Locked chests - no lockpicks, low drops... expansion? or help for the rest of gw?

GW:EN is labelled as the expansion to GW with ONLY level 20 content.
Yay! I love it!

This is shown by :
1. Good/hard battles
2. Good/hard dungeons
3. New beautiful area's - all views are awesome - charr valleys remind me of presearing.... ah nostalgia. (This doesn't fit but I threw it in anyway )
4. New PVE only skills
5. New Consumables for helping clear areas

But there's a few "weird things" and "doesn't quite gel together" too :
1. Lockpicks don't drop (Not one for me and I'm nearly done....) which really kill me since I don't have a lot of plat - Anyone have lockpicks drop for them in GW:EN??? Seems an excessive gold sink since they were limited to HM previously.
2. No HM... could be used as a faster way to gain points....
3. Normal playing drops are really really bad ....

I can see how the new PVE skills will help vanquishing easier - the new consumables too....

Maybe I'm missing it but since there's no HM in GW:EN (yet!) there doesn't seem to be any incentive to keep playing once you have "unlocked" enough points for the consumables (unless you're after armor)

GW:EN on HM would be damn tough....

This is not a GW:EN bashing thread (I love the game!) but after playing through it does anyone else feel that GW:EN is to be used for "stocking up" aid for the rest of GW, rather than the true hard hard expansion for level 20 it was supposed to be?

Try the dungeons, they're a blast. Also, I had one lockpick drop, so they're rare, but at least they exist.

I haven't had any lockpick drops either.

I retain more often than usually, strangely, but I get a purple in 9.9/10 chests. -.-

Yeah, I've found a lack of certain things too.. namely gold drops, lockpicks, and the like.. but one thing I've found is that the AI seems to be greatly improved, not in a "just give them insane attributes and make impossible" type of way, they seem to react more intelligently (such as using deep freeze before maelstrom) and cause you to shift your strategy on the fly, not just find the right party and builds to do it, such as areas like DoA have become. I'm really enjoying that aspect of the game.

I've seen a few lockpicks drop in dungeons.

Lockpicks must be quite the rare drop, then - 7 dungeons complete and not a single lockpick drop for me or my wife. Though, I'm not having the same bad luck as others - I have retained quite a few lockpicks, and managed to get about 20% gold drops out of chests (as opposed to many people's 0%). Oh yeah, and my treasure hunter and lucky titles are non-existent.

My ONLY Gripe with GW:EotN at the current time is the lask of "decent" loot. I've not seen a lockpick drop in Eye of the North, so I've had to buy every one I wanted (with the exception of a couple of quest rewards)...I'm confused as to why we're spending 1.5k on every lockpick...and most of the chest "loot" seems to be non-max purples. Not even hero-worthy. I am retaining a reasonable number of lockpicks...but I just feel the game would be perfect if the loot that dropped, and was retrieved from chests, was actually max damage, even if it is purple.

Hi

Lockpick drops im pretty sure dont happen, but as for other drops, i just keep getting golds (two max damage inscribable fellblades dropped for me in one dungeon, one of which was req 9 )

also after getting my armour and black moa mini, which wiped me out of cash on sunday, i now have 30k, im just not seeing all the roblems people have....

ALl ive been doing is quests and dungeons so far, (which btw give decent rep rewards, im level 4 in everything but dwarf where im level 6 atm dungeons make that dwarf rep go up fast)

Also about hard mode GWEN, im 99% sure its gona be coming for two reasons, the as yet unmaxable master of the north title track (unless tehres some wierd bonus for completing all teh dungeons), and the fact that if you go to a random outpost in tyria, set it to hard mode, and look at the gwen areas, teh dungeons and minimissions revert to teh undone symbols in red.... suggests hard mode on its way, (and hard mode dungeons will be blooming hard, going through them ive had a feeling that they were made hard then tuned down, (think lots of low level enemies), and hard mode enemies + the builds these guys use= death quickly )

I'm loving GWEN, but I have to agree the drops are abysmal. Considering it's a high level area, most of my drops have been equivalent to say mid-way through prophecies. I haven't had a single max mod on anything yet !

GWEN is cool and I agree the lockpicks are quite rare,the locked chests are giving plenty of grapes up with a few sprinkles of golds.I did get a Platinum Bow(max.stats 15^50 and mods +30 wrapping) req.12 though,it was a monster drop in the Sepulchre of Dragrimmar.

The drop rate/quality does seem quite low for what is a "high level character" expansion.

I've killed whole groups and get 1 or 2 white drops, or just gold coins.

Very few gold drops, no lockpicks, poor quality in general in my experience so far.

Quote: Originally Posted by Necromonger

Quote: Originally Posted by Necromonger

i think on the preview i got a lockpick but since the release, none.
and a weird thing (or just a coincidence), yesterday i opened like 5 chests, all retaining the lockpick, but at the same time all purples >.<

Drops will always be a complaint...

I opened probably around 20 locked chests, and only got 1 non max gold req 12 wand. And then I got about 8ish gold drops from eniemes and all of them were non max. If GWEN is a high level area, why am i getting such crap drops?

So far my best drops were in my last Frostmaw run, I got a tazer staff *what I call it* 4-5 golds, though only 2 were okay. But still the tazer I really like.

Ive gotten about 7-8 lockpicks to drop from GWEN and I'd say 95% of chests drop purple crap. The 4-5 golds I have gotten are Q12-13 and crap skins. Ive opened over 100 chests in GWEN, so yea, the drops SUCK. But they do drop lockpics in GWEN just not as common as in NF.

Drops stink both from kills and from chests. Lockpicks break at an alarming rate considering I'm suppose to have a 48% chance to retain them and very few golds. As for greens...what are they again? Seriously the only ones I saw were the end game items after getting my key. Considering this is supposed to the end of GW1 not sure what they are saving the economy from. BTW I've completed the main story line and a fair number of side quests as well as 1 dungeon. I'm actually down about 5 plat from where I started GW:EN and the only thing I've purchased has been lockpicks. Morale of the story...don't waste your money on lockpicks.

Quote: Originally Posted by ember2inferno