Passages - Gem drops rates in them

I just spent an hour in the Spindrift Passage harvesting all the crystals in there and found a grand total of 7 gems. This was gathering for a little over an hour and with a Mining and Meticulous skill of 90, and an Obsidian Potion of Precision and a Pickaxe of Prosperity. Of course, Meticulous doesn't give you a chance at more Gem's but more fragments.

The gem drop rate seems very low. You also probably have not looked at the crystal node gem drops for these areas in a very long time. I believe the Passages were designed as places Players do go to get the various (and specific ones, depending on the Passage) Gems and Fragments.

If you get some time, could you possibly take a look at these gem drop rates from crystals in the various Passages? For a gathering skill that is for specifically to gather gems (and fragments) that does seem a bit low, in the number of gems found. Especially in a Passage.

Thanks!

06/14/2019 12:16
SotA.Win.64.992.Date.06.11.19
Area: Novia_R5_Underground01_01
Area Display Name: Spindrift Passage
Loc: (25.2, 0.0, 93.8)
Debug: Tm92aWFfUjVfVW5kZXJncm91bmQwMV8wMXx8KDI1LjIzMiwgMC4wNDUsIDkzLjc1NSl8KDAsIDAuNzIsIDAsIC0wLjY5NCl8MjY3LjgzNDZ8MTB8MTI=

 

Actually, you can get a full gem on a meticulous, or at least you used to be able to. Somewhere I have a screenshot of a node that I got 3 emeralds from.

Agree that gems are pretty messed up though. Most miners don't even bother with crystal modes, but you can get hundreds of gems in a day from just killing bosses.

 

I’ve never seen more than 1 Gem from a meticulous. I don’t have GM Mining yet.

And yeah, no one goes at all to the Passages any more.

 

I used to, then they made the keys brittle. Many of them connect through Kiln Cisterns, where you have to kill a mini-boss water elemental to get a key...that usually only works once. After the various changes to combat, including magic resistance, it became impossible for me to do enough damage to keep up with their self-healing, so I stopped trying. This was when I was probably AL80 or so, those things were total damage sponges. I don't remember the tier of that scene, but something which drops passage keys should be defeatable by AL50 or so.

I know there was a fix to make pet water elementals not heal as much, I wonder if that was a general creature change or if it only works on the pet version.