What Caused Spike In Ecto Price: 9.5k ---> 15k

Anyone got any ideas of what cause the price of ectos being sold at the rare material trader to go from 9.5k to 15k?

Would be interesting to work out why it happened?

Edit: Obsidian Shards and Damask also went up.

That's a good question, you'd think they'd be going down.....

People in Asian territories who now have the chance to get into FoW to buy armor. Since their countries never have favor, they had to buy their ectos from the trader, so the prices went up. That, and the drop rate has plummeted into oblivion. You'll get an ecto faster farming somewhere else and merching the drops at this point.

If that actually is the answer, one wonders why shards have not increased as well. Though their availibility seems to be higher.

I remember guildies and alliance memeber paying 2.x k for shards earlier today and at trader when ecto was 15k the shards were 4.4k so your theory on asian players buying fow armour seems pretty good.

Why did the drop rate plummet?

Open Access Weekend

Lowering the drop rate of the ectos was part of the event?

No. its just that the more people farming an area, the less drops there SEEM to be. the truth of that has yet to be confirmed, i think

Well, I suspect ANet lowered it so that the economy didn't get wrecked.

I always thought UW was like a mission area.
And missions are unaffected by the anti-farm code right?

dont think so, what baout the old skelly farm form desalro sea boaredf, i think i got hit by the anti farm there

Im on the european server and ectos have been dropping like crazy. I had 4 in the last run and 3 before that, Not to mention the 2 black and 1 white dye that i found there as well.

I ve been farming the uw yesterday and i still got the average 1 ecto per run (only smithes, no aataxes), with the semi-odd 0 ecto and 3-4 ectos run. I seem to have got a few more golds than usual though.

Shards didnt go up as much only in absolute value, cause in relative terms they easly went up 50%.

Yes, I was surprised too when I saw the price of ectos go up. I also have been getting more golds than usual as well, but I've been getting 1-2 ectos a run.

Euros and ami always have favor. Everyone else does not.
So now all the asians and others are getting their fow armour.

Nothing surprising about that.

Asians getting their FoW.

I haven't seen an ecto in 23 UW runs I did today. Nor any shards in 2 FoW runs.

Maybe you can only get Ecto if your country has favor?

After a load of runs the ectos stopped dropping. I did grand court to see if it was the anti-farm code and the next run i found 3.

And im not sure about your favor theory, i didn't check to see if we had it.

Gaile has said in the past that that is not the case. She said it when replying to the yohlon haven-bot-fest problem. Unfortunately I don't have a link.

i went solo 3 times on friday and god four, saturday i went with a team and got one total. i think the drop rate is the same, but ca_aok said is probably what happened.

I got 2 ecto 2 days ago and a black yesterday thats it. So id say yes the drop rates got lowered. I did manage to buy 65 ecto at 7.5k and 45 shards at 2k.