Played Spirit Beads today again.. me not having time to farm them myself I just buy them whenever I feel "lucky" or if I have a certain sum of adena and don't know what else to do with it..
For the record I never do anything over 5 wins because I'd rather get some B grade recipes which itself is extremely difficult. I got 1 recipe out of 4000 beads, that is 80 tries, 4 made it to 4 wins and the rest isnt even worth mentioning. How can a quest like this be fair to a person completely new to B grade? Damascus rec's sell on Devianne for over 100mil, 60%'s for 50mil+ and the weapon is pushing 160mil.. ONE HUNDRED SIXY MILLION ADENA is just insane for a b grade weapon and the chances on getting the **** recipe are so limited to a low drop rate from Cave Maidens or this annoying Spirit Bead quest.
This quest also doesn't even make sense one bit.. how come its so random? Why was it created? Why is it so addicting? How come they make the good recipes so hard to get in a market which in need of them? I just don't get it, it drives people to buy adena due to the fact everything is so freaking expensive.. Not good. Quests were put in the game for legitimate players to make money, as was seeding and I guess spoiling? but when certain quests are so incredibly hard and tedious.. just doesnt make sense why they even bother putting them in-game. It's already tough enough to get the quest items if you don't have pole groups or can stay logged on 24/7 killing.
Alright, enough venting... or no, can you imagine if a person is in need of some EWAs? I believe that is the reward for 7 wins? Nice try and I hope you the best of luck. It would probably take a person 10k beads just to even hit 7 consecutive wins.
You have my kind of luck. I've never gotten to 5 yet.
My thing is, why oh why do they make you have to click so many times just to find out if you won or lost? Or even with the red gems quest, why do you pick 5 cards when you are only given 5 total anyway, why not just say here's your 5 crappy cards grats once again you didn't win jack/won 2 EAD.
Not so easy, Spud... not so easy. You need to buy shop the coins or spend one heck of a lot of time to farm the initial coins for a lvl 1 coin membership.
Then you need to either spend a LOT of money in buy shops or a lot of time farming the Kail's coins. Drop rate sucks, yep.
It is... easy in the sense that there's no gambling involved, but... bleh?
when compared with less profitable quests, the kail's coins quest provides the least hunt for the most money.
each rec on most servers is around 5-8m, some a bit higher.
you only need 220 of each base coin to get level 1 collector though. not that hard to farm. AOE the AB mobs for silvers, bloods come in WoA IIRC, and Golds in VoS (or is that the other way around ... )
a simple aoe group in these HERB DROPPING ZONES yields enough in 2-3 days of farming to get 1 recipe.
Being the analytical/programmer type that I am, I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out the rules of the Spirit Bead quest game after losing so many times. I wrote down the progression of the game and what was played in a win, tie and lose. After 40-50 games, it still didn't make sense. The in-game explanation of the game doesn't make sense, the outcome of the game doesn't make sense.
Oh, and I never made it to three wins in a row.
Some of the other frustrating quests are the TOI Blueprints quest and Giants Cave quest. These take forever to complete and you may end up with something you can sell to the store for 500a.
Good heavens, you bought beads? You need to kill mobs to level, don't you? Why not kill the mobs which give the beads since you are killing mobs anyhow, that way you get the beads for free and can view your quest rewards (if any) as a BONUS rather than as an expense?
cause hunting for the required number of beads to get 5 wins means almost a full level of grinding in bad exp zones on difficult mobs that do not give herbs and for which a party would be overkill.
Yeah the best place I've found for spirit beads is around DC in the "no herb drop" area of doom knights and spiteful soul groups. You can get a ton from those groups but they take a lot of mp to kill.
I have the quest on and when I get enought then I turn them in. I know already that I'm never going to get more than 5 wins (that is my luck lately, along with blowing up 5, I say that again 5 in a row DS's going from +3 to +4) so I look at this and the red gem one as a bonus to my hunting.
AoE/Pole at Ancient Battleground gives a nice amount of Spirit Beads.
But I don't try more than 2 wins. It's just a few more gadgets after a xp session like the "game" of cards, I don't expect to earn money with them anymore.
I won a recipe from the spirit bead quest once. Deadman's Glory. It failed :(
That said, I love *trying* to get something from these quests. <3 gambling :)
Buying beads ain't that expensive (atleast on Dev, where some shops sell for 2450a). You can buy 80 attempts worth for under 10 mill. It can be quite profitable if you're extremely lucky.
It is really an addicting quest, but frustrating as hell at the same time.
I've been exping near the Devastaded castle from like 58 till 65, mostly aiming for a spiteful groups for the best exp, all the others just for herbs.
I didn't aim especially at the quests, however, each time I soe'd to the town for shots, I talked to NPCs for the Stolen dignity, Game of cards and the spirit beads quests. I only bought quest items when I had like 99 Infernium ore and couldn't wait to burn them :)
The feeling you might get lucky just today was kind of a motivator to grind. I did get lucky with all the three quests over time, so I'm satisfied with sll those quests. Hovewer, if I bought the quest items instead of getting them via hunt, I would feel the same was as OP did.
As for Spirit beads, overall I've got BoP 60%, Lance 60%, SoeS 60%, Great sword 60% and the grand slam prize Damascus 60%. Few times I stopped at 4 tries, taking EWC, most of the time I aimed at 5 wins. I didn't bother to count how much money I could have made if I sold all the beads instead. I played it for fun.
What sucks about this quest is the duration of the "game". Sometimes you've won/lost on the first/second click, sometimes you have to click like 125243463 times to get the result. Since you cannot influence outcome in any way, this just gets boring.
when compared with less profitable quests, the kail's coins quest provides the least hunt for the most money.
each rec on most servers is around 5-8m, some a bit higher.
you only need 220 of each base coin to get level 1 collector though. not that hard to farm. AOE the AB mobs for silvers, bloods come in WoA IIRC, and Golds in VoS (or is that the other way around ... )
a simple aoe group in these HERB DROPPING ZONES yields enough in 2-3 days of farming to get 1 recipe.
This used to be a good quest in the past. Now, i don't know. I tried to level my main on mobs that dropped these coins and I remember getting fair amounts of them. But now that I tried 2 alts (levels 43/44) it seems pretty bad. They both got a level each on such mobs and they got around 15 coins each (timak orcs and formors). I am affraid that at some point, NC lowered their drop rate a lot (specially on these hunting grounds). This assumption is made stronger from the fact that I see far less coin shops nowadays than a year before (same for A-grade reciepes). Kali's coins drop rate seems unaffected.
Yes I buy spirit beads, yes I buy red gems and yes I buy infernium ore (well I used to when they werent 18k each).
I have made more than I have spent, 2 60% Damascus rec's, Kris recs, Lance rec's and Demon Dagger rec's up the [censored]. I have never won 5 in a row on my first 500-1000 beads and I have played the game at least 10 times now. It seems unfair to those who can't blow 9mil or spend a good month grinding for these quest items only to be denied by poor rates.
FYI I mostly play this because my Warsmith is in need of recipes, and you can't find or even get them by just grinding, like the Damascus rec's which are rare on Devianne.