The Holokeys grind is awful

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

Why is this grind so rediculously long?

To get the Holokeys (you need 40 for each Tenet melee weapon, and you need each melee weapon multiple times) you do Void Storm Railjack missions, which can be speedrun (depending on which missions are available) in about 5 mins but can also take much longer.

After this overlong mission you have a chance of getting Holokeys, mostly you don't, but if you do the faster missions (the ones without long time consuming objectives) you can get 3.

In practice this means waiting for a void storm at Nu Ga Mines, grinding the hell out of it for a boring hour, maybe averaging 1 key per 5 mins playtime (if you're both lucky and efficient). You can get enough for one Tenet melee weapon after about 3 hours.

3 hours.

THREE HOURS!

For 1 weapon (with random stats).

To put this in context I can get a Tenet gun from a sister (from candidate to Railjack boss fight) in an hour or so.

And this isn't fun, varied gameplay. This is grind Nu Ga Mines as quickly as possible, repeat as fast as possible. The matchmaking is toxic too, as everyone else is as fed up with the mission as I am.

1) Every completed mission should always have Holokeys. This is soul destroying enough without ⅔ of missions giving you FA at the end.

2) there should be other ways of getting Holokeys. Maybe optional objectives always give you some, maybe each crewship kill could drop one? It should be worth varying what you're doing.

3) Drop the weapon price from 40 to 20

 

[krc473]

21 minutes ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

In practice this means waiting for a void storm at Nu Ga Mines, grinding the hell out of it for a boring hour, maybe averaging 1 key per 5 mins playtime (if you're both lucky and efficient). You can get enough for one Tenet melee weapon after about 3 hours.

Why Nu Ga mines? There are quick missions on Veil that give 6 keys, grind those instead. Spy and Exterminate seem to be nice. I got enough for two weapons in less than two hours. I am not sure where you went wrong to get 40 in three hours.

 

23 minutes ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

1) Every completed mission should always have Holokeys.

The drop rate is fine. I was getting keys on roughly 70% of the missions (we got them eight missions in a row). Yes, I know I am biased as a result of this. If you pick low level missions there is going to be a massive issue though, so do Veil.

23 minutes ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

2) there should be other ways of getting Holokeys.

I do think it would be good to add them to the drop tables of the optional objectives. That way you get two chances at it.

24 minutes ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

3) Drop the weapon price from 40 to 20

I would say that 40 is fine. Again, I might be biased due to my key drop rate.

[TheSixOfDiamonds]

36 minutes ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

5 mins but can also take much longer.

36 minutes ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

After this overlong mission

I'm sorry, but I can't take this seriously now. If 5min is "too long" as a starting point, especially considering a lot of RJ Skirmish nodes can be obliterated without leaving your RJ most of the mission.

39 minutes ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

1) Every completed mission should always have Holokeys. This is soul destroying enough without ⅔ of missions giving you FA at the end.

I see no problem with the drop rates. It probably feels worse than it is due to you counting anything that is not a Holokey as a failure. Even though it has the highest single drop chance in those missions, there's a lot of basically net zero returns in Relics.

41 minutes ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

2) there should be other ways of getting Holokeys. Maybe optional objectives always give you some, maybe each crewship kill could drop one? It should be worth varying what you're doing.

Yes but no. I'm always in favour of multiple drop locations, but every crewship feels too high. 6 chances in mission plus the EOM reward. Part of this is me not trusting DE to not just make it 6 chances for drops of whatever level you're at.

17 minutes ago, krc473 said:

I do think it would be good to add them to the drop tables of the optional objectives.

This sounds fair, two chances at your mission tier reward.

44 minutes ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

3) Drop the weapon price from 40 to 20

Considering everything else, it's fine where it is. You aren't forced to get each weapon multiple times. you only need one of each, and you can sit on the keys until a good innate bonus drops. I run Void Storms to pass timers on Void Fissure and Arbitration timers, and have 15 without trying, and only doing Lith.

[Renzo]

22 minutes ago, krc473 said:

The drop rate is fine. I was getting keys on roughly 70% of the missions (we got them eight missions in a row). Yes, I know I am biased as a result of this. If you pick low level missions there is going to be a massive issue though, so do Veil.

You just got lucky. The holokey droprate is 37,5% on any void storm mission and I did 7 missions last night with my friend and we got a single mission to drop 6 holokeys for us. We do this almost every night and our droprate seems to be 1 drop in 3-4 missions which is kinda close to the droprate listed in the wiki. I would definitely not mind if the tenet weapon cost was actually 20 with these drop chances, or if it stays at 40 then every single mission should drop some amount of holokeys because the grind is just too demanding for people who don't want to sit hours and hours per day doing that crap.

[krc473]

1 minute ago, Renzo said:

You just got lucky. The holokey droprate is 37,5% on any void storm mission and I did 7 missions last night with my friend and we got a single mission to drop 6 holokeys for us. We do this almost every night and our droprate seems to be 1 drop in 3-4 missions which is kinda close to the droprate listed in the wiki.

I am fully aware I was very lucky. I did try it solo and got a lower drop rate, but I found that I did good when in a squad.

4 minutes ago, TheSixOfDiamonds said:

This sounds fair, two chances at your mission tier reward.

I actually thought that is how it was originally. It was disappointing to learn that I was wrong and had been wasting my time with the optional objectives. I do think it needs to be that way, it just sounds more fair.

 

[DebrisFlow]

I will just patiently wait for the vendor to have each weapon with a minimum 54.6 elemental % to buy them as less as possible (was already lucky with the Grigori on the first week). I'm sure that by the time i have all 4weapons a new/revised source of holokeys will be out, to buy the final desired element. 

Just don't play and buy content on release, in warframe is NEVER worth it, early adopter workload is ALWAYS calibrated as unsustainable and frustrating. Look at who farmed and maxed Kuva weapons before, and now has a 16/19 chance of not getting anything useful from a larvling spawn.

[Godmode_Ash]

I highly doubt the drop rate is 37.5%.

I have like 8 times more sevagoth parts than holokeys. Sevagoth is 30%(10%x3) vs holokey 37.5%.

[Schwitzer]

The Tenet melee acquisition system is currently bad.

For a single weapon, you have to farm 40 of these things at a 37.5% end-of-mission drop rate. In Veil, that's roughly six every three missions. So let's say 21 Veil runs per weapon with average luck.

Then you have to go to the vendor and check out your RNG (damage %) mixed with more RNG (element). In the very likely event that none of these appeal, you have to wait an entire week to hope for better luck. 

If you're looking to maximise, it's basically not worth buying until you find a weapon with +54.6%. 

Reducing the price to 20 would perhaps make it palatable. 

[Darth_Predator]

I farmed for holokeys on week 1 with my clanmate to get that mentioned Grigori. For us the luck was awful, so we spend 2 sessions (~6-7 hours) of farming to get 40 we needed cause we apparently pissed off RNG with something before the update. As suggestions go, having keys be in bonus pool would help like a lot.

Also while farming we discussed this whole drop rate thing. The idea we agreed upon was having keys be a guarantied drop with either dropped amounts being smaller or price per weapon being increased, or just both at the same time. Cause for us having a clear stable progress is more appealing than being frustrated due to no key drops in ~2 hours.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

10 hours ago, krc473 said:

Why Nu Ga mines?

Because it's fast. No shielded crewships that take longer to take down.

10 hours ago, krc473 said:

There are quick missions on Veil that give 6 keys, grind those instead

Time it, I have. Twice as many keys but 3x the crewships with regular issue when you're waiting around for more to spawn.

But, with a good geared up squad that know what they're doing, yeah, the veil prox missions can be slightly quicker: double the Holokeys in just under twice the time.

Not enought to make it not an awful grind.

10 hours ago, TheSixOfDiamonds said:

I'm sorry, but I can't take this seriously now. If 5min is "too long" as a starting point, especially considering a lot of RJ Skirmish nodes can be obliterated without leaving your RJ most of the mission

Yes, 5 mins is too long when the reward is a ⅓ chance of ⅒th of what I need.

5 mins would be fine if every mission gave Holokeys, it's not that "this mission takes a whole 5 mins", it's that the (at best) 5 min mission needs repeating so many times.

11 hours ago, krc473 said:

The drop rate is fine. I was getting keys on roughly 70% of the missions (we got them eight missions in a row).

Wow, you got crazy lucky. And after 8 lucky missions over at least 40 mins but more likely an hour plus you got enough for 1 weapon (so 4 hours for all 4, or roughly 20 hours to max them out).

I had 5 in a row with nothing. Things like that happen with RNG, but the more you play the more your average will be the base chance of about ⅓.

10 hours ago, TheSixOfDiamonds said:

you can sit on the keys until a good innate bonus drops

Ah yes, because waiting for a random weekly vendor isn't bullsh** grind at all.

11 hours ago, krc473 said:

Spy and Exterminate seem to be nice

Spy is slow unless you have a competent team of at least 3, otherwise it's quite slow even with Loki or Wukong, just for the traversal. Exterminate is what you want, but it scales very linerarly (due to more enemies required at higher levels) so even with very rapid DPS it can eat up time.

11 hours ago, TheSixOfDiamonds said:

11 hours ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

2) there should be other ways of getting Holokeys. Maybe optional objectives always give you some, maybe each crewship kill could drop one? It should be worth varying what you're doing.

Yes but no. I'm always in favour of multiple drop locations, but every crewship feels too high. 6 chances in mission plus the EOM reward

6 chances in a veil prox mission, for a maximum 12 in a longer than usual mission. Fewer chances in the lower missions.

It would be an incentive to play the slower missions for more reward chances.

7 hours ago, Darth_Predator said:

For us the luck was awful, so we spend 2 sessions (~6-7 hours) of farming to get 40

Nope, that's pretty consistent with my clan too. 3 hours is the heavily optimised grind.

7 hours ago, Darth_Predator said:

Cause for us having a clear stable progress is more appealing than being frustrated due to no key drops in ~2 hours.

Yes, the RNG is unnecessary here. It feels arbitrary.

[L3512]

9 hours ago, Schwitzer said:

Then you have to go to the vendor and check out your RNG (damage %) mixed with more RNG (element). In the very likely event that none of these appeal, you have to wait an entire week to hope for better luck.

This is the biggest issue IMO, while the weapons stats rotate every 4 days not weekly it's too slow or too random. I've gone 4 or 5 cycles now without seeing stats I like (any element over 55% or the element I want.) despite having keys to purchase them. The randomness means it could be tomorrow or it could be 2 months time.

 

10 minutes ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

Time it, I have. Twice as many keys but 3x the crewships with regular issue when you're waiting around for more to spawn.

But, with a good geared up squad that know what they're doing, yeah, the veil prox missions can be slightly quicker: double the Holokeys in just under twice the time.

Grineer skirmish in the veil is 3-4 minutes with a good team and possible sub 3 with a really good team, there are bugs that sometimes need to be worked around though.

At six keys per drop, nothing is faster.

[sunderthefirmament]

It's too much.  If they put in a guaranteed +1 holokey per run at Neo and Axi level, it would be more tolerable.  It would take some of the sting out of getting Sevagoth parts again and again.

 

As it stands, I ground out the keys and grabbed whatever tenet melee weapons were on offer.  I have no intention of maxing them out like I would a real sister weapon (well, at least the ones I like).  It's just too much.

[ghoti0315]

I severely doubt the chance of holokeys is 37.5% as well. Yesterday I literally did veiljack with full squad (like 5-7 mins per run, skirmish) missions for like 3 hours total and I only got 18 holokeys.

And I got 3 sets of sevagoth.

[Klokwerkaos]

Dear OP:  HOW TO HOLOKEY:

1) Get 4 man squad that is reasonably competent and has a decent enough RJ
2) 1 Pilot, 1 Forward Artillery, 2 away
3) grind Saturn Voidstorms.  it's less keys but they are way faster (like 2-3 min per mission).  You'll be getting keys like every 2-3 runs at about 4 keys average.

This is not a terrible grind because:  
A) you a cracking relics while also getting more relics, meaning you get plat
B) if you don't get keys you at least get a radiant
C) you also get a but ton of credits.

It's actually worth doing even if you've gotten all your +60% statuses on the weapons just because you're going positive on relics, while cracking relics, while getting a ton of credits.  It's honestly a good farm.

What makes it not a good farm:  You go in with pugs, a crap railjack, everyone is undergeared and you're running veil.  This will make your head explode if you're trying to get keys.  Don't do this an use the method I mentioned above.  It becomes not a bad grind at all at that point.

 

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

6 hours ago, L3512 said:

7 hours ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

Time it, I have. Twice as many keys but 3x the crewships with regular issue when you're waiting around for more to spawn.

But, with a good geared up squad that know what they're doing, yeah, the veil prox missions can be slightly quicker: double the Holokeys in just under twice the time.

Expand  

Grineer skirmish in the veil is 3-4 minutes with a good team and possible sub 3 with a really good team, there are bugs that sometimes need to be worked around though.

At six keys per drop, nothing is faster

Yes, roughly 4 mins average with a solid coördinated team.

While Nu Ga is 5 mins solo.

2 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

You go in with pugs, a crap railjack, everyone is undergeared

I can't always get a good squad when I have time to play, that's true of many players.

Like almost everyone in Railjack I have a maxed out ship. Everyone grinding these has a maxed out ship. "Crap railjack" really aren't the issue.

2 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

Dear OP:  HOW TO HOLOKEY:

1) Get 4 man squad that is reasonably competent and has a decent enough RJ
2) 1 Pilot, 1 Forward Artillery, 2 away
3) grind Saturn Voidstorms.  it's less keys but they are way faster (like 2-3 min per mission).  You'll be getting keys like every 2-3 runs at about 4 keys average

I know how to get a holokey. I've done this grind, with a squad and without, and spent a fair bit of time trying different runs to find the quickest.

If you have a good team Veil is quicker than Saturn. If you're solo or public Neptune is quicker.

Average is holokey drops ⅓ of the time or less. Everyone doing this has a lot of Sevagoth parts.

I'm not saying I can't get a holokey. I'm saying I need at least 160 of them and the grind is f-ing boring, no matter how you optimise it.

2 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

is not a terrible grind because:  
A) you a cracking relics while also getting more relics, meaning you get plat
B) if you don't get keys you at least get a radiant
C) you also get a but ton of credits.

A) Oh my sweet summer child. I have spare sets of everything. The limit on my plat is how long I want to spend in trade chat, not relics. When I have a team on this we're all MR28-L1 somewhere, none of us need to crack relics for plat.

B) ohh, a single relic. I have thousands of them, but do go on.

There are much MUCH more effective ways of both cracking and getting relics.

C) You get chump change credits. If you want credits there are much quicker ways of getting them. I think your definition of a "but ton of credits" is off, try Index for worthwhile credit farming.

[Schwitzer]

I like Void Storms and feel their rewards are decent. However, I still maintain that the Holokey grind is too much. 

[Klokwerkaos]

58 minutes ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

Yes, roughly 4 mins average with a solid coördinated team.

While Nu Ga is 5 mins solo.

I can't always get a good squad when I have time to play, that's true of many players.

Like almost everyone in Railjack I have a maxed out ship. Everyone grinding these has a maxed out ship. "Crap railjack" really aren't the issue.

I know how to get a holokey. I've done this grind, with a squad and without, and spent a fair bit of time trying different runs to find the quickest.

If you have a good team Veil is quicker than Saturn. If you're solo or public Neptune is quicker.

Average is holokey drops ⅓ of the time or less. Everyone doing this has a lot of Sevagoth parts.

I'm not saying I can't get a holokey. I'm saying I need at least 160 of them and the grind is f-ing boring, no matter how you optimise it.

A) Oh my sweet summer child. I have spare sets of everything. The limit on my plat is how long I want to spend in trade chat, not relics. When I have a team on this we're all MR28-L1 somewhere, none of us need to crack relics for plat.

B) ohh, a single relic. I have thousands of them, but do go on.

There are much MUCH more effective ways of both cracking and getting relics.

C) You get chump change credits. If you want credits there are much quicker ways of getting them. I think your definition of a "but ton of credits" is off, try Index for worthwhile credit farming.

I like how you're talking at me like I'm not in the exact same position as you, I also have infinite plat, more relics than I'm willing to count, I can't reasonably run out of credits, etc.  Check yoself bro.

If you think it's boring, don't do it.  You don't need the MR.  Since you seem to claim you aren't willing to sit in trade chat, you don't need the 1 extra trade per day from L2.  

You won't be missing out, they aren't exactly mandatory weapons.  Frankly you already beat the game and I have no sympathy for you because of course the game is boring.  How exactly am I supposed to not be bored by WF when I have 7.5k in mission hours doing the same thing on a loop since hour 1?  It's not meant to be exciting, as an old geezer in the game you should know already that you aren't ever going to get that same high you did when you first got to whatever point in the game where you reached peak enthusiasm.  That feeling is never coming back for you or for me.  Instead it's a default game, the game you load up when you're not more interested in playing something else and you feel like watching grineer explode on the screen.  It's supposed to be mindless for you at this level because you've already beat the game yo.  

If you are so bored, log out till next patch, play something else.  That's normal and healthy.  I've learned this especially with this game, you must take breaks or all the problems with the devs, the game and the mod team will drive you insane over time.  Take a break.  Come back when you're in the mood to farm railjack.

There are reasonable ways to get the weapons.  I did all 4 of them inside of 8 hours.  That's 2 hours a weapon.  Is it ideal? No, but it's a vanity thing to complete everything just for the sake of completion... if it's not a vanity bragging point, and instead is an OCD compulsion and mental health problem than needs therapy.  You don't need those weapons.  Take a break, trust me, been there.  

The grind isn't that bad honestly, it's not great, but it's doable.    I don't take your hostility personally, but maybe don't assume you know who you're talking to on the forums.  I'm not your typical MR 20 newb.  I've been around a minute.  I know the game, likely as well as anyone else.  The grind isn't super great, but it's not as bad as K drive or the old tower white dojo grind, so like, calm down then.  

Also as an old geezer you should also know that your voice as a veteran is absolutely worthless to DE.  It doesn't matter how right you are, they don't care and will continue to do whatever... until all the millions of newbies group up on twitter and sent them hate mail... that's it.  You should know this long ago, so venting about being bored from your place of privilage... meh... you should know better by now.

 

[Monolake]

I'm convinced it's utterly broken, Iv gottne NONE, 0 holokeys from 10+ voidstorms on various planets, including 6 Veil runs. Zero holokeys.  ~30% chance its not.

Not worth wasting time till DE fixes the dropchance.

[Wolfchild07]

They should drop 100% of the time. That's the whole reason people have jumped back into these missions.

[(XBOX)Kuhl MC]

I personally don't care, whether certain people got super lucky or which mission is the best to farm. The RNG factor is the issue here, leading to an annoying and unrewarding experience. Why not simply make them a guaranteed drop at the end of a mission and adjust the awarded amount and weapon prices accordingly? It's way more motivating to reliably work towards a goal instead of constantly rolling the dice and get screwed... In my clan alliance, the overall majority of players have currently decided, not to bother with the farm right now, because it's tedious and aggrevating and because DE has a habbit of screwing over early adopters just to shove everything into the hands of newer players big time a few months later...

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

5 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

Dear OP:  HOW TO HOLOKEY

 

2 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

I like how you're talking at me like I'm not in the exact same position as you

I mean, I met condescension with condescension. You told me I should be satisfied with new player level rewards and I responded assuming that you were at a level where that would have genuinely impressed by that.

My apologies, let's both drop the patronising tone.

2 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

I also have infinite plat, more relics than I'm willing to count, I can't reasonably run out of credits, etc

Then why are you telling me the drop tables are fine because I can get/crack relics and meagre credits?

Fine, we're agreed, the drop tables for these missions suck for the level of players accessing them.

2 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

If you think it's boring, don't do it.

I have stopped doing it. I went and posted on the forums to tell the developers it's too damn boring.

Everyone in this game is a completionist, were here for new content. Putting new toys behind this much grindwall is just a way to burn out your player base, DE only go away with it because so much other stuff is in this release.

2 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

The grind isn't that bad honestly, it's not great, but it's doable

Let's agree to disagree.

2 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

Also as an old geezer you should also know that your voice as a veteran is absolutely worthless to DE. 

Yeah, you may well be right, but then why are you here to shout me down? I'm saying this grind is too slow for the rewards, you're here to tell me I should shut up and git gud at Railjack.

We all know this is DE trying to make Railjack relevant. They put Sevagoth and the Epitaph and the Carmine Penta (🤣) in there but once we have those we never go back. Railjack is a relative ghost town because it's designed for a 15-20 minute game loop (not that we necessarily stay for that) while we can crack a relic just fine in a 90s capture.

Sticking Holokeys in at a woeful drop rate is not the solution to that problem.

In any case, thanks for engaging with my post, let's agree to differ on the rest.

[Klokwerkaos]

36 minutes ago, (XBOX)KayAitch said:

 

I mean, I met condescension with condescension. You told me I should be satisfied with new player level rewards and I responded assuming that you were at a level where that would have genuinely impressed by that.

My apologies, let's both drop the patronising tone.

Then why are you telling me the drop tables are fine because I can get/crack relics and meagre credits?

Fine, we're agreed, the drop tables for these missions suck for the level of players accessing them.

I have stopped doing it. I went and posted on the forums to tell the developers it's too damn boring.

Everyone in this game is a completionism, were here for new content. Putting new toys behind this much grindwall is just a way to burn out your player base, DE only go away with it because so much other stuff is in this release.

Let's agree to disagree.

Yeah, you may well be right, but then why are you here to shout me down? I'm saying this grind is too slow for the rewards, you're here to tell me I should shut up and git gud at Railjack.

We all know this is DE trying to make Railjack relevant. They put Sevagoth and the Epitaph and the Carmine Penta (🤣) in there but once we have those we never go back. Railjack is a relative ghost town because it's designed for a 15-20 minute game loop (not that we necessarily stay for that) while we can crack a relic just fine in a 90s capture.

Sticking Holokeys in at a woeful drop rate is not the solution to that problem.

In any case, thanks for engaging with my post, let's agree to differ on the rest.

I can certainly agree to disagree.  And please bear in mind, my intent wasn't to be condescending, I just generally don't assume people complaining about grind are in the same position I am since that seems weird to me, since having something to grind for is actually I thing I have to look forward to since there isn't really anything for me to do other than create new dojo sculptures.  Instead when I encounter someone complaining about a grind or challenge in the game about 99% of the time it's a newer player that's frustrated trying to do something they aren't geared for.  I fully accept that isn't you and take you at your word, but I hope you understand why I assumed this was the case :)

I think honestly it's not that bad in my opinion, once I figured out just running saturn was the best way to do it I stopped being angry about it and knocked out the rest in a day's time.  I don't think that's too bad for a day's worth of grind, to get 4 new weapons.  It's not great, but if you consider a lot of other stuff, it's not "the worst evar" and I don't say that to be dismissive but just to offer some perspective.  Think back to spending a solid 1-2 weeks going in circles around the pearl to grind out the k drives and how obnoxious that was... this is by far less annoying and more rewarding... though admittedly k drives are one of the worst possible examples and are the epitome of "low bar to clear".

I honestly will say though that I still think it's worth doing railjack even after these four weapons, I just won't be grinding keys, but collecting them passively.

I say this because it's a bit different and literally anything to shake things up helps me enjoy the game more.  For example, i hate doing a lot of the NW stuff, animal captures being one of my least favorite things in the game save k drive.  That said, I don't mind it so much when it pops on NW because the whole point of NW (for me) is to get me to do stuff I wouldn't normally do while min/maxing my input vs output and I find for me that actually helps a lot with burnout, to just do something different once in a while.

RJ might not crack relics as fast, but it does crack them, and I actually do max my trades every day that I log on.  Additionally RJ is one of the only placed where at least some communication is likely to happen with other players (at least assigning roles).  Cracking relics actually makes a big difference in my profit margins and gives me something to do.  As an example, lets say I'm making 1000p profit a day since that's a bad day of trade where 2-5k is a good day, but we'll stick to a 1000 as a round number, and that's 10 100p frame/weapon sales.  If we buy these outright at low price they are likely to be 30p for a frame set, meaning we have a 70% margin profit.  If we put it together from prime junk buying on average a frame is going to cost us 15p.  That's an 85% profit margin.  Every set we put together from grinding is going to be a 100% profit margin (not counting opportunity cost for time).

All in all it ends up being worth it to run some relics sometimes even though I don't have to, particularly for when we have content drops like sisters updates where I'm going to have to buy a bunch of liches/sisters, ephemeras, weapons, and of course some shiney new rivens for my favorite new toys.

All in all I ended up spending I think 12kish plat on the update, with about 6k of that being min/max rivens (and insanely 1000+p was just forma).  This is only reasonably possible to dump this kind of plat without buying plat because I trade well, which in part is because I use my time wisely when I bother to play the game part of the game and that includes busting relics even though I don't have to.

And the credits thing matters to a point as well.  When you do a butt ton of trading, plat tax ends up adding up.  Usually I just grab a booster each time a double credit weekend comes around and grind up an insane amount so I don't have to think about credits for the rest of the year.  Now however, i can spend a significantly less amount of time grinding credits over those weekends, which before was annoying, but now is no longer going to be an annoyance... so I guess I'm just saying there are reasons to do the grind otherwise, and relics and credits can still be relevant at LMR 1, as well as just making sure you do different stuff sometimes for a change of pace so you don't lose your cool at the devs/game/mods.

I guess what I'm trying to say is sometimes perspective can help you shift your attitude to help so something isn't so annoying.  

Example:  if see a player asking me how to grind khora I tell them not to grind khora at all, and instead grind focus and they'll just get plenty of sets of khora in the process because grinding khora as a target farm is insane with the RNG and will lead to frustration, but if you work on focus you'll have another type of progression you'll be making the whole time.  If you shift your focus on what you're doing, it can help a lot with being aggravated, which is why I was bringing up the relics and credits.  

I will offer in consolation though, before I figured out speed running saturn as a thing, I too was frustrated.  I also did find this grind to be the least enjoyable part of the update, so I get where you're coming from.  I'm just trying to say since giving feedback to DE feels like screaming into the void 95% of the time, changing perspectives can go a long way to reduce stress about stuff.  For me this was thinking about less index/profit taker runs on double credits weekend and bigger profit margins on my sales.  It made the grind a lot less annoying for me.

[Tsukinoki]

4 hours ago, Klokwerkaos said:

There are reasonable ways to get the weapons.  I did all 4 of them inside of 8 hours.  That's 2 hours a weapon.

Lucky you.
I spent over 16 hours this last weekend and managed to get 2 weapons and that was it.

16 solid hours of grinding away at various missions, doing fairly optimized mission times as well, and got 80 keys only.
I mean sure I got plenty of sevagoth parts, a pile of utterly worthless endo, and plenty of useless reources (don't know why they even have the planet resource bundles in the rewards table...useless bloat), even got plenty of epitaph pieces from some runs at Saturn missions, but only 80 keys.

The RNG to get the holokeys is utterly atrocious.

Glad that you were lucky, but plenty of people aren't.

There needs to be something done for the RNG.  Right now it is simply far too miserly.

DE presented the holokeys as a way to grind out specific weapons instead of farming liches and hoping it shows you the right one....but I honestly would have preferred the melee weapons to be on liches with how stupidly low the actual droprate for the holokeys are.
I mean they presented this as a token system where you could just grind up tokens and spend them....and then they made the tokens absurdly rare.

20 hours ago, Darth_Predator said:

having keys be in bonus pool would help like a lot.

I heavily second this idea.
Give us a second chance at the keys by spending a small amount of time longer in the mission.
At this point I would take near anything to ease the grind for the holokey drops.

 

Either that or make the keys drop a guaranteed amount per mission and raise the prices of the weapons to compensate so that they take roughly the same amount of time to grind out as now.  That way they could be an actual token system that you can noticeably work towards every mission you run instead of some twisted half token/half RNG BS that we currently have.

[Klokwerkaos]

6 hours ago, Tsukinoki said:

ucky you.
I spent over 16 hours this last weekend and managed to get 2 weapons and that was it.

16 solid hours of grinding away at various missions, doing fairly optimized mission times as well, and got 80 keys only.
I mean sure I got plenty of sevagoth parts, a pile of utterly worthless endo, and plenty of useless reources (don't know why they even have the planet resource bundles in the rewards table...useless bloat), even got plenty of epitaph pieces from some runs at Saturn missions, but only 80 keys.

The RNG to get the holokeys is utterly atrocious.

Glad that you were lucky, but plenty of people aren't.

There needs to be something done for the RNG.  Right now it is simply far too miserly.

DE presented the holokeys as a way to grind out specific weapons instead of farming liches and hoping it shows you the right one....but I honestly would have preferred the melee weapons to be on liches with how stupidly low the actual droprate for the holokeys are.
I mean they presented this as a token system where you could just grind up tokens and spend them....and then they made the tokens absurdly rare.

Were you running saturn missions with a pre built?  I'd say I got keys at about a 30% rate.  I'd say it's also possible that the RNG could screw someone also, but it's less of an issue when every run is 2-3 minutes.  Lets say 3 min, average 4 keys when they drop.  20 missions per hour.  

you ran 16 hours.  that's 80 keys or 20 drops.  20 drops out of 320 or 1 in 16 missions rather than 1 in 3.

If running at this rate, it's possible to get this ratio, but you would have to be supremely unlucky if running optimally to have this kind of ratio.  I can relate.

It took me 42 runs on earth to get my first set of hydroid, longer than it took me to build equinox (damn this was a long time ago).  Sometimes RNG is just cruel.  But the drop rate typically should be a lot better.

For me it was all about finding the right mission nodes (saturn).  Once I did that it became infinitely easier and holokeys would slow but sure pile up.  My ratio wasn't "lucky" it was what should be expected at 30% drop rate.  Lucky would have been much faster.



 

[xcrimsonlegendx]

I've been trying to muster the willpower to grind them but I only have 22 so far and I just can't, every time you do a mission and get zero its demoralizing.