Collector’s Bounty

I’m sure most people who read about Word of Warcraft on blogs have heard about the ongoing Collector’s Bounty event. Until July 29th players can run pre-Dragonflight dungeons and raids for an increased drop chance on mounts and transmog.

I’ve heard many comments and opinions on this, including both positive and negative ones, and I really think this is the kind of thing that is personal to each player’s own experience and playstyle. Maybe this is right up your alley or maybe you don’t collect at all and couldn’t care less about it. Maybe you’re somewhere in the middle. However you feel about it my goal, as always, is simply to provide my own reflections on it. I do not seek to change your mind or your opinions.

That said, I have both positive and negative emotions about it. I recently wrote a post about how I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything in WoW at the moment. I’m a teacher on summer break, I have no children, and I still feel like I don’t have a lot of time to play as much as I would need to do everything I need to do. I’ve been thinking about this more and ultimately I think it’s kind of a me problem. It’s a testament, I suppose, as to why World of Warcraft is the only game I really play with any kind of regularity. Blizzard has simply released a lot of content that I find enjoyable and enticing. It’s my problem that I want to do too much of it, I suppose.

Anyway, my play time for the past two weeks has been largely taken up by running legacy dungeons and raids, with the occasional treasure goblin farm whenever I realize it’s almost the right time. I’m not farming in Undermine because I don’t particularly care for Undermine and because I have things I want to do that aren’t just farm for the Diablo mount.

Some days I farm only a few different dungeons and raids that I know are quick to run. Yesterday I put about 15 different characters through Stonecore before I finally (it had been a few days of running it at that point) got the mount. Other days, like yesterday, I farm longer raids and more irritating dungeons, like Battle of Dazar’alor and Sanctum of Domination. On those days I am able to dedicate hours or playtime to collecting.

It doesn’t always pay off. I’m keeping a spreadsheet of mounts I want to get and can tell you that the Onyxian Drake dropped for me on July 2nd. Rivendare’s Deathcharger dropped for me on the 3rd and the Fiery Warhorse from Karazhan dropped on the 9th. Yesterday (the 13th) was a particularly good day and I ended up with the Azure Drake, the Blue Drake, the Blue Proto-Drake, and the Vitreous Stone Drake.

Overall I’m pleased by the mounts I’ve gotten and the luck I’ve had. I think it’s important, though, to pay attention to the gaps in my mount drop history. Yes, I got back to back mounts on the 2nd and the 3rd, but I played on the days between the Deathcharge and the Fiery Warhorse. I played on the days between the Warhorse and my especially lucky day. Every day is not a lucky day.

I know people grumble a lot about RNG. I definitely was not exactly pleased that my husband got the Blue Proto-Drake on his first try when I had been running it for days. He offered to trade it to me (we had run Utgarde Pinnacle together) but I told him we both wanted the mount and he should keep it. I then ran it on multiple characters afterwards until I finally got it myself.

Back to RNG, I think people sometimes think about percentage chances in a odd way. It’s not a guaranteed “x number of runs and you’ll get it” kind of a thing. It’s an “every time you kill this boss you have an x% chance of it dropping.” My husband lucked out because the percentage chance was small, not because it was impossible. I had to farm for it longer because it took longer for my one of runs to fall into the 5% (or whatever it was) drop chance. I find that when I think about it terms of each run I feel better about it overall. Sometimes I get annoyed at how long it can take, but mostly I just remind myself that the farms aren’t actually cumulative in terms of drop chance, reset the dungeon (or switch characters), and head back in.