How to get good drops

I've suspected this is how it works for a while, but now I have firm proof.

About two weeks ago, I took my R/W into Tombs for the first time in 4+ months. The very first run, I get both a Glob of Ectoplasm (my only one ever from Tombs) and Victo's Battle Axe. Next run, I get two greens, one of which is Victo's Sword. Figuring it can't get much better, I promptly resolve never to come back to Tombs again.

Last night, I take my SS on a two-man UW farming run with a 55 monk. He gets a Glob of Ectoplasm from the Aatxes in the starting chamber, and then the very first mob of Smite Crawlers gives him another Ecto and a rare. That's when it turns out he hasn't been in UW for months. Sure enough, when the run is over, he's gotten all three of the Ectos that dropped for us.

Is this ANet's way of feeding addictions? "Look how good your drops are! Don't you wish you came to this part of the game more often?"

or it could be "I scored a lucky drop or two.." The drops are there to intice people to come and play there. The fact they dropped for you and your monk friend is merely luck and does not dictate the drop rate to the rest of us.

He wasn't a friend, and we didn't even call 50/50 before the run.

What I'm saying is that we all know ANet discourages constant returning to the same zone, so much that there's game code that reduces the quality of drops if you do it too often. Isn't it reasonable to assume there is also game code that increases quality of drops the longer you stay away from a particular area?

No, theres reason to assume that the game code that reduces the quality of drops wasn't effecting you because you'd stayed away. Not vice versa.

But if you're taking these "incredible" drops as "normal," what does that say about the "normal" drops? You're effectively saying there are two levels of anti-farm code: one that reduces "normal" drops (as seen in my first post) to the level of a regular run, and one that reduces the drops of a regular run even further should you see the anti-farming "hint" come up on your screen.

What are you talking about?

You haven't farmed there for a while = your drops are normal.
Your partner has farmed there alot = his drops suck.

Put 2 and 2 together and your drops seem 'magnificant' because your comparing it to someone with massive amounts of flags on them.

I haven't been in FoW since shortly after Factions release. Last night I went with just a random PuG. I got: 3 keys, 2 shards and 2 purples.

The anti-farming warning has the solution to getting "good drops"

"If you complete this area NORMALLY your drops will return to normal" or some such thing.

People who ONLY do UW over and over have a worse drop rate per run than those that do it very rarely.

I rarely do UW, a friend of mine has an IV of UW in his neck. Now and then he will convince me to duo UW with him, I rarely do that. When I do, his drops and mine are impressive to him because hes used to going various runs without anything worthwhile. When the smites see him come they all hide their goodies. They know him too well

I find going to PvP with my PvE characters and messing around for a while is worth more than just "switching crops". It works wonders for me. Then again "messing around in PvP" means ~2weeks - 1 month of not stepping into a pve area cept to help people on quests.

I agree with the above; however, I find that I get an ecto almost every UW trip (out of the last 25 trips, I've gotten zero ectos 2x)...have had 2-3 ectos per farm quite often, as have guildies...with 6 ectos for one guildie on one run as our current guild record...we hit it every night and usually get 6-10 ectos as a group (4-5 man trap team) every trip there...

Outside of UW, my good drops decrease the longer I farm...per the norm.

I will go to areas I havn't been in months and never get good drops, or even bad drops. The drop system in this game is pure crap.

I don't know about that, my ele went to FoW last night, for her first time in 3 days (go everynight usually) and I got 2 Shards, my necro and he got 3 shards...my monk nothing. So you could be right.

Well, I have to disagree with this because I have been farming FoW a lot (and that might be an understatement) but some runs I only get one shard and then I do it again and I get 3 shards, 1 key and a rare. I think people look into this too deeply.

Its the same anywhere, you can be the biggest farmer ever and still get 6 ectos in one smite run, or you can go on your first ever UW trip and get nothing but demonic remains.

I have also seen this, a friend of me went online not playing since start of factions,he went on his smite monk, bum 4 ectos for him in the chamber, other runs went ok, the next day we did 4 runs not 1 ecto .

And when I couldnt play for a week i went with my guilde to finders keepers uw run got 3 golds 3 ecto :P, godds were nice.

to OP: Yes its true. The less you play - the better the drops.

I'd disagree with this. I alternate farming areas all over the place, over different characters, and no matter what, I usually end up getting screwed in groups and getting no good drops during solo. And I don't farm 24/7 either. Basically, it looks like the best bet is to just farm merch food from trolls or vermin or something.

i have not been to ascalon in a year. i go there to train my pet. not any drops above a white. so umm...?

to Above post, READ EVERYTHING

Dont play the game for a good month then go to UW and tell me what you get. .

Been there, done that. I was away from the game entirely for over a month. Came back, went to uw. I got a bunch of whites, a couple of blues, a bunch of demonic remains and a purple from a chest. I didn't get a single ecto for almost an entire week after being back (this is a week of many runs) while ecto were dropping regularly for the 2 people that I duo'd with.

i haven't played my warrior for like 3-4 months, i did some uw solo last week, well on the first run i got 6-7 purple items. wow

it should be pretty obvious now that all drops are random occuring if u havent seen that by what ppl are saying here. but to help u a little ill give u an idea of how things seem to work ( how i seem to see things work).

A. u load an instance, computer takes the leaders times hes been in and out of the instances. does a random multiplication of that to a random table of figures. then sets on doing that to each member in your party.based of the leaders finally tally marks. then finally adds that number up and that is what decides what types of drops u get.
B. so if u want just do some things there then reenter the same instance again with a different party leader if u like.

again its just what ive seen happen. when i do dou teams we switch leaders every time we go.