1893 Posts

I am at Max level, and it seems to me that the higher the level I am, the harder it is to finish the seasonal events. This event was very disappointing for me because I was not able to get all the pristine dishes. I only had 8/12. I found plenty of meat and vegetable ingredients, but the drop rate of desserts were next to impossible to get. I’ve also noticed that there were barely any drops of any kind on the last day. (I have noticed this with other events too). I played countless hours, used up several large energy packs, and tried different rune, pet, and trinket combinations. I am curious how many other players were not able to finish this achievement. Also, does anyone know how many ingredient turn-ins are needed for each pristine dish?

Lvl 440 "Other Peoples Problem Solver!"

5565 Posts

I have never heard of anyone at max level, or anyone who has done even one single event before whether or not they got that prior event to 100%, ever having issues with any subsequent events. Do you play every day? Even more then one time a day? If so then there is something seriously wrong and you should actually write a trouble ticket to the Developers.

It is random but the more you turn in t he more likely it will make a pristine.
Did you do single turnins or the multiple turnin to use up all ingredients in one shot? That shouldn't matter though.

47 Posts

I was also wondering how many turn-ins were required...I didn't finish that one either, but was offline for the first couple days of the event so missed out on a couple days of playing, so I figure that one's more on me than on the game. My bigger quible, though, was with the turkey-gathering. Seemed to take 10 or more 'quick whacks' (a complete pass through the whole field) to get a turkey, while other quests only seem to take half a dozen or so passes. For example, with the 'dooty clean up' it only takes 3-4 passes before I get a dooty to whack; there are only 20 dootys to gather, while for the Thanksgiving event you have to whack 100 turkeys. If there are going to be that many items to gather there should be fewer passes required before you get a shot at one, or at least the number of passes should be consistent with the number required for similar quests. If that takes too much of the challenge out of it, randomly varying the number of passes would seem a little more sporting - say, 8 passes followed by 3 or 4, then back to 7 or 8, down to 5, etc.

Lvl 440 "Little Kid Scarer"

17 Posts

While I had no particular issues with turkeys gathering (I think I got them all in 6 or 7 days), I must also report my concerns for the pristine dishes achievement.

I haven't missed a single day of the event and did at least three complete energy refills each day (in the last few days of the event I even played twice as often, spending many more energies than I ever did on the previous events I participated to - and exception made for those achievements related to things that were specifically unlocked in the final days, I always got them all at least 3 or 4 days before the end of each event), but 48 hours from the end of this event I was still stuck at 8/12 pristine dishes.

Then I asked for tips in chat and I was told that turning in all ingredients at once was sort of malfunctioning for some players and if I wanted to get pristine dishes I should have turned in ingredients one batch at a time. Did so, and got 1 or 2 more pristine dishes with only 24 hours left.

On the last day I had my usual three refills (one from crops, one from level up, one from the energy packs my few friends sent me and packs bought with gems), and got to 11/12 dishes. Then, with only 4 hours left, I farmed 40 minutes energy fruits two or three times in a row - however those didn't give me much energy, so out of despair I went out on an energy hunt rampage and:

- bought a complete refill (I have around 1500 energies as a lvl 118 player) using almost all of my island tokens;
- bought another complete refill using half of my 20 prize tokens by the casino's shop (and would have bought another energy pack from there, if there wasn't a 20 hours cooldown on those);
- spent my few remaining island tokens and all of my coins and gems into casino slots, hoping to find anything to refill my energy (would have spent all my bush bucks as well if I hadn't spent all in a furniture items two days earlier);
- on the day before I had already spent most of my DJArts reward points in refills.

The result? The 12th dish was nowhere to be found, and I ended up completely broke. I had to slowly rebuild some coins by planting money fruit in 2-3 plots (since I had not enough coins to plant on all crops). Right now I have basically no gems, won't be able to try get prize tokens at the casino for many days, I can't even combine a very useful (at least to me) trinket that requires a jade and will have to wait who knows how many days for that too, and all this for an achievement that I didn't manage to get anyway. Now my next chance will be next year, and will have to restart from 0/12. And I don't even want to think too much about the 10 prize tokens I wasted, while I wanted to save enough to buy a new pet...

I'm sorry to sound so negative, but something definitely went wrong with it, and the fact that I'm not the only active player who didn't succeed in earning that achievement (I also saw other people mentioning it in chat) can't make all this just be classified as bad luck or a mistake on our part, even if many other people got the achievement without any problems. I can only hope the issue will not repeat itself in future events, as one thing is to give challenging tasks (like the turkeys gathering), one thing is giving tasks that can possibly not be completed even with 300% effort.

47 Posts

Realized after posting that I may have come across as whining about the turkeys, which was not my intent. My kvetch wasn't with the number of turkeys but rather with the seeming imbalance between how many passes it took to get one when compared to getting other similar items: when going after robbers, dooty, or cones of shame, for example, it usually takes me 3-6 passes, while the turkeys took 10 or more passes. (I'm defining a 'pass' as a clearing of all 6 bushes in the field either by quick whack or use of mana.) Despite being offline for the first few days of the event I was still able to get all 100 turkeys. It just seemed to me that if it only takes 4-6 passes to get one of the 10 robbers, it shouldn't take almost a dozen passes to get one of the 100 turkeys (or 100 of anything else, for that matter), especially since events have a time limit. Obviously they didn't make the goal unachievable, but it was (to me, at least) a tad annoying to only need 3-6 passes to get 1 of 10-20 of something while needing 10-12 passes for 1 of 100 items...

Back to the pristine dishes: I didn't get that one finished but had originally chalked it up to my missed days at the start of the event. From the sound of things, though, perhaps it was a combination of my delayed start coupled with whatever glitches may have been happening on the other end of things. I have noticed that they didn't do the usual post-event questionnaire when this one ended, though. Or if they did it hasn't popped up on my screen yet....

Lvl 440 "Other Peoples Problem Solver!"

5565 Posts

Oh, P.S. every day I take a break from the Flux and even this current Kaine and do the Hermits quest where bushes cost 2/9 of my highest bushes, and there all spawned quests take 4.5 times as many 'passes'. I am fully used to counting 15-25 quick whacks for some quests, and I forget how many it was for Turkeys.

Lvl 440 "Little Kid Scarer"

17 Posts

@Finieous: did you even bother reading my post entirely? As I already said, the fact that many players had no issues whatsoever with the Pristine Dishes achievement proves nothing, when a noticeable amount of active players (I saw at least 4-5 in my little time reading the chat) didn't manage to get all 12. Personally I noticed a difference that goes beyond luck, because in all of my previous 6 or 7 events similar tasks could be completed blindfold with large advance by anyone who did at least 2 or 3 energy refills everyday, and this time not even spending MANY more energies than those spents in previous events had been enough. Anyway, as soon as feedback for this event will be made available by the devs just like after for the past events, that should give a better indication of how many people experienced the same trouble and compare it to what happened the other times.

Lvl 440 "Little Kid Scarer"

17 Posts

I did read yours as well. But you see, statistical data works in a way that the result can largely vary when the range includes a small amount of examples. But when you have 7 or 8 events as source for such data, and you see that all of the tasks *but one* could be completed in large advance (and by large advance I mean by average between 3 and 5 days from the end of said events - except with tasks that could only be completed on specific days, even the final days, because they were technically impossible to complete before: see the Halloween event, with the decorations given by friends and NPCs) without even resorting to use more or 2 or 3 energy refills (because I basically stopped replenishing my energy each day as soon as I was done with all of the daily non-event quests), and then I run into this one achievement where with 48 hours left I'm still missing 4 pristine dishes and even after literally spending everything I could (DJArts points, coins, gems, island tokens, prize tokens, 40 minute crops several times in a row) to refill my energy many more times, I fail to get the 12th dish, and other people both in chat and forum mention having been unable to earn that one as well (an issue I never saw addressed by any active players in my past six months of events), well... excuse me, but I start to get a feeling that something might have been a bit unbalanced, at least compared to how events always have been. I would have suspected this even if I didn't experience it personally, because of the reason just stated (4-5 other people reporting it, something I never saw before).

Now, all I'm asking is for the devs to have a look at their code for that event and see if all was set as they effectively planned to, or if instead something went wrong (call it bug, call it miscalculation) and the range between "lucky" and "unlucky" outcomes was spread too afar this time compared to all previous events. Just because you managed to get all 12 dishes without spending more energies than you usually do to get other event achievements, that doesn't mean all went good and you should ignore reports from those who experienced a completely different outcome.

If the devs, after looking at the event's code, will tell us they didn't notice anything different than usual and some players just had an incredible case of bad luck, I will accept it. But until then, please allow me to have at least the suspect that there might be more than just bad luck in this case, because I could have thought that if out of 7-8 events I participated to (with by average 10 achievements each) only one single achievement was ten times harder than the other 75-80, I can only be surprised about that and would like a final words from the devs after they have a look at the code and see if everything worked fine or it didn't.

EDIT: and by "everything worked fine" I mean also that both possibilities of certain ingredients not being spawn as often as they should have been, and of "all at once" turn-ins not giving as many chances of pristine dishes as "single" turn-ins, will be proven as wrong assumptions after looking at the event's code.

65 Posts

As Raymond said. Francesco, all the "data" you're talking about in your first paragraph is anecdotal related to one player. Is it unlikely? Yes. Is it impossible? Nope. To paraphrase Heinlein: Just because it's personal, doesn't make it important.

You're just sitting around a campfire telling ghost stories. Many people believe the ghost stories, but others won't. Even if there are hundreds of survey results where people tell their own ghost stories, it doesn't mean anything. Those results are self-selected by the population of people who thought they had good stories. Very few of the balancing stories will make it into surveys. Example: I got all my meat pristines on day 2, all my veggies on day 3, and all my deserts on day 4. Waited a day for each station in sequence so my help invitations could accumulate, then dumped everything I'd gotten in each station. Four pristines popped each time. Did I tell that ghost story to the survey? Of course not.

The only data that matters is the whole-population logs on the CNE servers. Yes, your ghost stories may prompt them to analyze those logs... but I suspect they analyze them regularly. They do run a game based on random number generation, after all.

Lvl 440 "Other Peoples Problem Solver!"

5565 Posts

forums are mostly 'slightly' monitored by them.
a trouble ticket is the only way to have actual direct notification to them.
And in this case they will look at your account since there was no problem with the code in general, you had some kind of glitch perhaps, flash corrupt or something that directly effected only you.

it is always good to ask here in the forums to get others information and to allow others to see possible issues. i.e. if we had gotten a reply from the Devs on our asking this very thing then we could give you that answer without you having to go the route of making your own ticket.

all info is good.