Stone elementals in Old Ascalon

I got bored one day and set out into Old Ascalon. Of course, I am high enough level to be able to walk around the area solo.

To my surprise, after fighting about 15 of the Walking Stone Elementals, I found myself with 2 Silver Dyes. I thought to myself: sweet!! 15 lvl 3 monsters = 1000g in dyes!

Then I proceeded to clear out the entire map, fighting dozens of elementals, and received nothing. Went back to the city, and re entered the map. Cleared out the map again... to no avail. I've tried this a few times of the last week. I thought I had experienced a freak fluke.

Then I did it today and after fighting 4 elementals, I had a silver dye and a red dye.

Is this a freak occurance? Are there certain conditions where dyes are dropped regularly by these lvl3 elementals? Am I just desperate for gold?

I haven't paid much attention to drop rates in dyes, but I did notice I had more dye when I was a lower level, or when I'm doing old quests and killing the easy mobs. Later in the game, as the levels get higher, I found less dye. But, it could just be coincidence.

I tend to find the same colors over and over again, too: purple, red, and silver.. strangely, which are the three colors I use/have used.

Seems very random to me. I went for a whole week and did not see a drop of any dye and last night found 2 black and 1 silver.

As far as drop rates as I haven't seen a table on that, I wonder if Dyes fall into a lower Treasure Class (yep Diablo speak is coming out :-) ) so they have a greater chance to drop with lower level monsters and as Monsters increase in levels, their TC also expands thusly decreasing likelyhood of dropping.

I was doing one of the ascalon mission for the bonus with a human team and got a black dye drop.

Dye drops are very random, you can get a black at lv4 and never see it again until you reach lv20.

100% random. Random means that sometime a person could get 2 black dyes in a row at times, and at other times never see one for a month. (and he's typing now) Nothing has changed, no conditions affect anything, the moon doesn't have to be in line with venus, that's just the nature of random.

Except when it comes to computers, nothing is truely random.