Underworld drops?

Most of us have been there. You form an Underworld group in the hope you can go the distance and someone takes Unwanted Guests and instantly your team is doomed and maybe you get 1 ecto for your troubles.

Also 55 smite runs, can usually get 1-3 ectos in a trip.

Just came back from a 5 hour trip there (with possibly the dodgiest bonder in the world). Cleared the entire place and got for our troubles, 5 ectos. Was just about to do the quests when the same tool of a bonder took Uwanted Guests for no reason and dropped us all in seconds.

Led me to wonder if its actually worth doing full teams at all in UW. They seem to have nerfed the drops that much because of 2 man teams that you can't get a thing. Supposadly the mesmers in there give you better chances of ectos but by the time we'd got the first drop we'd cleared the start, the village, the smites and 3/4 of the chaos planes.

At the rate i saw that trip, 5hours in there, 5 ectos. 1ecto/hour really isn't incentive to stop doing 55, SS/SV runs which if the drops are poor for that particular trip you do another within the hour anyway.

Drops are random. In a single smite run, 5 ecto's dropped. So I guess all it takes is some luck.

1-3 ectos per smite run when i used to do it and the drops arent as great as they used to be. And the chests are purple more then gold anymore. So in my opinion its not worth the time anymore.

With the anti-farm code there, I would think that if one person in your team has been farming the UW too much, all the drops will be slashed. Oh, and if you want to go UW just for ectos, dont go in a team of 8 and dont do the whole thing.

1-5 people is ideal for UW. A full party of 8 is too many people to play general with and keep in line. Why people even bother with it anymore is beyond me.

People are over the storm bow/eternal shield craze and ectos can be farmed for free in ToPK. Ectos average around 6k on a daily basis with shards steadily climbing to over 4k. And as noted the chests in UW suck as in mostly purple rewards. Only reason to keep doing uw is if you havent got Fissure armor yet and refuse to pay for ectos.

Only spot that gets my attention farming wise is FoW. Just cuz it's so easy to make a profit there from shards, chests, upgrades,easy access shot at rare skin items, and the 60 gold per piece stackable demonic turds. I made almost 200k in 4 runs solo there a few nights ago just from selling shards and the stackable junk. I dont even bother picking up blue or white items it slows your run down

Even fow get's boring............need factions to feed the addiction.

If you just want ectos or just farming, then definitely don't go to UW with a full group. Go with a full group with only the intention of clearing the UW and finishing all quest or something like that. (Yes, I realize that most group fall apart so soon it's not even funny, but you just need a good one)

EDIT:
And yeah, like kcp said, FoW does seem more fun farming wise. But I try to alternate between farming and doing quest and stuff. It's nice to go down to UW or FoW and not worry about drops and just kill stuff and do quest. (a nice break from a row of completely bad farming runs certainly)

I went in as a full team because i wanted a change to 2man teams owning smites. I've cleared FoW once inc/ quests (so many leavers out there!) and sorta cleared UW now.

The only problem was its not just the chests around the smites, the entire of UW was full of purple chests. Overall we found roughly 8 chests, not a single 1 was gold. Just what is the point in the rest of UW if there is absolutely no reason to farm it at all? They might aswell remove 2/3s of it and leave it as smites+village since the other parts are
1. Too much frigging hastle
2. Full of Mesmers + High damage warriors/eles

If they're not gonna make the drops/chests worthwhile, why have it there? I mean when they designed UW they really can't have expected your average useless PUG to do well down there. We spent about 20minutes in ToA sorting out the build and the bonder was still useless. Seriously he bonded the tank only and CONSTANTLY cast Spellbreaker on him even when he wasnt under attack by casters. Infact by the end i don't think he even bonded at all...or cast at all, don't forget that.

Oh and we got 2 gold drops the entire trip. 1 Flame Artifact (so its almost definatly gonna be useless) and a non-max Spiked Axe that didnt even get a damage mod.

Mindblades have some of the best drops in the whole UW. What is this nonsense about 'blublublu no drops no chests shd remove 2/3 UW!!!'

The UW was never designed for a 55 monk and SS supporter. It was desisgned for full teams, which can clear chaos quickly. They aren't meant to be easy for farmers, so your point that they are hassle just shows that those places should STAY.

UW goes from very easy to very hard as you go further in. Most people only stay in the easy part, but theres no reason that the harder parts should be just mindless xp. PvE has some challenge and there is no point in removing that because PuG farmers can't take it.

Owned

Meh fair point. Just seems the drops aren't quite as good as they should be for all the length of time you have to spend in it.