Character Bug with loot

Has anyone come across a character bug where items simply stop dropping, no matter what zone you're in or what you're killing? I was killing cactus salves or whatever theyre called outside Hereo's Audience, trying to collect 5 spiny seeds for a collector item. After killing 8 or so, all loot completely stopped dropping.

It took me about 20 kills before I realized what happened. I went to numerous other zones and tried various mobs. No items were dropping. I relogged and rebooted, though Id imagine no client-side files would affect loot, and there was no change. Items just dont drop for my main char anymore.

I logged in an alt and items are dropping fine. So I email support and explain the problem. The reply? A form letter from someone who didnt even read my email, telling me how the last patch changed the way loot drops.

Has this happened to anyone else? My main char is now useless for any kind of item-finding, since no items or gold drop for her anymore.

Not a bug but apparently Anet attempt at stopping farming. I am assuming you were doing this solo? If so the only way that I have seen where people go around this was to partner up another player/henchman or 2. I'd get with someone or a couple of people you know and try a 2 or 3 person team.

I tried grouping up with more people, and I still get nothing.

Gawd I hope this is a bug in their anti-farming/botting code and NOT a feature. IOW I hope they fix this problem next patch.

I don't farm, but I usually travel around with 3 henchies instead of 5 to increase my XP/l00t drops a bit. I don't wanna start getting nothing due to this problem.

You know, it's strange. I hear a bunch of people saying that they get crappy and then no drops when they're out and about. I, on the other hand, don't seem to have any problem at all with drops. Just for giggles the other day I went to the Old Ascalon area to kill easy critters. (I was tired of getting my ass handed to me by hard critters and needed that confidence boost ) In less than say 15 - 20 minutes I had 5 blue items (2 had upgrades), a purple item (with no mods ), and a vial of blue dye. Now this is not by any means spectacular drops. But I kept killing them and they kept dropping stuff.

You are obviously a bit out of the loop. Not sure what "the other day" means exactly, but the latest patch was put in VERY recently so perhaps this little expedition of yours was before the patch. But as it stand now, this is not exageration or psychology, the drops literally stop completely if you kill the same mobs too much whole soloing.

yeah, apparently if you kill too much of the same thing now you get nothing, nobody know how long his lasts yet, but it sucks

Well, I just went to test it out myself by killing those skellies outside of the Hot Springs myself over and over by myself solo. Granted, they were dropping items each time I killed them, but after so-and-so time (didn't keep track), they just suddenly stopped. And so, to test this out furthermore, I went to a different zone to try it out. No item drops yet again.

So, after getting bored, I took my party of henchmen to go skill hunting in Mineral Springs where nearly hundreds of the same enemies were abundant. After a bit of time with no drops, they suddenly started appearing again. Once again, I didn't keep track of the time, but that's what happened.

Now, from what I can see is, they discourage solo farming. Why? Because I guess they want to keep a multiplayer game multiplayer if you know what I mean. After all, all the areas are instance off and you see no other players but yourself. Granted that if you bring along henchmen, it's not really multiplayer, but it encourages the idea of forming a party. Well, with that having been said, I think I can safely assume this is how the anti-farm program works.

I've been complaining about this in another thread, but I'll mention it here as well.

While doing the Thunderhead Keep mission, I noticed (on the first attempt) that the drops weren't exactly stellar. I kept an eye on it--and over the course of three attempts (we kept on dying during the Ragnar fight), we totaled (eight people) a handful of blues, about two purples, and one gold.

The fourth run, I decided to keep count.

A bunch of common drops (mostly collector item's and gold), seven blues (one of those a minor rune), and nothing else.

Now, before someone says "it's only luck," I RAN THE MISSION FOUR TIMES.

That's a lot of luck to be having if I'm getting the same response EVERY TIME I DO IT.

Something is definitely wrong. I still do not receive any drops while solo, in any zone or mission from any mob. I have two accounts, so I logged in the second to test with an alt. I killed a mob outside ascalon, and an item dropped. I disbanded and went solo, no items. I tried with henchmen, and no items.

So what exactly is the deal here? I have to play with other people ALL the time or I dont get items? How versatile.

Averon,

Apparently so.

If you decide you want to play alone, YOU'RE PLAYING THE GAME WRONG.

It isn't just happening to 'farmers'. This happened to me today doing the 'Villany of Gilrath' quest. The Kessex zone is full of minotaurs and redwood shepards with some trolls thrown in here and there and a bunch of aloes.

I had to clear path to where I needed to be, and in order to do so, many groups of each type had to die. (Henchies stayed with me throughout.)

I never left the zone (had a 60% DP for most of the day, actually) and eventually managed to get the quest done.

However, after about the sixth kill of each type, there was no loot at all.

I don't think ArenaNet thought this one through.

Studio:
Yeah, ok chucklehead, because I went by myself to get collector items I was playing the game wrong! I should have brought 5 other players who didnt need the items instead. Or better yet, 5 henchman who get all the items.

It's pretty clear by the availability of henchmen and instanced zones that this game was not intended to ever be played solo. *sarcasm*

All I can say is, if this is the direction the developers want to take the game, then I wont be playing it or buying future expansions. I group with people to complete difficult missions or to play with friends, otherwise I go solo. Removing the solo option from the game is a bad idea imo.

Yeah, this happened to me. I was killing some Ettins for the hell of it. Then all of a sudden, items stop dropping. I kill about 12 more monsters, none dropping anything. Then I went to the next group, and everything was back to normal.

WTF?

Averon,

i was being sarcastic and actually sympathizing with you.

I keep logging in and testing this occasionally. Items are still not dropping for me at all, off any creature in any zone I go to. Is there some kind of timer on this or should I just keep killing crap til items start dropping again?

so, i've been running all over the desert for the past 2 days TRYING to collect the items to turn into the collectors, and well, guess now i know why i've been haveing a hell of a time trying to get my armor. i swear i'm about to whip out my credit card and find me a new game to play. been bored out of my mind ever since reaching lvl 20 anyways and the only think that has kept me playing is looking forward to getting my 15k armor dyed all black, which i decided to get this collector's set in the mean time and now can't even do this without smashing my monitor, let alone... now how in the hell will i ever get enough money for the full 15k set.

I dont see much of a change at all. I never farmed (never really knew how) and I don't see much in change of drops. I don't get many purple items anymore; only had one gold item (my staff) drop ever. However, I was doing the Ruins of Surmia mission today on my warrior, and I got 3 nice drops (to me): 1 silver and 2 blue dyes. Those three from the charr and a devourer made me 1.3k richer . (If you haven't noticed, I'm not that rich lol). I guess it really depends on how you look at the problem at hand...

In response to Wrain:
I'm kinda bored also. The Elona Reach mission has me pulling my hair out. I've actually gotten farther with henchmen than a group of people. Problem is, I get one crystal, then die on the next. Then I think, "Well...I know I can get this one...lemme grab the other one first this time..." only to find out I get that crystal, then 50 more groups appear on the path to the other, and I die again. Not very fun at all, especially when no group wants a level 20 N/E . I hope they make the mission a little easier with us 'outcast' groups since people only ever seem to want tanks and healers...but I digress...

Anyway, the change to farming or whatever (never even knew they changed drops till I read this) doesn't effect me...and I still get gold in fine...just have to find other ways to make cash, I suppose. Good luck to everyone on that.

There's a theory going around that drops get reset after turning in a quest reward or completing a mission. Try finishing a quest or mission, and see if it starts working again.

never get any drop? tehehe .... BANG.

same thing with Charrs Hide, it take 6 or 10 charrs before you got one hide. But i got lucky tonight, i kill at least 14 charrs and got 3 hides, but it take a whole lot of hides in order to trade up for fur squares, which is what im doing!

Tested it last night by completing the first mission with my main and an alt on a second machine. Items did start dropping again while solo after the mission was completed. Would have been nice if such a fundamental change to the game was listed in the patch notes. Even their tech support had no idea of this bug or its "fix".

This is going to put a serious hurt on my research into the hidden properties of collector's items. Especially with the harder to get items.

Well, I'm pretty new to the game (and these boards) but yesterday I finally passed the game with my first character, a W/Mo. After looking around this site and the forums, I found someones post on making a build so that you can solo an get some loot/xp. Soooo, I try it out, rearrange my attributes, and head into the Dunes mission to kill the first couple of groups of Losaru Bladehands. In less than an hour, I managed to get 4 gold items, a superior swordsmanship rune, and I almost got a superior curse rune, but unfortunately lost that in the salvage process ( I was pissed about that one ). Anyhow, a bit past 2 A.M (I was on a roll and didnt want to stop!) I noticed that one of the Losaru wasnt dropping. And I was getting standard drops from all the others. So I go in one more time, and notice something kind of strange after the Ghostly Hero lowers the bridge. As soon as i stepped on the bridge. A monster skill appeared on the top of my screen called "Claim Resources." Right after that, the monsters wouldn't drop anything, in any zone, and everytime i would go back to the dunes and lower the bridge in the begining, that monster skill would appear on the top of my screen. And, like some of you have said, the drops do resume after a while. Today when i logged back on they were dropping again, but after a few groups, bam, same thing happens. I'm really hating this patch.

Anet seems bound and determined to turn off the average player. In their all out quest too nerf farmers out of existence(this will never happen, no matter how bad it gets, of this I am certain), they are nerfing players such as myself and from all the posts I have read in the last few days on various boards, many many others such as myself, well they are nerfing us right out of the game too.
Anet may want too stress that GW is a game where Godly(I only use the term for its descriptive nature) items are not required to be competitive, but the truth is people play these games for many reasons, and for me one of the biggies is the fact that over time, I will become wealthy, it has happened in every other game I have played. But it seems in GW's it is the other way around. Ive only been playing for 3-4 mos. and in that time there has been nothing but nerf after nerf of the loot system. Now it is so bad that I dont even want to play anymore, and that was before I heard about this little jewel of a 'bug'.
Anet get your head out of the sand, and wake up, please Im begging you.. You are screwing over your player base badly in your overley zealous, and extremeley short sighted plan of 'nerfin' farmers out of existence. The only thing your nerfin out of the game are the casual players that would like to slowly build up a nice pile of gold.
Again I implore you, wake up Anet, every day the thought of buying the next game gets a little less likely. With each new 'update' the amount of gold that drops lessens. I dont see how they can make it any worse, in fact soon they'll be demanding we pay the monsters some loot to be able to kill them. Thatll fix the farmers.

I've been farming ettins a fair amount recently.

Got a sup healing yesterday.

Got a Sup Death and Sup Soul Reaping in my first five ettin farming drops EVER a few weeks ago.

I'm not terribly worried.

The grawl outside Port Sledge are very disappointing, however.

I hate it when somebody, reactivates an old and death post from more then 4 months old.

I've been farming in those 4 months and never see this bug happening, perhaps I'm lucky.

@Grais: this isn't the rant forum, it's Questions & Answers. Closed.