where did all the charr hides go?

I am a leader for a guild and am in the process of recruiting new members. One of the perks I use to get people to stay in the guild is to offer them a set of armor if they are new to the game or some equipment/help on quests. I have been fighting charr in all locations in search of charr hides for fur, to help better the armor of those who need it. I have killed well over 1000 charr in the past few days and haven't gotten more than 10 hides in that time. And to buy fur squares from the rare materials trader costs 550 gold a piece. When starting ascalon armor for warriors or rangers requires 7 fur, thats 3750 just for fur, not including crafting costs and iron/tanned hide. So my question stands, where did all the charr hides go? I get more blue and purple drops than hides. How are new players supposed to get the armor they need without having to spend over 4k for it? No other class needs such high priced armor as warriors and rangers.

My 2 cents,
Seraph

I have also noticed a marked decrease in hides.

I have also noticed a marked decrease in hides

well, after some hot tips from our friends on the Korean servers, I went charr hunting, like, the day before the Wintersday stuff started happening (to get charr carvings) and was tagging charr hides left and right. However, after they put the Winterday-item collectors in place I noticed a marked difference in charr hide drops (hardly any were dropping anymore). My guess is they lowered the charr-hide drop rate in anticipation of the amount of players who would be going out to farm charr for carvings to get Wintersday gifts (and, therefore, insuring that fur-squares' value didn't drop down to, say, 10g each). My guess is that when Wintersday is all said and done, and all the collectors have packed up and taken their candy canes and eggnog with them, and everyone and their brother stops killing charr like crazy and head back to their usual haunts, then charr hides will start dropping again.

I bet its an adjustment by Anet.

This isn't supposed to be a week-long game. New armor shouldn't be easy to get.

agreed.
I wonder if maybe they just converted a lot of the hide drops to carvings.

They converted alot of the Hide drops to SHARDS too lol.

I Farm Nolani like noones business (before and during this wintersday update).

A good 20-30 Minutes work before Wintersday could fetch me 20-30 Carvings, and 10-12 hides.
A good 20-30 Minutes work during the Winterday update (and after the 2nd day fix where they HUGELY increased the number of shard drops everywhere) Got me about 30-40 Charr carvings, 0 Charr hides (I get about 1 an hour), and 5-6 CC Shards.

So I'm inclined to beleive this isn't a nerf of Fur Square getting, but rather that they had to decrease the drop rate of hides to fit in Shards.

Yeah it`s true, i`ve been farming the same area before and after the patch, and the number of hides dropping before the patch is now equal to the number of hides + shards post-patch, with shards having 90% of that number. Too bad, shards are pretty useless compared to charr hides.

I also agree, but at the same time I would like to see a materials npc fabricating fur, as they do with everything else.

Hide drop rate decreased about a month ago for me.Long before Winters day.

stupid nerf lol
ppl alrdy dont brother to make those non-max armour


more ppl need running to Droknar now !

Fur has always been a PITA to get, right from the start. Used to be a hideous % chance to get it from Charr Hides, so we can certainly do without those dropping less!

I think since playing in April I've had maybe.... 7 fur squares. lol.

The reason to use charr hides is not the chance of salvage you speak of. There is a collector in Ascalon City next to the merchant that trades 4 charr hides for 1 fur square.

Very profitable indeed when charr hides are dropping regularly.

During the Halloween Update, I was farming charr so I could get Halloween items. At the same time, I was getting enough hides to trade in for about 40-50 Fur Squares per day.

During the Wintersday Update, I decided to do the same thing. I ended up with about the same amount of Wintersday items, but about 2% of the amount of Fur Squares as I got during Halloween.

Just a statistic I thought I'd throw out for everyone to see.

last I saw, fur was through the roof at 600.

I wonder if hides will start dropping again in a couple days?

heh...it's always funny when some noob gets pissed at me for trying to scam them when I offer hides at 50 ea.

Yes, I too have noticed that hides drop very frequently and am inclined to agree that everything will return to normal once Wintersday is over (*sniff)

In the meantime, as price of fur is so high, ive been farming for fur to sell to trader for nice tidy sum

OMGWERE DO U FRAM???22

I farmed like crazy for 4 hours...only 6 hides a.k.a. one fur square and a half. Last like three months ago I had 14.

I think cc shards are more common....I got 15. Ya hopefully everything will return to normal after Wintersday, and charr hides will be dropping again.

People seemed to have missed this line, and while it is not directly related to the dropping of Charr Hides, I believe this is worth pointing out:

You only need ONE piece of Ascalon armor to get the damage reduction. The damage reduction is global, not specific to the zone in which the armor is located. WHICH MEANS you only need one square of fur. Maybe 2 if you really want to go for it.

If you're at Droknar's, though... just go Knight's. I don't even think they've got Ascalon at that point in the game. Knight's armor uses Steel Ingots, though, which are far less expensive than Fur Squares.

Now, for the drop rate of Charr Hides... yeah. There's a decrease. Big Time. Normally on a Nolani run, I can expect a Charr Hide at least once. Now, it seems I have just as much luck getting Ectos in UW as I do Hides in Nolani. Which is saying something. And it's true... today, I farmed each location roughly the same amount of time. I suppose overall, I killed more at Nolani than at UW (both soloed)... but the results were 1 Charr Hide for the day, 1 Ecto. CC Shards, meanwhile, were very different. 2 in UW, 7 or so at Nolani. And God-knows-how-many Charr Carvings, which I sold for 40 gold each and made a small fortune.