Did they nerf the SoT drop rates?

[Gunn1997]

since my luck with miasma is crap i had been farming the first couple rounds of champ spawns for SoT's and was making decent money doing that.

but it seems since the recent patch that they dont even drop any more.

before the patch id get 2-3 sots out of each couple of runs, since it i havent gotten a single one, not even a camping sot.

ive ran vermin start to finish, cold blood first 2 rounds 4 times, first 2 rounds of sleeping dragon 4 times, and the first 2 rounds of vermin 2 times since the patch and not a single SoT, got 5 jaana's staves, 2 dragon swords, several statues/maps/set armor peices/ 105sops, but not a single SoT.

 

[Farsight]

I believe is has slowed down at some point, but it also remains very streaky.

For example, I was just killing dark wisps for bones yesterday (I'm looking for particular bone facings to make myself a "jolly roger" banner) and I got three SoTs in three kills in a row.

My last half dozen complete spawns have netted me exactly zero pink slips.

 

[Gunn1997]

guess i gotta figure something else out, cant solo the champ spawns and i need some 120's to finish my samp.

miasma isnt going well for $ either, guess my best bet is to pay up for SA raise imbuing and sell relic frags.

 

[Farsight]

Paying up for SA is probably the best way to make gold as a sampire, yes.

But not relic fragments.

If you do the mini champ spawns which nobody else seems to be doing (everyone is focussed on the Cavern of Discarded and the Stygian dragon entrance on Catskills, it seems), you can get a lot of imbuing ingredients. My best result was in a half an hour, I got seventeen essences (of passion, unfortunately, but they are good for hit-lightning) as well as 4 demon claws and 9 lava serpent crusts. Each of those essences, should I decide to sell them (I won't, I'm hoarding right now) could bring me 50k gold. The demon claws are worth another 50k gold each (or more, demon slayers are nice) and slightly less for the serpent crusts. So in that half hour of work plus the time it would have taken me to place it all on my vendor, I could have earned 1,400k gold from the people who are too lazy (or just don't have enough time) to get it all themselves.

Granted, that's an extreme case, as most mini spawns only give me 6-8 of any essence (plus extras only found on certain creatures). Still a decent return rate for a short time of work, and a decent sampire won't even find most of those spawns slightly challenging.

That's as opposed to the old lands, where you need to just head for the highest end of spawns and hope for lightning to strike (2 years back in UO and I still haven't had a rare peerless drop like a Crimmy or Mark of Travesty, and no Doom drops at all, but I gave up on Doom about 6 months ago. I have received a few good 120 scrolls, but I spawn with friends and on my tamer or archer)