Discussing Steel Essence Farming (Eidelons and Survivals) vs Farming Vitus Essence (Arbitration)

[MiraJune]

As the title says, Steel essence is not dropped enough at current to compete with other game modes and incentivize farming in Steel path vs other game modes such as Arbitrations, Kuva Survial, or Relic farming. Since the closest thing to The Steel Path is Arbitrations, I will compare the two briefly:

• In an arbitration, you are garunteed 1 vitus essence per round, arbitration drones have a 3% chance to drop vitus essance, as well as 7% potentially gaining 3 as a reward.
• In a 30 minute solo run in a survival, I tend to get somewhere around 5-10 vitus essence
• In a steel path, eximus units have 2% chance to drop steel essence.
• In a 30 minute solo survuval with a pilfering strangle dome Khora and a resource booster where I killed 4200 enemies I got 2 steel essence.
• In an Eidelon hunt, you have a garunteed drop of 1 steel essence
• A solo Eidolon Teralyst takes about 8 minutes for me

All this information together, I get about:

• .25 vitus essence per minute from a solo arbitration
• .07 Steel Essence per minute in a solo Steel Path survival (with resource booster)
• .125 Steel Essence per minute in a solo Eidelon

The only directly shared reward between arbitration and Steel Path is 10,000 Kuva. (it cost 25 vitus essence and 15 steel essence) So you can get 10,000 kuva in about:

• 100 minutes for solo survival arbitration
• 215 minutes for solo Steel Path Survival (with resource booster)
• 120 minutes for solo Eidelon

I think it is also important to think about the other rewards in each game mode. Solo Eidelons give arcanes and sentient cores which are valuable rewards, arbitrations are the second fastest endo farm (only surpassed by Vodyanoi) and also gives arcanes that have significant value. The only outlier in these farms is farming normal steel path nodes. The rewards for these missions are regular star chart missions, and while the resources and focus you can gain are useful, they are hardly comparable rewards to arcanes and large amounts of endo.

I do think I should note that out side of the solo experience, I suppose these drop rates are fairly reasonable. With a farming party the time to would be decreased by half putting it inline with arbitrations. I understand in that respect, that this drop rate makes sense; My concern however, is that there is not significant incentive to go into a node on the steel path and farm some steel essence, because even in this scenario, Eidolon Teralyst hunts done in squads can be done faster (4 minutes or even faster depending on squad) and earn much greater rewards, remaining a much better farm, and this is further exasperated when playing the game solo. 

With the current situation, the way I see it, we need one (if not both of the following) in order for steel path nodes to be worth playing:

• Steel Path nodes need significantly better rewards
• Steel Essence needs a higher drop chance

TLDR;

When considering the lack luster rewards for Steel Path nodes and them being less efficient than eidelons and arbitrations, (especially in solo scenerios) it simply does not make sense at current for players to engage in Steel Path nodes for Steel Essence because Hunting Eidelons for Steel Essence is faster and has better rewards, and is much more comparable, and some times better than farming arbitration, making these 2 options for farming strictly better, and inorder to change this, either the drop chance must be revisted, and/or Steel Path nodes rewards must be improved.

[vanaukas]

Dunno how many times this thing about "more rewards" will be posted here, I genuinelly hope this end soon, because it's being said by the own devs that the mode isn't about the rewards and they aren't going to put big rewards because the game mode is optional and should remain like that. I'm gonna quote myself with this:

1 hour ago, vanaukas said:

About rewards: Nah, they should keep same as regular, to give emphasis on "this is not for everyone, it's optional", more rewards would lead to a mindset on the line of "they are forcing content I don't like to have those rewards!" (like the complains we have on arbis, eidolon, whole operator system, open worlds, archwing, nightwave, e/so, defection, conclave/lunaro, railjack, profit taker, lich system... I could keep going but I think you get it). So, same rewards as regular = No one will feel the need to be in there even if they don't like.

That being said, I agree on improving the steel essence drop, but also tweaking the current values of the Tehsin offerings, on the same fashion that they did with warbitrations when they tweaked the vitus drops (and works like a charm imho).

P.S: You wrote vitus instead steel essence on the teralyst part.

what the devs says about this mode?

 

 

[Katinka]

I see Steel Essence as a route to gaining the cosmetics that only come from there and I don't see a need to farm it after that.  The Relic packs and Kuva I view as simply being there to make any remaining Steel Essence technically an 'evergreen' reward.  I wont try to use it as a method of farming Relics or Kuva, but I might buy some from there if I run out and happen to have spare Steel Essence. (Not that I'm likely to have spare, or use that as my first port of call when spare Nightwave Creds get me Kuva already and spare Syndicate medallions get me Relic packs already...)  From the latest Home Time stream it sounds like we might be seeing some tweaks to rewards at some point though.

[(PSN)palebluelight]

I so tired of rng I wish they’d stop adding it to lengthen the most un-fun parts of the game. It’s the laziest mechanic ever to be added to gaming. 

[(PSN)IndianChiefJeff]

6 minutes ago, vanaukas said:

Dunno how many times this thing about "more rewards" will be posted here, I genuinelly hope this end soon, because it's being said by the own devs that the mode isn't about the rewards and they aren't going to put big rewards because the game mode is optional and should remain like that.

Content survives so long as there's a reason to partake in said content. People will always express their concerns about the viability of newly released content because it lives & dies by the rewards that are present. There's a reason why the open worlds, Liches & Railjack are criticized; they're content islands with only so much to offer, having no major bearing on the main game. Once you've gotten every ephemera & Kuva weapon, you've absolutely no motivation compelling you to go through the process ever again. It's an unsustainable model that should always be questioned.

How long will The Steel Path survive with its very limited offerings? Ask your this question before considering developer statements to be absolute. They've revisited Arbitrations, PoE, Fortuna, Railjack, Liches, bosses and countless other things that are optional, this'll undoubtedly be revisited once numbers dwindle. Motivation is a compulsory mistress, nothing compels people to engage in old content like new rewards & gimmicks.

[vanaukas]

16 minutes ago, (PS4)IndianChiefJeff said:

Content survives so long as there's a reason to partake in said content. People will always express their concerns about the viability of newly released content because it lives & dies by the rewards that are present. There's a reason why the open worlds, Liches & Railjack are criticized; they're content islands with only so much to offer, having no major bearing on the main game. Once you've gotten every ephemera & Kuva weapon, you've absolutely no motivation compelling you to go through the process ever again. It's an unsustainable model that should always be questioned.

How long will The Steel Path survive with its very limited offerings? Ask your this question before considering developer statements to be absolute. They've revisited Arbitrations, PoE, Fortuna, Railjack, Liches, bosses and countless other things that are optional, this'll undoubtedly be revisited once numbers dwindle. Motivation is a compulsory mistress, nothing compels people to engage in old content like new rewards & gimmicks.

every mode you listed gives progression on the game and gives you something to pursue and set a goal to reach that places. But this is an entirely niche mode, no one will care if someone plays it or not besides getting the MR or maybe getting the offerings too. Players like me, who have been asking this for literal years (a way to literally skip 1 hour or more of the same mission to reach high level values on enemies to check our gear), won't stop playing this even if the Teshin offerings didn't exist. Maybe I'm acting like a gatekeeper, it's not my intention, but I trully doesn't want to be another mode ruined because it tires to please all the playerbase at the same time. I think the rewards reflects that, just (literally on emotes lol) flexing "look, I made this far on the game" like our mr number or our playtime or when we joined this journey. 

[MiraJune]

34 minutes ago, vanaukas said:

Dunno how many times this thing about "more rewards" will be posted here, I genuinelly hope this end soon, because it's being said by the own devs that the mode isn't about the rewards and they aren't going to put big rewards because the game mode is optional and should remain like that.

I totally get that the devs are not focusing on making this game mode with the intent of giving great rewards to players, but I do think it is important to balance drops if they are going to include them as a part of the game mode. I think at current, steel essence drops rates are at a good place for eidelons, but farming steel essence any other way is at best half as efficient, and that is problematic.

[vanaukas]

23 minutes ago, MiraJune said:

I totally get that the devs are not focusing on making this game mode with the intent of giving great rewards to players, but I do think it is important to balance drops if they are going to include them as a part of the game mode. I think at current, steel essence drops rates are at a good place for eidelons, but farming steel essence any other way is at best half as efficient, and that is problematic.

Yeah, that's why I said:

1 hour ago, vanaukas said:

That being said, I agree on improving the steel essence drop, but also tweaking the current values of the Tehsin offerings, on the same fashion that they did with warbitrations when they tweaked the vitus drops (and works like a charm imho).

Also, can you fix this? It's kinda confussing:

1 hour ago, MiraJune said:

• In an Eidelon hunt, you have a garunteed drop of 1 vitus essence
• A solo Eidolon Teralyst takes about 8 minutes for me

[MiraJune]

right yeah. Got it fixed