat, heralds, professions, events. All you need is time. Dont have to be BiS, 3k is enough to melt stuff.

  • March 23, 2016 at 10:35 pm
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    Yeah to get maximum gear isn’t really the point.

  • March 23, 2016 at 11:36 pm
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    My main problem is the lack of reason to gear past certain point. I can already solo everything with my TR and the only thing that required some thought was the hand on VT/MC. I havent participated in mod 9 itemization at all – no specific mount and even though I have some insignias in my bags I havent even slot them – I dont see a reason to analyze the bonuses and see which one is good/bad, because the only thing thats going to change is killing Orcus in 18-19 seconds, instead of 20. I had a huge fun creating a new account with my friend and replaying whole game from 1-70 (well, 68 since thats when exp x2 ended and we didnt bother to grind past this point) and not moving anywhere there from main accounts – except of a green fancy mounts, since those were a bit role-playing characters – and being forced to actually think in combat and utilize some mechanics, which were killed in “endgame”.

  • March 28, 2016 at 1:57 pm
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    That’s just one side of the medal, you can make millions with farming. Cause every little item here and then can make a difference. I started a sellout of my profession materials on Gond event, made 1,5 millions in AD. And where do i got all this stuff? Nodes, which are “not worth” in your opinion. It’s not only farming, it’s making smart decissions to be rich or poor.

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