Farming cubics and auto-bot system analysis

[Gabrielis]

There are currently many debate around cubics farm in the new patch so I decided to come up with a simple analysis based on my own experience of farming several thousands mobs in Forest of Antiquity (I didn't bother to collect a precise statistics but rather my feeling which yet makes a very good estimate). I prefer to farm Raging mobs (when Elyos own the camp) since they are supposed to have higher drop rates). So, according to my feeling, the drop rate of a cubic (all types confounded) is around 10% with drop rates varying from bronze (5-6%) down to gold or platinum (around 1%). I believe these rates are roughly proportional to the ratio of total number of cubics of a given type 300:150:75:75 bronze:silver:gold:platinum respectfully. Now let's consider the bronze cubics. There are 12 cubic stats in total (HP excluded, they don't drop from open world) which means that a drop rate for a cubic of a given stat is 6%/12=0.5%. That means you get one bronze cubic of a given stat (of course along with other stats and grades) from killing 200 mobs on average. The total amount of bronze cubics per stat is 300. So, for a new player, it would take 200*300=60k mobs to kill to complete all his cubics. Is that a lot ? Let's consider a person who is religiously farming 100 mobs per day every day (believe me it is already not that easy as it looks like). That would take him (or her) 60000/100=600 days= almost 2 years to complete all his cubics (since along with bronze ones you get all the other cubic types and if we assume they drop rates is balanced to their ratio). This is a completely unrealistic goal since we don't know what Aion will become in 2 years and if there are still cubics at that time ! Now let's consider a person who only wants to complete lvl4 and 5 of his (or her) cubics. That makes 180*200/100 = 360 days= 1 year of farm and it is likewise unrealistic. Let me add, that there are no other ways to farm stat cubics other than that (we can easily disconsider buying 1 cubic bundles that are on limited sale). All this leads to conclusion that this patch simply does not allow new or recently returned people to complete their cubics and stat cubic content is simply locked away from the game.

Now all this is making people think of auto-botting system which is already active in other regions. Although that system can look tempting (not personally for me since I hate botting and think that this is a worst thing you can have in game and totally not interesting), I don't think it's going to work for cubics farm. Firstly, the mobs that drop cubics are located in pvp areas where asmo presence is pretty uniform during all day. I often find myself ganked by asmos in those areas when I go afk 2 min to go to bathroom (sorry for that detail) or grab some food. Secondly, with so many people who are going to bot, there will just not be enough mobs to kill efficiently, here I suppose that with this botting system everyone (especially new players) will put their chars there to auto-bot. I already feel some competition for mobs while doing forts for gemstone shards although the mobs respawn fast. So NCSoft will have to put one mob per square meter in order to provide enough mobs for all the people who want to auto-hunt in this area. For the third thing I am not sure, but I saw in a video a char attacking an elite during auto-hunt activated. I don't know if the same is valid for mini-bosses since there are two of them (Latzio and Cap Voltaire in Forest of Antiquity) and also Omega in Angrief ruins. Attacking one or simply getting near his aggro radius will quickly put an end to an auto-botting session. Considering all that I believe that auto-hunt feature in this area will be less efficient than manually killing mobs (but it can be nice for titan coins otherwise, probably).

In conclusion, I can tell that in the current patch getting cubics is simply impossible and auto-hunt system will not save the situation. Other measures (like bringing drop rates 4-5 times higher or increasing the number of cubics you get from a bundle up to 10 instead of 1) are needed.

[Squid]

I think one thing we have to take away from the whole auto-hunt system is the actual fact that @Kibbelztold us that it will not be added as of yet. This is hands down an absolutely great improvement on the communication front and credit needs to be given where credit is due. If this was prior to Kibbelz joining the team a question about a game feature would of been met with total silence for weeks after the patch hit.

[Thronos-DN]

I know this sounds revolutionary and drastic but how about instead of farming 100 mobs one by one and get repeatedly ganked by the same player by yourself and finish by the time aion 8.0 comes out, how about everybody becomes a little more social and join or form a group to farm more efficiently and fight off asmos trying to kill u? Unless I'm mistaken u don't roll on cubics.

And if it's an overly geared player taking down a whole group of new players u can always notify your faction of their location since I'm sure older players will want to hunt them for fun.

[Thronos-DN]

Most classes this patch have some sort of area of effect skill and those  that don't have some utilities that benefit the group in different ways, so group up and stack all the monsters together and burn them fast to optimize your time spent farming or farm them one by one it's your choice

[Gabrielis]

16 minutes ago, Thronos-DN said:

I know this sounds revolutionary and drastic but how about instead of farming 100 mobs one by one and get repeatedly ganked by the same player by yourself and finish by the time aion 8.0 comes out, how about everybody becomes a little more social and join or form a group to farm more efficiently and fight off asmos trying to kill u? Unless I'm mistaken u don't roll on cubics.

And if it's an overly geared player taking down a whole group of new players u can always notify your faction of their location since I'm sure older players will want to hunt them for fun.

Thank you for all these suggestions that I find nice and logical. However, the purpose of my post was not asking for a way how to farm cubics, but rather to bring up some real numbers into the discussion. Indeed, in a group you can kill mobs more efficiently, however you also need to share the cubics with the other ppl, so let's say you can farm 4 times more efficiently in a group (which is impossible, in reality it will be as low as 1.5 more efficiently than solo), what it will change ? 6 months of daily farm with a group (I wish you good luck finding a party that will farm 600 mobs with you every day during 6 months) instead of 2 years ? lol

I just wanted to say that whatever you do, farm with a group, kill asmos, do auto-hunting, sing Kumbaya while farming to increase the drop rate, you just simply cannot have sufficient access to cubics in this patch.

[Thronos-DN]

7 minutes ago, Gabrielis-KT said:

Thank you for all these suggestions that I find nice and logical. However, the purpose of my post was not asking for a way how to farm cubics, but rather to bring up some real numbers into the discussion. Indeed, in a group you can kill mobs more efficiently, however you also need to share the cubics with the other ppl, so let's say you can farm 4 times more efficiently in a group (which is impossible, in reality it will be as low as 1.5 more efficiently than solo), what it will change ? 6 months of daily farm with a group (I wish you good luck finding a party that will farm 600 mobs with you every day during 6 months) instead of 2 years ? lol

I just wanted to say that whatever you do, farm with a group, kill asmos, do auto-hunting, sing Kumbaya while farming to increase the drop rate, you just simply cannot have sufficient access to cubics in this patch.

It took a few months for most people to complete their cubics, why should you get to complete your cubics in less than that amount of time? And how much time are u asking to spend to get all your cubics done? 

[Gabrielis]

3 minutes ago, Thronos-DN said:

It took a few months for most people to complete their cubics, why should you get to complete your cubics in less than that amount of time? And how much time are u asking to spend to get all your cubics done? 

If there are people who completed all their cubics at least starting from lvl4 in the current patch (which started in May 27), I would be glad and thankful to hear from them about the ways how they did this. I am sure these people do not exist.

[Thronos-DN]

1 minute ago, Gabrielis-KT said:

If there are people who completed all their cubics at least starting from lvl4 in the current patch (which started in May 27), I would be glad and thankful to hear from them about the ways how they did this. I am sure these people do not exist.

Cubics last patch were not completed in a day or a month so I ask you again, why should u get to finish your cubics in less time than those that did spent time getting their cubics the last patch? And How much time are u expecting to finish all your cubics this patch?

I will give u that it's more tedious to get cubics this patch since they had people doing different tasks the last patch to get them.

[Idle-KT]

2 hours ago, Thronos-DN said:

Cubics last patch were not completed in a day or a month so I ask you again, why should u get to finish your cubics in less time than those that did spent time getting their cubics the last patch? And How much time are u expecting to finish all your cubics this patch?

I will give u that it's more tedious to get cubics this patch since they had people doing different tasks the last patch to get them.

You simply just cannot compare last patch to this patch in terms of how cubics are farmed lol you could easily run 8/12 toons in cubics 7 runs a day (before it got changed to weekly) 

If any old player is still missing cubics that's basically on them for not doing it while it was super easy but now cubics are literally not accessible to any new / returning players cause of the amount of time needed / patience to sit there and kill mobs for countless hours every day and get random cubics in the end.

Best case scenario is them adding the old cubic system back inside Cubic Lab so that way it is accessible and at the same time it's not as fast cause it's a weekly instance but it'd be a progress rather than mindless farming

[Gabrielis]

15 minutes ago, Idle-KT said:

You simply just cannot compare last patch to this patch in terms of how cubics are farmed lol you could easily run 8/12 toons in cubics 7 runs a day (before it got changed to weekly) 

If any old player is still missing cubics that's basically on them for not doing it while it was super easy but now cubics are literally not accessible to any new / returning players cause of the amount of time needed / patience to sit there and kill mobs for countless hours every day and get random cubics in the end.

Best case scenario is them adding the old cubic system back inside Cubic Lab so that way it is accessible and at the same time it's not as fast cause it's a weekly instance but it'd be a progress rather than mindless farming

There are many words I could say but I will be concise : Thank You.

[Thronos-DN]

32 minutes ago, Idle-KT said:

You simply just cannot compare last patch to this patch in terms of how cubics are farmed lol you could easily run 8/12 toons in cubics 7 runs a day (before it got changed to weekly) 

 What instance gave u bronze,silver,gold, plat atk, accuracy,magic attack, defense etc cubics all at the same time in the last patch which u were able to do daily? The only cubic instance I was aware of that awarded specific cubics for bosses was cubic lab which did get changed from daily to weekly but the reward amount was increased.

[Gabrielis]

6 minutes ago, Thronos-DN said:

 What instance gave u bronze,silver,gold, plat atk, accuracy,magic attack, defense etc cubics all at the same time in the last patch which u were able to do daily? The only cubic instance I was aware of that awarded specific cubics for bosses was cubic lab which did get changed from daily to weekly but the reward amount was increased.

Your answer is here : https://aion.fandom.com/wiki/Qubrinerk's_Cubic_Lab

Citation :

Rewards

Upon killing Madrukin, a rank is assigned to the player. This is based mainly on the time remaining. Depending on the rank received, the amount and quality of Cubicles from the cubes will be different.

GradeScoreTime Remaining

S878,600 points51 minutes

A878,600 points48 minutes

B878,600 pointsAnything below

Three cubes will spawn in the middle of the final chamber. The Aggressor's Cube will give cubicles respective to offensive stats (Physical Attack, Accuracy, Magic Attack and Magic Accuracy), the Defender's Cube will give defensive ones (Physical Defense, Shield Defense, Parry and Magic Defense) and Survivalist's Cube will give vitality and survival ones (HP, MP, Healing Boost, Evasion and Magic Resistance).

[The Secret Cow Level]

Here's my farming:

Cubic mobs drop rate (Tested in Gelkmaros Viscum Swamp) with Ice Cream Event Drops (20% drop rune)

[Gabrielis]

2 minutes ago, TheSecretCowLeve-KT said:

Here's my farming:

Cubic mobs drop rate (Tested in Gelkmaros Viscum Swamp) with Ice Cream Event Drops (20% drop rune)

I permit myself to repost some of the data of TheSecretCowLeve was so kind to provide :

Bronze 5.4% drop rate

Gold 1.1% drop rate

These values perfectly support the estimates I gave in the beginning. My conclusion stays the same : farming cubics is impossible in the current patch.

[The Secret Cow Level]

With my Magic Attack Chanter ((Advanced) Blessing Of Wind) I can do 500+ mobs/hour at Gelkmaros Viscum Swamp.

I've just been lazy at farming cubics + ice creams.

[Gabrielis]

4 minutes ago, TheSecretCowLeve-KT said:

With my Magic Attack Chanter ((Advanced) Blessing Of Wind) I can do 500+ mobs/hour at Gelkmaros Viscum Swamp.

I've just been lazy at farming cubics + ice creams.

I wish I had your patience

[Arhangelos]

Cubic lab needs to give cubics for everything. It is that simple, they need to implement it.

[Vantheria-DN]

On 8/15/2020 at 7:32 AM, Thronos-DN said:

It took a few months for most people to complete their cubics

 

On 8/15/2020 at 4:53 AM, Gabrielis-KT said:

That would take him (or her) 60000/100=600 days= almost 2 years to complete all his cubics

 

A few months =/= 2 years, Thronos.

[Gabrielis]

1 hour ago, Vantheria-DN said:

 

 

A few months =/= 2 years, Thronos.

Exactly, but it's not only that, I said 2 years in average, according to probabiliy theory 0.5% drop rate means you get 1 cubic every 200 mobs on average, in reality in can take less but also much more. I just gave these estimates to show the people that even putting completely unrealistic effort and with best luck possible, and considering you already got lvl3 in all cubics, it's still a matter of years to complete them within the current system. If you look into last patch, there were 3 repeatable 2 times = 6 weekly quests in Lakrum for 20 one-shotable mobs each. Each quest gave 5 bronze cubics as reward, which means 1 cubic per 4 mobs, which would be equal to 25% drop rate, which is 5 (!) times higher than in the current patch (5%), and the mobs are much stronger also. I completed my lvl3 bronze cubics in 2.5 months during that patch = 20+40+60= 120 cubics. It's been already almost 3 month since the new patch is live and I only got 20-40 more bronze cubics ! But for lvl4 and 5 I need much more than that (180) !

There should be a reason why with every patch farming cubics becomes more and more difficult, I won't be surprised if with the new update they make cubics only drop from HM bosses with 10% drop rate.

[Zombiex-DN]

auto bot system means they will nerf everything that u can get grinding, cubics, titan coins, exp, everything imagine farm hours and hours just to get a few cubics and almost 0 exp ...  u can test early access server from GF if u want lol and see how it is

https://forum.aion.gameforge.com/forum/thread/7256-aion-7-6-auto-hunting/

[Camalus-KT]

When they removed the cubic instance from lakrum, that was the first hit.. Then when they completed f*** the system, when they removed the cubic exchange.. now u can have 100k of usless cubics that u cant trade for silver, gold or platium. At least they should add that back.

The only one that is avaible is pandora cubic exchange, but we dont have pandora anymore.. its funny, we have the VT instance, but u cant farm those cubics anymore.

[Thronos-DN]

8 hours ago, Vantheria-DN said:

 

 

A few months =/= 2 years, Thronos.

Did i say a few months = 2 years? I said it took most people 5-6 months after 7.0 to get their cubics because i didn't play this game during 6.2 when u can get the cubics easily, but i don't think it should take people 2 years to get their cubics in 7.5. I think u will find the cubics in the BCM eventually(not that i'm in favor of this but it is what it is)

[Arhangelos]

On 15/8/2020 at 6:51 PM, Thronos-DN said:

 What instance gave u bronze,silver,gold, plat atk, accuracy,magic attack, defense etc cubics all at the same time in the last patch which u were able to do daily? The only cubic instance I was aware of that awarded specific cubics for bosses was cubic lab which did get changed from daily to weekly but the reward amount was increased.

During 6.2 cubic lab was giving all cubicles for normal stats and we could even upgrade bronze to silver and silver to bronze.

It took me like 2~3 weeks to finish my cubicles since I would spam it in all my alts in the same account religiously. We had 7 entries per char per week, and the only thing that made me take longer was the fact I started getting a lot of doubles once most of my stats were done.

[Ele-DN]

In the old cubic instance, you can afk like 50-75% of it and still get reward. 

[Gabrielis]

10 hours ago, Zombiex-DN said:

auto bot system means they will nerf everything that u can get grinding, cubics, titan coins, exp, everything imagine farm hours and hours just to get a few cubics and almost 0 exp ...  u can test early access server from GF if u want lol and see how it is

https://forum.aion.gameforge.com/forum/thread/7256-aion-7-6-auto-hunting/

Well, I hope the GMs realize that disabling auto-hunt means disabling OW drop nerf, otherwise what a nice update this is going to be : zero OW drop, sorc skill nerf ... It must be mentioned that already the OW drop in Inggison is virtually nothing , only titan coins have a decent rate, and a crazy competition for elites/hidden monsters. Even magic xtals do not drop in Inggison ! When this update was coming I was expecting similar OW in Inggison like it was in Illuma.