Undermine Reputations NEED improvements

Community General Discussion
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The 4 main Cartels of Undermine

The 4 different Cartel reputations (I know there’s 5, I’ll get there) are way too painful of a grind.

You can only pick one each week to do Weeklies/World Quests for, and you basically get NO reputation with the other ones you didn’t pick.

The only other source of reputation are CHETT lists, of which you only get 1 free list per week, per level 80 character. Sure you can farm 40 cards to get more, but with the drop chanceof those cards being abysmal, you might as well not consider it an option.

The disconnected Cartels of Undermine Renown

The main Cartels of Undermine reputation does not help you either. Unlike the Severed Threads, this reputation seems even more severed from eachother, as they do not interact at all. It’s fast to get to Renown 20, but after that it’s the same stuff as something like Council of Dornogal. You will barely notice you even get reputation, you get a paragon box and the most notable piece of loot is pet charms (yikes). It doesn’t even drop Miscellanious Mechanica unlike the non-renown cartel paragons.

Darkfuse Solutions and the definition of “respecting players time”

Darkfuse is the secret 5th cartel you can farm reputation with through different means. You basically have two options.

  • Farm mobs for 10+ hours at the beach behind the Blackwater Cartel building in a 2x4 farming group.
  • Farm Scrap digs until you lose track of time, because that method is 3x slower and you’re looking at over 30 hours there.

I just finished getting to Exalted, doing scrap till Friendly and 2x4 farms for 9 hours total. It was a miserable experience, shared by everyone I came across in farm groups. Multiple times did people whisper me to check if we were bots, I got reported atleast twice, and kicked from plenty of groups just because I wasn’t a boomkin, but a feral.

If this is respecting our time, then I don’t know what disrespecting it would look like. Because this is the worst farm I’ve done since probably Classic Steamwheedle rep, or farming Protoform Synthesis motes for every single craftable protoform.

And the best part - You’re not even done at Exalted. Enjoy farming another 2000 Market Research for your paragon box, so you have a chance at looting the waveshredder mount and Miscellanious Mechanica!

Oh yeah, about Mechanica…

Miscellanious Mechanica is another terrible item added with 11.1. It has a chance to drop from Rares and the 5 cartel Paragon boxes, and it is used to purchase pets and mounts. I’m a mount farmer, so let’s talk just for the 3 mounts: You need 75 mechanica, 25 for each.

Me and many others farm as many rares as possible, even across multiple characters.
I have 4 mechanica’s since Week 1.
Friend of mine that farms less, has 7.
Friend of mine that uses 5 accounts to farm them just bought his first mount, 25.

We need 75 total. For just the mounts.

I’m sorry, are these drop chances right? Because they sure don’t seem right. This is way too low.

Is it really this bad?

Calculate it for yourself. How much reputation are you getting with your chosen cartel per week? With that gain, how long would it take you -just- to get all cartels to exalted? (It’s over half a year btw).

How much time have you spent farming Darkfuse Smugglers? How much mechanica have you looted? Can you estimate the end of the farm, or is it so far in the future, you might still be farming all this in 11.2?

I’ll tell you - yes. If you’re a mount farmer, you will be farming these reputations well into 11.2. (Which should be releasing mid-summer). Just the cartel reputation alone, if you don’t have alts to farm CHETT lists with, you’ll be doing those weeklies, world quests and side gigs well into October before you can be exalted with all 4, and you might be farming the paragon mounts still at the start of 2026 depending on your luck.

What would make these farms better?

The 4 Main Cartels

  • Have some of the Renown you get also give reputation towards the 4 cartels. 1k renown? Let it give 500 rep towards all 4 cartels, why not, it’s a weekly!
  • Increase the drop chance of CHETT cards so you can actually realistically farm them without a level 80 alt army.
  • Have a CHETT list that’s turned into the CHETT device give 100 reputation towards all 5 factions, on top of the Valorstones.

Darkfuse Solutions

  • Increase the drop chance of Market Research without buffs & with buffs from all sources.
  • Increase the advertisement pylon radius, perhaps double it.
  • Have advertisement pylons stack. Let the ones put down by others also increase your gains further to encourage grouping even more.
  • Have advertisement pylons last 5 minutes with a 5 minute cooldown, instead of 3 minutes with a 5 minute cooldown.

Miscellanious Mechanica

  • Massively increase the drop chance. Like a 30% chance to drop from an elite rare, 10% for a regular rare.
  • Make the mounts (and pets?) from the mechanica vendor BoP so it doesn’t turn into a gold farm for people with multiple accounts that will spam kill all rares.
  • Have mechanica also drop from the Renown paragon & the weekly quest boxes.

Oh, and just for those unaware… some more bad news!

I bet you’re all very excited for the 100% reputation buff coming next month~ with 11.1.5!

Well I sure hope you love pet charm paragons, because for The War Within, it only affects the 11.0 reputations. None of the Undermine reputations.

Suffer well, and please pray with me that these farms receive improvements sooner rather than later.

18 Likes
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Some people like such grinds. Always did and always will. Darkfuse is aimed at these people.

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I have never met a person that liked grinds that took a minimum of 10 hours of nonstop AOE 2x4 group farms.

People were miserable during Protoform Synthesis, people are miserable with Darkfuse.
Not seen a single person say they liked either.

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Just because you didnt met them (which isnt surprising given you hate this kind of farming) doesnt mean they don’t exist. There were also people that farmed the insane pre nerf. Thats the same kinda people more or less. Or people that play “Korean MMORPGs” (given those are notorious for mindless grinds).

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100% with everything Rogudruid said - it is surprising how people on forums or wowhead will defend 20-30+ hour grind for exalted and then rng paragon boxes as if that is acceptable

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You arent entitled to everything in the game. Farm it or don’t. You feeling the “need to farm it although I hate it” is a you issue.

And again. This particular part of content isnt aimed at you. Darkfuse in the very least. We can debate the other 4 sub factions of undermine. Darkfuse is intended to be a slog.

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yeah you right, make it a 1000 hour grind, make it real exclusive

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The thing that I dislike is how much things cost. Even the things for resonance crystals. The gain is too slow.

I hated paragons in legions and the troves are no better. I dont want to be coming back to undermine for years.

I dont seem to get the mechanica items very often and have only managed to get 8 so far. Thats a far cry from the amount requires to get the mounts and pets.

The kaja stuff also seems to drop so rarely. Not the empty ones. I’ve bought one pet so far but the other requires three.

I do not enjoy mindless mob grinding so the darkfuse are going to take a considerable amount of time.

The amount of time and grind required for the large number of rewards seems to be out of sync with the low amounts we can generate.

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Any more straw? Just don’t farm the Darkfuse if you don’t like it. Demolisher cant even fly and the waveshredder is a recolour. Like these particular grinds arent anything new. Also nice alt posting.

Dunno whats with the Kaja but I’ve got 2 of them in like 5minutes of each other. None since or before that however.

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Yeah sorry I didn’t check that the forum hadn’t selected a random alt then decided to fix it.

I already have enough market research for exalted and beyond. I’ll do the grind no matter how ridiculous it is.

Except I have sympathy for those with more irl commitments/responsibilities and less time to grind so that they can collect the items they want. I can recognize where reputations and factions have deep seeded design flaws

You on the other hand… I’m not sure what your agenda is

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This has nothing do with sympathy. Darkfuse is a grind. Its intended to be a grind. Its for people that like this kind of mindless grind in particular. Its not aimed at you or me or the people you mention. Not everything has to be made for everybody.

And there are alternatives in the very least for the waveshredder. The demolisher given that it has no rng attached to it like the paragmo trove you can at least slowly but steadily work towards it with the goal in sight. The patch is expected to be at least 4 if not 6 months long.

I want it too. I will get it eventually. I am not going to lose my sanity or sacrifice time I need elsewhere for a 10 hour in one go grind.

Not everything is made for everybody. Been like that since over two decades.

We can discuss the regular factions since their design is horrible in comparison given their direct tie to the undermine renown and one hitting 20 renown with undermine while the rest is chilling at honored or friendly and it just feels wrong (it feels like Severed Threads rep system but one step backwards). Havent dabbled into the chett stuff for them yet and wont bother until people have figured it out completely.

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Yes you have. Classic Mage/Lock players.

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Yes there is a lot of people playing wow who dont Play it for the core part of MMORPG which was always grind.

That’s the reason why we cant have nice things like titanfoeged or ap powers

Which is also why wow lost its MMORPG soul years ago and why classic is do popular because it lets people relive those days when hard part was grind not the Boss mechanics in dungeons and raids

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The Undermine patch was just released weeks ago, not even a month. Where exactky do you expect to be in terms of Rep?

I agree with the fact that many of the drops are super rare and hard to get. I would’ve expected to have more of the Miscellaneous Mechanica, but i do think the main Rep was too easy to get. The cartels themselves feel a little on the slow side, considering how much time I’ve spent in the Undermine, but there’s also nothing amazing IMO to get that i feel i need right now.

I think allowing players too much fteedom in grinding out Rep for cartels would make the content too toxic. People would be camping rares and farming areas where players wouldn’t even be able to get anything done. Farmers ruin the vibe of zobes and loot everything thats worth looting before you can.

So, im happy with how the Undermine zone feels and plays on my realm at least. Its very relaxed and you have time to kill rares. Encouraging players by rewarding their rep farms wouldnt be the move either.

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Undermine is a mega bloat fest and i wont even bother with the reputation system, it’s just too much. You can tell it was designed with engagement metrics in mind, nothing player friendly about it.

2 Likes
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I guess I’m lucky I don’t like the vast majority of the rewards. So I feel fine not bothering with these grinds.

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I would argue that they are the main reputation for the current patch and blizzard likely introduced them not with the intention to make it so grindy it becomes an exclusive thing.

What would’ve been better is a 5th rep grind very obviously not related to the 4 cartels that don’t feel like they’re the core story reputation if they wanted to give such a heavy grind a go again.

For me the main patches reputation grind is definately on a ‘cannot be bothered’ level.

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Korean MMOs nowadays are absolutely nothing compared to retail WoW. Anyone who creates an account now and wants to reach 50k achievement points will need to spend at least 30000 hours grinding.

This is something that should change. If doing the content of a patch for all the time it is current for multiple hours every day and without missing a single day is not enough to guarantee unlocking every reward from it, that’s bad design.

Yes. It’s actually less than 50% income rate in comparison to Dragonflight.
At the end of Dragonflight, and without having actually gone out of my way to farm its currency, I had amassed 100k more than what AllTheThings (at Insane mode) mentions is required to purchase everything that uses it.
Right now, I am approximately 500k short of what is currently available for Resonance crystals in TWW. There hasn’t been any income upgrade, and we know that 11.2 will add at least items worth another 400k+ to purchase/unlock.
I mean, hell, I have been doing Siren Isle every week, and even farmed on some occassions for Flameblessed Iron, and I still haven’t purchased half the items.

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I started playing MMORPGs on Asian MMOs like Legend of Mir and Myth of Soma, where in the high levels a literal solid hour of non-stop grinding yielded a whopping 1-3% towards leveling. They were designed to never hit the level cap.

WoW, even Vanilla, was incredibly casual compared to them. :sweat_smile:

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EQ was like that too. Combine it with the whole world trying their hardest to kill you, and most roaming about best to be done with a group. WoW was so chill compared :smile: