So I just did about 30-40 mins on a Sea Serpent spawn because they used to have Serpent Venom Sac (q4). I did maybe 4 or 5 waves of the mob and the lootpack became pretty apparent. They dont anymore it seems, which is fair enough. But from what it looks like, the redesign/change is redundant and results in a useless mob. The lootpack feels almost identical to that of a Shark, but instead of Q3 Shark Bile we get Q1 Venom Sac, obviously. The difference here, is that we do not get as many Venom Sac as you would from other sources. So, given the contents of the loot pack of a Sea Serpent, we have to compare a few things about this spawn vs the other locations that one can acquire these contents. The general sea theme loot, such as Nacre, Fish etc can be better found elsewhere, such as Sharks. Sharks take the same amount of time to kill, but spawn in greater numbers and drop a more useful enchant mat.. So already, a Shark spawn is better money than a Sea Serpent spawn. They also both drop Sea Rares (Ship Mod, Astrolabe etc) Though I did notice Small Map and Map Fragments dropping from Sea Serpents. The main difference is that Sea Serpent can drop Cephalapod Ink. As for the Q1 Venom Sac; This can be acquired from Sarlids I think? In Elf Lands at an extremely better rate than Sea Serpents, due to quantity of mob, respawn, etc etc etc. So basically, for everything a Sea Serpent drops, it has a far FAR better source out there. The mob serves no real purpose other than an isolated uncontested filler on the map, to make oceans look spawned with mobs perhaps. I'm fully aware that there could be a very rare drop on these mobs, but whatever it is, the money to buy it could be farmed elsewhere in the time it takes to get it here. So that's just my thoughts on the mob. I'm not even sure what to suggest to make it more attractive and useful and even have a base level of purpose. Even a low(ish) drop rate on Q4 sac would have been OK. I believe so because the nature of a Sea Serpent spawn is to generally be uncontested and extremely remote... But that's always tricky to balance because a players gametime is quite valuable to the player also.. and Darkfall requires more work and effort elsewhere and on different mobs too. If you want a player to be able to live off a mob spawn, then it has to be a valuable enough resource in the lootpack that can be traded off vs other stuffs this player needs.
Seaserpents have the highest map droprate in the game for anything below boss monsters (5k hp mobs) though it's one of the monsters that will be updated after the armor patch as it may not be dropping them often enough.
Oh, well it's funny you mention that because I did feel that the Map + the Fragment I got happened very quickly. But I honestly thought that was just being lucky, as opposed to how unlucky one can feel. I'll give them another run and see later or tomorrow. They're also the type of mob you can alt tab between waves and they'll notify you when they're respawned by hitting you. I also realise there could possibly be a bigger spawn somewhere, but not to my knowledge. Even a small increase to the scaling potential or total number of serpents in one or more of their locations might increase the value for the time investment, without adjusting the lootpack or drop rates of items. --- Post updated --- About 1.5 hours.. :/ It was a spawn of 5 (boosted from 4) --- Post updated --- Also, I said in another thread somewhere else: The lootpack wouldn't look so bad, if all of the items were in constant demand, or if even a couple of them were used all of the time. I honestly feel that is part of the problem with PVE too. Mobs are dropping a lot of stuff, it's just that it ends up not being useful to many people by the time we hit end game.
Man, i'm tired of mobs dropping map fragments. I can spend 1 hour on a spawn only to get 1 small map fragment rather than a whole map just like before. And i don't know what's the deal with a few mobs that used to drop q3's and q4's now dropping q1's instead and the same amount. Or mobs that used to drop 900 gold now dropping 500 gold or below. Maybe the armour patch will regulate that, but i really hope so because these mobs are super useless right now. Even for the yeti on niff, they do drop a fair amount of tooth, but it's hard to sell those at 1k each. Not doing that makes it feel like yeti's are not worth farming because they don't drop nothing else. They drop a lot of map fragments, but again... and they are annoying to kill with bleeding damage, exhaust, rays and they got a lot of HP. This has ruined a lot of rotation which is making me want to make an alt account just to rotate better stuff on 2 or 3 different characters.
