45 Days Later ... Relic drop rates are absurdly low regardless what happens in 0.36

Would love to see this.

Even in Gems of War they don’t do it for a lot of things. Only the actual loot boxes (keys) do they show the drop rates in game, but many things do not show the drop rates like orbs (relics), trait stones (runes), and specific troops in drop table (gear) among many other things are not mentioned in the game.

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I just hit level 50 last night. Used like 60 dungeon/skirmish tickets at difficulty 1. No gear higher than rare, nothing seemingly of value. Is this patch we’re waiting on for this? Did I waste a ton of tickets?

Only chest type they specifically mentioned they are planning on buffing is diamonds.

That would be cause there is no merit or anything productive achieved in doing so.

As you correctly noted in your own post below,

There’s nothing productive left to be said at this point in the thread, and frankly it reached that point a long, long, tine ago.

The whole point of doing that is because there’s literally nothing the devs are going do about this no matter how many times this issue is rephrased or repackaged.

I’m pretty darn sure at this point the devs got the message, a long time ago. At this point in the thread, its like listening to Gong sing.

But, at least at this point, you understand the argument that others in the thread are making, whether you agree with that or not.

I disagree with you on that, and this thread is a shining example of what this tension has brought about and IMO it completely sucks. That said, I’m willing to settle on agreeing to disagree on the most effective communication style and moving on.

I’m already there, to be honest. This thread has long outlived its usefulness, stinks like moldy cheese, and is just an angry echo chamber at this point.

Even when I alluded to another post yesterday to imply that 0.36 might finally be close to arriving, that comment fell very flat.

At this point, 0.36 needs to arrive purely on the grounds of letting this topic finally fade into oblivion. We’re all going stir crazy waiting for whatever changes to come to actually happen so we can talk about that.

At least now they know that when they tell us one thing and give us another, we will accept that as well. Looking forward to my allowable “drIp” from daily events.

The text above had already been amended to have the line about introducing the primary way of obtaining relics. (Not sure which team member did this but thank you!)

However I have also added the part in bold saying (there is a small chance of this.)

I hope that this has amended the patch notes to make things clearer. If I could speed up 0.36 I would, but alas, I cannot. Outside of doing what I have there isn’t much else I can do to resolve this issue, so I will continue reporting bugs and collating feedback.

Thank you @Salty; I appreciate this. I still think the Relic drop rates are a crazy absurd chance rather than a small one, but I am thankful that you were willing to make even this modest modification with regards to the previously published information.

Thanks for holding your nose and approaching this moldy piece of cheese once more.

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I 100% agree with this statement. I mean… Its been officially stated here on the forums and also in the stream. Nothing will happen until 0.36. I do not believe there exists a scenario where TPTB just decide to toss something together before the next major update.

They know what is wrong. They know why it is wrong. They know people are angry. They don’t care. I do not mean they don’t care about the game or the players! I mean only that they have committed to the plan of fixing this in 0.36. As a business owner, I recognize committing to the action plan.

All of that said… I believe its perfectly ok to advocate for oneself in a game, especially one that involves purchases. If you bought a car and it randomly came without brakes, how excited would you be to hear “we will send someone out to put breaks in, when we get around to it.”? A bit hyperbolic, I know. But there are people already paying for the game. So maybe let people vent their frustrations? It’s one thread, and I can almost guarantee that noone on the team are crying in a corner over it.

My point, if I have one, is that this indeed a dead horse, as you suggest. Also maybe its still ok for some people to be angry and frustrated a vocal about it. Both can be true. Again from my personal experience, with my business… When people are b–ching? = not good. When they don’t bother to b–ch? = they gave up = worse.


I’m not gonna quote this out… too lazy at this late hour, hah!

But it seems your frustrations align with mine to some degree at least.

Do I care that relics really aren’t in the game right now enough to matter? Eeeeeeeh, ya, but also kinda no. It really is a beta we are playing and doodoo happens. :woman_facepalming:

But the official responses up until @Salty 's latest (also thank you Salty!) have not owned the blunder. We are here just testing the exciting new game. We know what testing means. Just SAY we screwed up. DON’T say we are entitled to screw up because its early access. (spoiler alert! we know that but… read the room, k?) Just a simple, you’re not wrong, we didn’t do this right, fix eminent is all it takes.

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Thank you @Tresk. I know I’ve been outspoken about these issues, so much so that several people think I’m just stinking up the place. But I believe strongly that there are still legitimately bad ongoing design choices here, not just the absence of the Challenges mode (the “fix”)

I am still uncomfortable with this idea that they have a “fix” in 0.36. I think it depends on the definition of the problem. For some (clearly the developer view), it’s just the absence of available evolution mats; for me, it’s a narrowly articulated vision of allowable gameplay for the foreseeable future. Even when they put in whatever primary means of obtaining relics they envision for 0.36, the drop rates on relics by other means is virtually non-existent. In terms of gameplay, that means there is a narrow event-based “drip” that will essentially be the only way to acquire relics (and glyphs). Perhaps that will be augmented by shop purchases, but in terms of how the game can be played and the rewards that can be acquired while playing the game, it’s entirely constrained to this Challenge system.

Essentially what’s been described is: log on daily, get your allowable “drip” of evolution mats from the Challenges system, spend resources in the shop (likely overpriced crowns/gems, not optimistic that these can be acquired with gold), come back tomorrow. It’s a very “on-rails” vision of F2P rewards-based game play. What about the person who can play two days a week but can put in several hours. They can’t “catch-up” any amount of resources necessary to do evolutions as the only means to get them are narrowly restricted on a daily login basis. Furthermore, if the “drip” is randomized over 60 currencies because it’s based on what dungeon is given in a particular Challenge, what is the actual outlook for doing an evolve? Will we all be sitting on 2/4 of 60 different currencies 3 months out because the only way we can target specific evolve mats is through the shop and not through any of form of gameplay? What if I have two of the same item that I’m waiting to evolve but of different masteries; 6 months then? The benefits of doing Dungeon runs outside of this “fix” will then continue to diminish because your chest loot will contain more and more things you can’t use (more gear you don’t have space for, more Superior Shards that you can’t use because you are behind the evolve curve, more mythic scrolls/runes that you can’t use as well, more food that is a dead currency).

Is it possible that the Challenges system will be more rewarding than I’m giving it credit for? Will we be able to choose (or target) the specific Relics/Glyphs that we need? Perhaps, but nothing that has been done or mentioned to date suggests a holistic solution will be part of the update.

Correct. I’m still here; many others are still here. But goodwill only goes so far. Quite frankly, the game product put forth so far is quite inferior, even given it’s early access status. We need to see more of the “full” product . At the same time, elements that have been introduced to-date have been subject to wild swings (sidequest rewards anyone?) and serious imbalances (so much food!) that suggest that they don’t have a strong grasp on their own economies or expectations of player interactions. In the specific case of Relics, the drop rates are simply too low. That’s the case now, and that will be the case when their “fix” arrives in 0.36. I see it as a flaw in the product. Clearly I’m not the only one. The fact that they don’t intend to do anything about it in the near future doesn’t change that fact.


I might not be remembering this correctly, but the impression I got during the stream was that PQ3 was put out to early access at a much earlier stage of development than is typical. I’m not sure if I think that was a great idea or a terrible one. It will depend on how much all of the additional player input, gets used, and HOW it ultimately gets used. I’m personally enjoying being a part of things so early. But yep… certainly can be super frustrating, also!

haha, ya. I certainly understand the skepticism. Again from the stream, the plan seems to be to roll out the new challenges, observe the impact, and then make more changes as needed. There was nothing really said about what the ideal relic economy or evolution system would look like on the dev end. Things like how long THEY think it should take an average FTP to evolve something from common to mythic, or a modest spender, or the big spenders.

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The player input has certainly been significant since the rewards from the upcoming “Challenges” (0.36 Update) didn’t even exist until 0.35. They effectively scrapped two entire progression systems (Follower evolutions based on food cap limitations/evolution mats and Gear/Spell/Minion evolutions based on multiple copies of same items) and replaced them with entirely new ones(Relics and Crystals). Was this where they wanted to go all along? Were the previous systems trial balloons? Remember we were told that these new systems were introduced based on player feedback around the “challenges” of the prior systems. But in each case the effective result was to severely limit progression going forward (hard constraint on new players for follower/crystal evolution and at least in theory a slow “drip” for gear evolution). The follower change clearly took the choice away from players about how to direct the development of their followers. It certainly seems like the Relic system is intended to produce the same result.


Ya. I have to admit that since 35 I have felt my play and progression being directed in a way, and to a degree that I do not love. I started just a little bit later, took a little while to find the right kingdom, picked a rather difficult first hero class, AND sort of slow poked my first hero. This resulted in me having my followers stuck at a lower point than they would be had I started day one and plowed through as fast as I could.

There is nothing super terrible about that. But I’m not loving being essentially forced to play every hero. Not just play them, but grind them as fast as possible. I’m also not loving being forced to do all of the side-quests in order, even if I don’t give a fig about the gold lady. haha

A lot of player choice was already out the window due to the limited vault space and the balance issues. Meaning, there really isn’t much choice of what gear to chase and what spells to use, or what to put your citadel points into. There ARE choices, its just that 98% of them won’t help you. lol

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You are likely right on the money with this assessment. Your assessment has been my position on the matter since the entire relic system was launched with 0.35.

Implementations of these new systems being significantly different from similar implementations in Gems of War are very likely going to lead to extreme disappointment. Although these implementations are not going to be 1 to 1 with Gems of War, in principle they are likely going to be designed to achieve the same goals as their GoW equivalent.

Doubtful, IMO. It’s probably some sort of Explore-mode equivalent. Will have to see which resources are allowed to be farmed in it, time-limited or not.

Glyphs - Extremely doubtful. Well… if there is, it’s almost assuredly going to be in a future Flash Offer form for Crowns only.

Relics - Possibly. Events are coming in 0.36. If Events are analogous to GoW in that a kingdom of the week is featured (PQ3 equivalent would be dungeons), then the game could feature rotating specific relic sets weekly to somewhat allow targeting.

This is a F2P game. Targeting specific things is going to cost money. F2P players are going to have deal with the RNG.

They are not going to disclose that information to the playerbase or the testers. The publisher is likely going to set those values, with the dev team tinkering with the game’s economies to achieve those internally set values. Nothing on our end is going to make the smallest scratch or dent on this.

Probably. The system that was in place in 0.34 was most likely not going to get them where they needed to be by version 1.0, so they scrapped it in favor of the system partially implemented in 0.35 and likely mostly finished with 0.36.

Same answer as the one regarding targeting glyphs and runes. I’m reasonably sure there will be some convenient flash offers in the future that players can purchase to direct the development of followers.

Requoted myself without removing the context. :roll_eyes:

Now I must respectfully ask, who said anyone was going to disclose that information? Who said that anyone SHOULD disclose that information?

I was discussing with @Sibelios, my understanding of what was said in the stream, regarding letting the challenge system run before making further tweaks, based on data, as needed. I added that there is an “unknown” factor. That being what the development team has in mind as their ideal.

The point was that we can expect to see relics within the challenges. We may or may not see further tweaks to where we get relics and how many, if our results end up above or below their ideal. But since we don’t really know that ideal… his skepticism about the new system was certainly understandable.


My bad for misinterpreting the conversation.

I would agree with that.

I believe the crux of Sibelios’s apprehension is that he is expecting the game to be balanced closer to that of a single player game and the publisher likely has very different intentions in mind, which is further feeding back into his apprehension towards the matter.

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I try (but occasionally fail) to not believe things about the expectations of others. Any mind reading attempts I have made in the past, have usually ended badly. :rofl:

Written communication is easily misconstrued. A misplaced comma can change the meaning of a sentence, and all that. But, I still find that I have better luck not trying to read between the lines. Your mileage may vary, of course.

As to the issue on the table… I personally intend to let the devs sort it out. Then I will give my feedback. That’s why we are here. :wink:


Ok, @Lyrian, let’s go.

You could not be more off the mark. I’ve played numerous F2P model games that have various incentive structures, lockouts, daily gating, resource constraints, etc. etc. I literally authored a thread regarding the Shop structure, it’s necessary place in the the game’s F2P model and the need to have a functional purchase economy that properly incents players to occasionally spend money. You even posted to the thread! So spare me this drivel about my apprehensions that this game will not be the premium game of my dreams :roll_eyes:

Also, why are you even still here in this thread? Didn’t this stink of moldy cheese. Weren’t you desperate to get away? What were your thoughts again?

Oh that’s right, you just couldn’t resist opining with your expert opinion about how the game is going to go. The whole point of my mostly rhetorical questions earlier was to emphasize that during early access things are always subject to significant changes and developers can change their minds about the direction of gameplay as they get more input (which includes feedback from players). I get that you are a beta tester for Gems of War and you think you have some special insights into the direction of development for PQ3, but mostly you just show up and throw cold water on people’s ideas about how elements of the game can be changed or improved. Why you feel the need to constantly dev-splain to everyone how the game will manifest is beyond me as you have shown regularly that you don’t know any more than us.

For instance, here you are explaining to us based on your insider knowledge how Relics are not yet available at any reasonable drop rates under the new evolution framework introduced in 0.35:

Later on you could see people continuing to be confused about this “half-implementation” that was clearly explained in the patch notes so you chimed in again with this dev-splanation:

Hmm. Ok so maybe those patch notes were not so clear after all!

What about addressing issues with the state of the game, critiquing drops or drop rates based on on the investment of time by players:

Here is @Lyrian exhorting the development team to review their drop rates and reconsider the quantities because in his view players are entitled to better rewards from higher value chests; not just more rewards but better rewards. The hubris!

What about abysmally low drop rates that make the player feel like they can’t accomplish objectives in the game; that makes it feel like they are just putting time into getting paltry rewards and might discourage them from playing?

What about when an issue has been acknowledged by the developer, but there is concern that their plan might not be sufficient to resolve the matter:

I wonder what @Lyrian has to say to all these suggestions that the developer review their drop rates, rethink incentives to players, and continue to take input even when the developer has made acknowledgements that the issue will be addressed in the future:


I’m sure some will think I’m a jerk or that I’m playing some stupid game of “Gotcha”. I’m sure @Lyrian will point out how all his observations were valid and worthwhile while mine were petty and already fully addressed. The reality is, @Lyrian is not the developer of this game no more than I am. @Lyrian has ideas and suggestions and recommendations about what would make the game better from his perspective. Ok. But I and others also have ideas, and suggestions and recommendations about what would make the game better from our perspectives. We don’t need @Lyrian to constantly tell us that our ideas won’t work or can’t continue to be discussed because that’s not how the development cookie crumbles. We don’t need him to step in and address all our concerns with his “Developer Translation Services”.

Whatever, I’m sick of it and going forward I will do my best to ignore @Lyrian’s attempts to dev-annotate mine and everyone else’s inputs.

In my view, adding increased drop rates for Relics will not upset the F2P model or the “drip” economy that they want to implement in their event system. If anything it will provide additional motivation for players to continue to play the game even when their dailies are done. It will also allow players to feel like they have a bit more direction and control on what they want to focus on in the game. And who knows, perhaps the additional dungeon runs will yield the 3rd Relic they need, while the 4th Relic is waiting in the shop to be snatched up (but the player was disinclined to make the purchase when it was the 3rd Relic needed). This can be done simultaneously with any other “drip” model and I would argue is worth doing to create an overall cycle of player engagement.

There are so many things to still address in this game; so many interlocking elements that may be incompatible now but ultimately work perfectly well for all parties. I would hope that more and more players are offering suggestions based on their experience playing numerous games, not just Gems of War. And in my opinion it’s good for players to advocate for changes even if it seems unlikely that the developer/publisher sees any value in it. I’ve participated in enough betas/early accesses over the years to know that ideas emerge from players all the time, many which were originally resisted by developers but ultimately were seen as advantageous to player engagement and were inevitably embraced. I want to continue to advocate for such changes.

(Apologies to anyone that read through this entire thing. As my personal mind-reader @Lyrian once said:)


Please keep this thread on topic.

If the meat of your post isn’t about the thread topic, please move it to PM or find another place for it.

I am locking this thread for a few days to give everyone time to cool off. It will open again next week.