Question / possible bug : Freshwater Pearls from Mussels in Sandswept Isles

[Adzekul.3104]

I have been harvesting Mussels in the Sandswept Isles like a madman, and not seen a single Freshwater Pearl drop. I can accept that the drop rate is circa 1% and RNG is RNG, but could it be that Freshwater Pearls are not acquirable from these nodes ... because they are in salt water? Is there a bug here?

Has anyone been able to get Freshwater Pearls from the Mussel nodes in Sandswept Isles? There have to be about 20-40 nodes throughout the map.

Given the high price of the pearls in the TP, it kind of looks like nobody is able to gather them from the new map.

Would be interesting to have commentary from others.

Edit to add: I can confirm that Piece of Mother-of-Pearl still drops from Mussel nodes in Sandswept Isles.

[Adzekul.3104]

Given that Coral nodes are also bugged (not dropping Coral Orbs) it makes me think there is a bug here, rather than my luck with RNG.

[Malerine.5762]

No its not a bug. In all map from pof coral is blue so. I think its to keep control to coral and other t6 water food - trophy

[McPilch.3719]

I've managed to get some freshwater pearls there, however it was a long time before one dropped and I was wondering the same thing. Got a couple in the same day after that. So not bugged, however maybe the drop rate is even lower there? And as Malerine said, coral nodes are dropping a mid-tier in all maps since PoF, hard to say if bug or not.. but would be nice if was a bug and then fixed ;)

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

tl;dr

• Pearls seem to be dropping at a comparable rate to other maps (because there was a noticeable increase in supply + drop in price on the TP)
• We need lots of data before being able to speculate if the pearl drop rate is the same (or lower or higher) from nodes on the new map.
• Coral chunks dropping from coral might be an ANet experiment with offering mid-tier drops on L80 maps (or might be a bug); no way to tell :(

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We can't compare the drop rates of Freshwater Pearls in the two maps unless people post actual drop rates.

If the true drop rate is 1 pearl per 100 mussels, then there's a 36% chance that someone could harvest from 100 nodes and not see a single one. With 500 nodes, the chance of getting 0 or 1 pearl (with a 1:100 rate) is still nearly 4%.

In other words, if people want to test whether the nodes are bugged, we need to see results from about 500 attempts in the new map and from the old ones. Now, that doesn't have to be one person's efforts. Anyone can offer data as long as they are prepared to record all attempts & drops (regardless of results) for a set period (e.g. it doesn't matter if it's 10 minutes or 2 hours of effort, as long as they commit to posting).

Without that data, it's really just people saying, "I don't like the bad luck I've been having."

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There is a proxy for measuring the drop rate: looking at the price (and supply) of pearls on the TP before & after the release of LS4.2 (March 6)

• March 5: 1000 pearls on the TP, with buy offers up to nearly 7g, sell offers as low as 7.4g
• March 8: 1235 pearls, buy 6.2g, sell 7g

That suggests that pearls were almost certainly dropping in comparable numbers to the old maps, what with the high traffic to the new zone helping to increase the supply as people tromped around.

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With regards to coral nodes: it's not clear that these are bugged. The drops are consistent for the same nodes in a lower tier zone, so it could be ANet experimenting with offering mid-tier drops in L80 zones — something that some folks have asked for since launch. Instead of adding yet another faucet for Coral Orbs (and Tentacles), they provided one for Coral Chunks.