A Strangely Marked Slab has too low a drop rate

[richvh]

I have been trying for weeks, several hours most days, to obtain A Strangely Marked Slab to start the Meadowlands Antiquities quest, and in all that time (spent mostly at the southern ruins, with occasional trips to the other Exile Raider spawns and to Gerrin's Camp) have seen only 2 of the tablets drop (neither of which I won), and have heard of only one other dropping, which Nautilus obtained. By all accounts the other two tablets (in Dryfoot and Redshore) are easier to obtain. (I have completed Lost to the Sands of Time on 3 characters in less than a week, and have heard of several of the Redshore tablets dropping in a single session at Lumberjacks.)

 

[Quoetzl]

I think the mileage may vary on these droprates.

I've done all three - Dryfoot was the quickest, it took me about 2-3 hours in Meadowlands to get that tablet and then about 3 days for the Redshore dropped tablet.

I agree though. If a quest starter item is dropped, make it a bit more common. I'm ok with searching around for a quest item for several hours but not days.

Q

 

[Korraz]

This idea of gating quests behind a dropped item that then has to be rolled on is the laziest most artificial way to inflate the time spent on questing that I've ever seen. The tablet quests are straight up bad game design that intentionally disrespects the players time.

 

[richvh]

I'm not opposed to quests started by drops, but the drops shouldn't be so rare that almost no one can start the quest. The same may also apply to the bag that starts the Stones and Bones quest, which I have seen drop exactly once (from a Snatchscale) over several sessions of doing or helping with the Forest of Madness quest, but this is a much smaller sample size than my effort to obtain the Meadowlands tablet.

 

[richvh]

Quoetzl, were you able to complete the quest? Finally got the tablet, and I'm stuck at Find the Excavation Orders.

 

[darkwizard]

I can confirm this drop rate is a tad low... have been here with my wife non stop for about a week or so, have spent entire multi-hour play sessions only moving to go sell scrap at the village. Gained about a level in the process, haven't seen a single Strangely Mark Slab drop. Not sure how many of the looters we killed, but we WERE focusing on pulling them specifically when they popped.

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