With the season closer to its end than its start, and with the cap of the crests removed (although probably too late in the season), it is perhaps also time to lower the exchange rate of the crests.
The exchange rate has always been on the high side when the cap was still there, as 15 Aspect crests (one single upgrade) costs you 3240 (!) Whelpling crests. The cap was 1440 last week, so it is quite obvious the advantage of being able to exchange low crests has been as good as neglectable.
These days it still takes you 30 M+ 11/15 dungeons to gather enough for 1 single Enchanted Dreaming Aspect Crest, which feels like too much at this part of the season, especially on fresh alts. During this part of the season I feel gearing shouldn’t be stalled this much. Now I’m not advocating for free 486’s, but I think faster gearing would improve player activity.
By dropping the exchange rate from 90 to 60 crests, you’d only need 960 Whelpling Crests to get 15 Aspect Crests. Dropping it to 45 would change that number to 405.
You can farm about 1000 Whelpling Crests per hour by collecting those orbs. So currently it takes ~13 hours to get one single Enchanted Dreaming Aspect Crest. With an exchange rate of 60 it takes ~4 hours, and with a rate of 45 less than ~100 minutes.
Now I’m not saying that is a desirable method of gearing up, but just to put it in perspective that dropping the exchange rate allows people to gear up a bit faster and feel less hindered by the gearing wall that is currently still there.
Crest exchange was also new this season. It just feels the exchange has always been on the high side, which makes sense at the start of the season, but not really at this point.
One of the issues is that there aren’t a lot of Drake and Wyrm M+ runs out there anymore. This often results in being stuck on gearing up. We’re at a point in the season where you should just be able to grind your way out of these situations, within in decent timeframe.
Currently that decent timeframe is not there. Ideally the exchange rate should drop to 60 or 45. I think 30 would be too low.
-If the exchange rate is 90 it costs 3240 Whelpling crests to get 15 Aspect crests
-If the exchange rate is 75 it costs 1875 Whelpling crests to get 15 Aspect crests
-If the exchange rate is 60 it costs 960 Whelpling crests to get 15 Aspect crests
-If the exchange rate is 45 it costs 405 Whelpling crests to get 15 Aspect crests
-If the exchange rate is 30 it costs 120 Whelpling crests to get 15 Aspect crests
The whole crest exchange was never meant to exchange all the way to the higher currency.
Its more used to have a goal for them since you still collect them on characters that have no use for them. From weekly quests or world quests, to exchange them to a currency you do need.
A character only having access to whelpling crests and then exchanging them all the way up to the wyrm ones or aspect ones will need the gear also to make use of it (and the ilvl to unlock exchanging them)
So there is no need to fix the system from the bottum to the top. Having the option is great for a few extra crests.
But at the time you are able to exchange them, you are already getting most of your crests from the content you are playing anyway.
All i can agree on, is that the amounts needed could be a bit lower. But then again, i barely used the exchange option on any char to upgrade gear.
Either i needed more gear to upgrade, or i simply filled my vault more and picked the coins to buy crests from the vendor.
The whole crest exchange was never meant to exchange all the way to the higher currency.
I’m well aware of that, I’m also not advocating for it being a desirable method of gaining Aspect crests. It is just to show the difference between each exchange rate and how much impact it has.
Its more used to have a goal for them since you still collect them on characters that have no use for them.
And that is where the current exchange rate fails. The exchange rate is so high is has always felt like an neglectable gain. Even a single step feels too high. These days lots of guilds have stopped clearing the raid on several modes, so there is a lot less of crest ‘income’ we had months ago. Now the cap is gone, but the ‘free’ crests are also gone.
So there is no need to fix the system from the bottum to the top. Having the option is great for a few extra crests.
Well, I disagree. It can be a pain to gear up your alts through the Drake/Wyrm ilvls, as this content gets done less and less. Lowering the exchange rate from bottom to the top helps easing up the process, as a patch for the average player commitment in the latter parts of a season.
Totally this. Having hundreds of dragon and aspect crests on main and not being able to spare some time in gearing alts is quite nonsense this far into the season.
Thats where i completely disagree and so does group finder.
I geared up 4 alts in different roles up to 465 ilvl and i can get whelpling / drake or wyrm crests from m+ quite easily.
Groupfinder is still filled with the perspective keylvls for the crests.
Yes, for drakes its mostly 7s and for wyrms its mostly 11s, but for gearing purposes i dont mind. That means i can cram another run in the same time instead of doing a +14 or 15. And not interested in score since i fixed that,id rather have some alts ready for season 4.
On top of that, the coins from your vault either give 30 drakes or 15 wyrm crests if there is no upgrade in there. (Even more crests if you can get more slots filled)