Increased Adamantine Drops

[Dardonas]

I suggested this partially a while back, but it got lost in a larger debate and under other things I had mentioned. 

Plain and simple: Adamantine is currently too RNG to achieve.  I believe the system is a 5% chance per meteorite to be an adamantine meteor.  The amount of planning and time that goes into this is incredibly high, especially with the changes to Perfidus.  The system currently encourages players to play PotM like an MMO, except in those games the grind feels a lot more manageable as the entire systems are built around it.  PotM already takes days of real time game investment to get your smithing up to where you can craft it.  It takes months of progress to enchant your gear.  This would make it just a little bit easier by negating the grind just a tiny bit.

Perhaps it was fine back in the day for older players, but that was before Perfidus became as difficult as it is with the roaming groups of pit fiends so for people who may suggest that it should be hard—please try obtaining adamantine in the current iteration before commenting.

I suggest that Adamantine be raised to a 25% chance, that way it properly rewards players who spend hours going through Perfidus to get meteorites.  As it stands, you can go to Perfidus and come back with thirty meteors between your party of 5-30 people and only get one adamantine ingot between the lot of you.

Here is a breakdown of the current gearing system for adamantine armor and weapons:
- Optional: Grind 24-48 hours of actual playtime to get your smelting for adamantine
- Optional: Grind 24-48 hours of actual playtime to get your smithing for adamantine
- Optional: Grind 24-48 hours of actual playtime to get your hide curing to where you can obtain the useful leather patches
- Form a group for Perfidus
- Search for Perfidus for upwards of 15-30 minutes
- Get your group to Perfidus without the mists shifting
- Gather 10-15 meteors within an hour.
- Get 1 adamantine ingot and discuss the one person who gets it among your group
- Repeat 4-7 times per person who needs armor and weapons made of adamantine
- Spend 1-2 months of experience gained to enchant the adamantine equipment

[Skelni]

I'd say a smaller increase first, just to see how the waters are after an increase of any at all. It is suppose to be this absurd metal from the heavens and stuff. Having it drop like cupcakes kind of downplays it's price and 'supposed' rareness.

But ultimately yes, I agree. It shouldn't be a grind to get it. That goes for any resource.

[ladylena]

Perfidus has always had fiends roaming in it. Maybe if the dev team deemed it was needed it could be bumped to 10? But I dont see an issue with the rarity of it. Making it more abundant seems like it may be detrimental to the setting of ravenloft

[Dardonas]

Perfidus has always had fiends roaming in it. Maybe if the dev team deemed it was needed it could be bumped to 10? But I dont see an issue with the rarity of it. Making it more abundant seems like it may be detrimental to the setting of ravenloft

Nope, something was changed within the past year or so to be much more dangerous for people to solo-farm adamantine and it was that they added Dogai and a roaming group of pit fiends.  Sure, people shouldn't be trivializing fiends in the setting.  That does not mean it should take me weeks and weeks and weeks to finally get adamantine.

[Chabxxu]

The biggest problem I see with Adamantine is that it's the only metal that allows someone to get higher AC and AB when enchanted. That means (almost) everyone will want to use that metal for their weapon and armor as it is what will give you the biggest benefit when you enchant them. When you spend hours and hours and hours dungeoning and roleplaying to get some XP, it's pretty normal to want that xp to go towards what makes your character as strong as possible.

The influx of gold in player's pockets and the rarity of ingots have made their value skyrocket. Paying half a million gold to get a piece of armor is simply crazy. I agree with Dardonas that it feels like an MMO grind to actually get to those amount and be able to afford anything.

What I'd suggest is either to bring all enchanted metal to the same value as adamantine, or lowering enchanted adamantine AC value to those of the other type of metals. Those who then would seek out adamantine would do it for the other properties given by the metal instead of the bonus AC/AB received by enchanting it. If something like this was to happen, I expect we'd see way more of the other type of metals being used as people would be able to decide which sidestat they prefer instead of the metal that gives the best flat AC.

PS: Someone pointed it to me that the AC is the same, and that only AB on weapons change. Sorry about the mistaken info.

[zDark Shadowz]

I could make a post of numbers but it'd be spoilers.

Half the classes can hit the fiends, and the other half can stealth if they can't. A composite group does better than soloers, but soloers can do it too.

If this were a competition of people in the zone, I'd agree, partially, and ask for more zones to collect at the same rate. It wasn't designed for the current population of players.

Groups that want adamantine should work together for adamantine as a long term project.

Excess adamantine beyond a parties' needs, which gets onsold to people who simply aren't capable, is where debatable issues happen.

If you don't have the capability to earn it you probably shouldn't have it, and if you want the drop rate to be higher so that people who collect in excess can collect more, it's not a good enough reason. Gold has less and less value every day, 30k an ingot is practically giving away powerful weapons to low level characters as it is.

As for fiend roaming, it tends to happen if people rest in inappropriate proximities, it's always had a chance to happen anyway. Malebranches' always roamed far to begin with, and even if something has changed for the others, the strategies remain the same. Clear an appropriate amount of space, then rest.

The pit fiends are really easy to kill for about five or six pure classes. There were strategies that relied on biding time, and there were strategies and groups that just cleared everything, including the 5+ pit fiend spawn of old that would block the exit when they respawned and people tried to run.

In that regard... roaming pit fiends would actually make it easier. They'd move out of the way.

[MAB77]

If adamantine was so "vastly superior" to steel I may understand, but in reality it is so marginal that it's rarity is a non-issue. Enchanted steel will serve you just as well most the time.

For weapons, the advantage it confers vs steel is readily nullified by using a strong tier 2 magical varnishes (and those are easy to acquire) or by casting Greater Magic Weapon at a certain level. I understand the appeal of not having to use resources to reach the same bonuses, but that does not make it in itself a reason to make adamantine faster to acquire. You have options at your disposal precisely so you don't have a need to grind for an adamantine weapon.

Steel and adamantine provide the same AC bonus on armors. I agree the DR difference makes it more significant, but even then there are options around that one and I would rather add more options to acquire that same protection than make adamantine easier grind.

For any any other item types, adamantine is just wasted anyway.

Trust me you DON'T need adamantine gear. It's fun to have sure, but it's not worth grinding for it. That's a choice you make, not an obligation. That being said, rest assured we will discuss the possibility of increasing adamantine spawn rate at the next Dev meeting, but I would rather suggest one, or a combination of the following changes instead:

• Steel armors to provide DR 2/-. (This diminishes the advantage of adamantine over steel)
• Magical varnishes to provide DR 1/-, 2/- or 3/- on armors based on the strength used.
• Increased drop rate of Arjale rocks, used to produce green steel, the alternative to adamantine.
• Move adamantine to loot drops (precisely to entirely remove that grinding mentality about it)

BTW you may have noted that Cynnabril Rocks (used to produce Red Steel) had there drop rate increased significantly of late. That is precisely to shift the focus from adamantine. Red Steel, for those asking, is a metal from the eponymous D&D setting, behaves exactly like steel with the advantage that it is significantly less expansive to enchant XP wise.

[Hummer Guy (Birdman)]

Hello! Adamantine Nut Job here looking to weigh in on this topic. I'll give the TL;DR right here: I agree with Dardonas and would actually suggest perhaps improving that number to even 30% chance to acquire adamantine.

As someone who has 'gone the distance' twice when it's come to smithing and adamantine seeking I'd like to leave some notes that hopefully are taken into worthy consideration...

Adamantine is a pretty useful metal over all and there really is no denying that. When I first set my sights on adamantine I thought I saw a potential gold mine and something that could help cultivate the faction I had planned (Church of the Lawgiver) when I finally got to it though things were quite the opposite.

First was finding groups willing to take you rock collecting. Virtually no one wanted to do it for another player mostly because the other parties got nothing out of it unless you split shares of adamantine (which are not guaranteed) and even then; it would only mean it will take you longer to get these ingots as they could be split between anywhere between 3-5 people. What I speak of was the time prior to Perfidus' major mob changes which have made the area far more deadly. Even prior to the change it was still very difficult to acquire and it was only with small groups of allies was I able to go. Prior to the mob changes (but after the drop rate was lowered) I usually only left the area with about 10-20 meteorites which made the process of forging 1 armor one that could take months. Especially if you weren't particularly money saavy.

Second once you got these rocks provided Dardon's estimated figure of 5% is correct that would mean if you collected 20 rocks you had a one in twenty chance that one of those would have adamantine. This would seem about right as typically when I smelted about that much I would get 1 ingot but I've also been on the 80+ Rock collections where nothing has dropped which makes me doubt those exact numbers greatly. Prior to the changes made to the monsters of Perfidus, the only people who could Rock collect were high level wizards most of whom already didn't get many rocks in the first place, and secondly they would have very little use for them. No they wouldn't stimulate the economy as the martial classes that actually would use adamantine struggle with making the kind of money that say a ninjalooter does.

Under this format the smiths and people who actually were able to use adamantine could neither work it nor obtain it. The overall grind itself is horrendous...

I won't lie and I will say that i made the very amazing run of going from level 1 smithing all the way to 58 on my newest character in about 3 months or less time. This would seem astounding but you have to keep in mind, at the time that I did this I worked third shift at an unsupervised job where our managers allowed us to play video games, watch netflix, etc while on shift. I would have 7-15 hours a day where I could do nothing but grind out that smithing. Most normal people are NOT going to be able to do this (nor should they really). The reason all this is important to take into consideration when looking at the drop rates on adamantine is because success and failure come in hand. Let's pretend the highest DC for an Adamantine armor is 80 (It's not actually 80, but I am just making an example to illustrate...). Collecting all that adamantine will take months... you have to put together your group, and you have to actually roll on the adamantine, and if that group happens to demand an cut or share of adamantine or ingots are rolled upon it could take you even longer. Anyway that DC 80 is so astronomically high, and the adamantine itself is so hard to get. Let's say you are at level 70 and you are ready to try and make this armor...

You have to deal with the -5 for a new recipe. We can assume that you get another +5 from your overall STR and DEX which leaves you at 70 v 80. You only need to roll a 10 or better to make the check. This means you are at a 50% to succeed unless you get ahold of 5 Muses. Which requires a degree of coordination and planning ontop of all the work you've done. If you can't manage to get those five people to help you, you have to take the risk. Your months of work can be all for nothing in less than a minute.

It's an insane amount of time investment you need, the right group, and you have to get lucky with all those meteorites.

When I switched to a normal 9-5 job I got to see what things were like on the ordinary side what the actual typical player is like (The person who goes to work or school) provided you don't do anything else after your day you have about 4-6 hours that you can dedicate to your craft and IC goals. When it comes to group finding there is no guarantee and depends entirely upon who you are worth/willing to help you, when it comes to getting the appropriate smithing to make sure you can 100% succeed or come close to it requires serious dedication and grinding insane amounts that just dont appeal to the average player.

I think it would be a good quality of life choice to improve the drop rate of adamantine as it is more sensitive towards players time and investment. Overall, I do like that Adamantine is rare and it adds the 'legendary' aspect to the item, but at the same time I want my goals to be reasonably achievable as well. This rareness can still occur by increasing Perfidus' difficulty just a little more. It should be difficult enough that a player would feel rewarded once he finally accomplishes everything while still making it a journey to collect.

[Vissy]

My experience probably does not represent the majority, but the group I used to run with to collect meteorites in Perfidus - yes, the dogai were around back then - brought back 50+ meteorites several times. One time, I believe we even managed a haul of 100+ meteorites. With current drop rates, that amount is only likely to get around 5 ingots, for work that takes many, many hours; and for a group that is really difficult to pull together all at once. That group consisted of a ranger/rogue, a pure bard, a pure cleric, a pure sorcerer, and a pure ranger (also a fighter and an additional wizard, sometimes). We were all around the level range between 13 to 17, with little enchanted gear. All I can say is that a strong bard makes a heck of a difference. So it -is- theoretically possible, when the stars align, to do long runs of meteorites, but even considering that, the runs I did were a year ago and some things have changed.

I like the idea of bumping the drop rate of Green Steel and adding some properties to Steel (and why not Darksteel, Fever Iron, Dlarun and so on too). I also like the idea of bumping the rate of acquisition of adamantine from meteorites. So why not both?

[Willy]

I am a bit hesitant to give my opinion here for some reason, but here goes.

I do like the idea of Adamantine being generally difficult to aquire, yes. It's endgame stuff. Now I won't get into the specifics of which material is best for an enchanted weapon at the end of the day, but I will say that having a permanent +3 weapon vs everything and +4 vs specific things is neat, especially for people who don't have their personal pocket warder with them at all times. The demand is certainly mirroring that.

Aquiring Adamantine is extremely difficult for people who don't sit around the Mist Camp 24/7, however. That is the place where it is usually traded. And even if you spend time there, the chance that someone sells the stuff right then, while you happen to be around, is incredibly slim. I've tried, trust me. I've even asked other people IC to keep an eye out for ingots offered, and buy them for me - to no avail. The only Adamantine I ever got was through another faction member that had a means of farming it semi-regularly, and even that took ages and eventually fizzled out.

And here begins the problem. I know that someone is gonna jump at me for saying it, but: Adamantine is pretty much gatekept by the Mist Camp playerbase. The little bit of Adamantine that is aquired by people willing to sell it is sold there. Period. You must have incredible luck to find someone in any other part of the server to sell you an Adamantine ingot.
Other means to aquire it is go and farm it yourself with a group. Such a group must consist of people of high enough level to survive the demons there, since due to the invisibility change, picking up the rocks from stealth doesn't really work anymore. I tried that once, too, with a group of people. I couldn't pinpoint which enemies it were that had enough spot/listen to dispel my invis through a critical failure, while I was in full sneaking gear and buffed up for it, mind you. But it happened. Not surprising tbh with the meteorites weighing over 30 pounds, but still. It means without the right group, you won't even have a chance of getting the stuff yourself.
I remember my group hauled around 30 rocks back from that run, probably not much compared to what other groups get. We smelted everything down and didn't get a single ingot. It was frustrating.

I think an adjustment would do the server good, though I have to say, 30 or even 25% chance of Adamantine per meteor does sound a bit extreme to me. It should still be rare, but I agree that the rate needs to be raised a little bit, simply so that some of the Adamantine that is farmed for the purpose of selling can trickle into the other areas of the server.

"Why don't you just sit in the Mist Camp then?"

Yeah, why do people who wish to immerse themselves in the setting not want to sit in a place where Balors are summoned when people are bored, where half naked Dragon girls sit around petting druids in cat form that roll up in their laps, where random timestops occur when someone wants to prove a point, where [...]
I know these things have been adressed recently, but the Mist Camp is not a place where you generally want to hang out, still - unless you are looking for PvE, or PvP, even.

[Maffa]

I love the idea from MAB to introduce varnishes that replicate the DR

Also, I must say the knowledge about what the newish metals do is still really hard to come by (as well as all the interactions with linens and gildings).
There were talks of writing a wiki a month or so ago but I cant find anything on POTM wikia.

In the end, things gotten harder because of soloists. If retrieving meteor had been something a group could do, there wouldnt have been any need to make things harder, since a group that moves out and does things is just playing the game as it was meant. Unfortunately coping with this cascades with issues to everybody.

Demistify adamantine would be useful in the long run. It might become less valuable for powerful characters to farm, and become more available to less-than-perfect groups to attempt.  Sure, as Vissy said, there are ways, but knowledge is hard to come by, and thats all the difference between the haves and havenots. And I have to agree with Willy, Perf is a place which seems to be most accessible to people that sit in MC doing nothing much all day.

[Evendur]

Since adamantine is both very good for metal armor because of the provided DR, as well as for weapons for the additional AB, perhaps this could be changed by providing another material that can be used as a replacement for one of those categories.

If there was a new material that could replace adamantine for weapons, the demand would be significantly lower.
Given how hard it is to get those materials, especially for the kind of character who does not focus on PvE and is hardly ever in mist camp, I would like to see a new material that can provide similar weapons as glided adamantine, perhaps without the additional special bonus that is currently provided through the gliding and instead at a lower XP cost as well. 


I cant really say that I found it hard to aquire relevant items for my characters that are rarely in mist camp, but it should be possible to get some decent gear even for those who rarely show up there.

Yeah, why do people who wish to immerse themselves in the setting not want to sit in a place where Balors are summoned when people are bored, where half naked Dragon girls sit around petting druids in cat form that roll up in their laps, where random timestops occur when someone wants to prove a point, where [...]
I know these things have been adressed recently, but the Mist Camp is not a place where you generally want to hang out, still - unless you are looking for PvE, or PvP, even.

While it may be a bit off topic, I also want to point out that as someone who has spend a lot of time in mist camp, I have not seen nearly as much immersion breaking behavior in that place then I did in the outskirts, despite having spend a lot less time around Vallaki in my time on this server.
Nontheless nobody should have to spend their time there, if they don't want to, or their character does not fit there.

[bloodless]

I agree with MAB, nobody actually needs adamantine. It is nice to have but required for nothing. I do appreciate that the grind is painful, however, and would like to see its rate bumped up to reflect how difficult it is to acquire and work with, I just don't agree with the tone expressed by the latest few posts.

[MAB77]

BTW do note that we certainly are considering alleviating the grind in many of our game mechanics, and that includes the grind for adamantine of course. The grind, in crafting or other things, is meant as a deterrent to power-building behaviors, but that's not in itself the only way to achieve that, nor the most successful method there is anyway. We are less interested by the stick nowadays, and more with the carrot to promote RP.

That said alleviating the adamantine grind does not equate with making it more available. In fact it would be way better for server balance to make it both easier to acquire but in drastically more limited quantities. To reiterate, our staple material in the world is steel, we have no intention to make adamantine more available, but we are quite willing to kill the grind.  So here's another suggestion I throw in for the sake of discussion (NOTE: to be clear, there is no plan to go in that direction. It's just an exploratory conversation).

We change the system so that adamantine can no longer be farmed, no more grinding. We replace it by a sort of quest akin to the vampire hearts where a given character of a certain level can be hired by an NPC to bring back meteorites. Success is guaranteed, to a limit of 1 per server resets and a maximum of 4 ingots in the entire character's lifetime.

The level restriction (I'd say 14+) is to avoid the exploit of rolling new chars just to acquire ingots. I would also assort it with the impossibility of using old shelved characters to get more. Older characters had the opportunity to grind for adamantine aplenty anyway, so it might just be done through a cut-off based on character creation date.

The restriction on the amount of ingots is precisely to limit the amount of adamantine gear out there. A player is then free to keep the ingots for is own use or sell them back to others. More could be acquired through loot drops, but the days of being fully clad in adamantine would be more or less over.

[Nemesis 24]

BTW do note that we certainly are considering alleviating the grind in many of our game mechanics, and that includes the grind for adamantine of course. The grind, in crafting or other things, is meant as a deterrent to power-building behaviors, but that's not in itself the only way to achieve that, nor the most successful method there is anyway. We are less interested by the stick nowadays, and more with the carrot to promote RP.

That said alleviating the adamantine grind does not equate with making it more available. In fact it would be way better for server balance to make it both easier to acquire but in drastically more limited quantities. To reiterate, our staple material in the world is steel, we have no intention to make adamantine more available, but we are quite willing to kill the grind.  So here's another suggestion I throw in for the sake of discussion (NOTE: to be clear, there is no plan to go in that direction. It's just an exploratory conversation).

We change the system so that adamantine can no longer be farmed, no more grinding. We replace it by a sort of quest akin to the vampire hearts where a given character of a certain level can be hired by an NPC to bring back meteorites. Success is guaranteed, to a limit of 1 per server resets and a maximum of 4 ingots in the entire character's lifetime.

The level restriction (I'd say 14+) is to avoid the exploit of rolling new chars just to acquire ingots. I would also assort it with the impossibility of using old shelved characters to get more. Older characters had the opportunity to grind for adamantine aplenty anyway, so it might just be done through a cut-off based on character creation date.

The restriction on the amount of ingots is precisely to limit the amount of adamantine gear out there. A player is then free to keep the ingots for is own use or sell them back to others. More could be acquired through loot drops, but the days of being fully clad in adamantine would be more or less over.

Honestly while a (very large) part of me likes the idea of less adamantine being out there, there is the off side problem in that it means characters which are clad in adamantine gear all over will linger around even longer with an even heavier disincentive to closure.  Its a tricky one, but I -do- appreciate the idea of there being more carrot than stick, so more discussion is good!

[RedMoney]

From my perspective, the issue is that meteors are trash 99.99 percent of the time.  To address that, why not make them drop other neat materials as well? Random rare metals and gemstones come to mind.  Finding other useful things in meteors, in addition to adding adamantine ingot drops to other tough but seldom explored dungeons, will solve many issues. 

I'm not sure if the Dev team tracks the actual dungeon traffic on the server but I know there are some that people avoid like the plague. I've been to the Ice Queen Palace once and never even seen the lich tower, for example. There are sure to be some places that can use loot love.

[zDark Shadowz]

A limit of four for a characters life time doesn't sit right with me. Halberd is 3, halfplate is 7, greatsword is 6. People fail with adamantine. I've failed a half-plate craft.

It'd just result in people tag teaming characters where one collects meteorites and then finds people to "use up" their adamantine quota from people that don't need it.

It's an arbitrary limitation that you *will* be gaming around. As soon as a crafting recipe passes the 4 required limit you are gaming it off other peoples timers, even if that character didn't "need" it.

If there were to be a quest for anything, make it for turning steel into masterwork steel. It won't have the vs properties specific to adamantine, but it will have the +1, and fit into the theme of keeping people with steel, and you wont need to make 100+ variant crafting script iterations, just enhance the item on an anvil and have a check when enchanting.

Adamantine being character limited would turn them into what mint cakes were on RuneScape. Not far off either in appearance.

[Disorder]

I like MAB77 impovement idea and happy to see someone who points out that adamantine is not that useful, because its bonuses are rather easy to counter.

Another thing is that I am curious will a revert to older system where all rocks players were obtaining in Perfidus contained adamantine, while the amount of rocks being dropped was significantly lesser than it's now, work to those who crave for star metal? And, yes, the idea is that now rocks will follow all the rules and mechanics that we have (needs to be cooled, etc.)

[MAB77]

[...] Another thing is that I am curious will a revert to older system where all rocks players were obtaining in Perfidus contained adamantine, while the amount of rocks being dropped was significantly lesser than it's now, work to those who crave for star metal? And, yes, the idea is that now rocks will follow all the rules and mechanics that we have (needs to be cooled, etc.)

The problem here is that if you are guaranteed adamantine for each rocks, you will see parties camping the site for much longer periods. At the very least the current system forces parties to retreat at some point.

[Dardonas]

[...] Another thing is that I am curious will a revert to older system where all rocks players were obtaining in Perfidus contained adamantine, while the amount of rocks being dropped was significantly lesser than it's now, work to those who crave for star metal? And, yes, the idea is that now rocks will follow all the rules and mechanics that we have (needs to be cooled, etc.)

The problem here is that if you are guaranteed adamantine for each rocks, you will see parties camping the site for much longer periods. At the very least the current system forces parties to retreat at some point.

That's fine, but we shouldn't make players waste their time even if it is a marginally better upgrade.  The issue is the grind and the drop rates.  This is not respectful to players' time.

[Anarcoplayba]

So, first of all, I really dislike the idea of limiting Adamantine for PCs. The idea of raising the drops is not making adamantine rarer and that would punish the players that need them more: mundane classes that put six ingots in a greatsword and five on a half plate and may want or need a secondary weapon.

Also I'd point out that "needing" one or other material is not exactly the point. Darksteel is widely considered Meta for clerics, there is steel, adamantine, cold steel, cold iron in crafted items. Also there are loot drop items that are part of a build but that aren't "needed". No wizard NEED a robe of wizardry, but he probably will spend time and money looking for it. I am still looking for the black robes of the Lunatari. Need is a subjective matter and it is fair that all players have a chance at finding the equipment they need.

It may take time, but in this matter, adamantine is one of the fairest mechanics on the server: it is hard, it takes effort, but it can be acquired by (heavy) time investment by everyone in the long run. Way better than the premium itens that only drop in specific dungeons and are, therefore, blatantly soloed by the best known builds of the server.

I'd say, even make adamantine more abundant or don't change it at all.

[EO]

Ideally people wouldn't camp Perfidus; we've put multiple systems in place to prevent that behaviour and make it as hard as possible. It's not something we encourage, so we won't make it easier or common.

We could possibly set up a system akin to what is used for looting chests, making it less profitable to farm/camp it, rather than a hard permanent cap. That way people wouldn't feel compelled to spend a unhealthy amount of time there, and instead would only gather adamantine when they head to Perfidus to clear the dungeon.

[Anarcoplayba]

Ideally people wouldn't camp Perfidus; we've put multiple systems in place to prevent that behaviour and make it as hard as possible. It's not something we encourage, so we won't make it easier or common.

We could possibly set up a system akin to what is used for looting chests, making it less profitable to farm/camp it, rather than a hard permanent cap. That way people wouldn't feel compelled to spend a unhealthy amount of time there, and instead would only gather adamantine when they head to Perfidus to clear the dungeon.

I dunno if this is just impression or not... but after the temple, the meteors drop seems decrease significantly. That is, also, a problem in adamantine runs... Either you go for adamantine, either you go for the temple. Both are rarely worth.

[myrddraal]

Standard luck feels like 1 ingot out of 30 rocks, which can be a huge grind, sure, but adamantine is some of the strongest material in the game.  I havent SEEN an arcane steel sword, but I am sure its probably the only crafted thing thats straight up better.  I do agree that a very slight bump in RNG could be warranted, but it isnt impossible to get adamantine in a somewhat timely fashion.  If you have an APPROPRIATELY leveled group with a warder and 2-3 melee, or 2 melee / war mage to melt everything, if you focus on one person at a time and farm pit fiend hearts / gelugon hearts etc for alchemy, it really isnt that bad.  I think we managed to get the adamantine we needed for one person in 3-4 days and it felt well earned after battling endless droves of demons.  If it is going to be more common, it should be impossible to farm on your own.

[Maffa]

I guess raising success rates from 1/30 to 1/20 or 1/15 would be enough. That way there will be more of the good stuff around and people will get less frustrated in smelting, working and acquiring the finished product, without flooding the market. If there were too much around, then just spawn less meteors. Could this work?