AKradian

The update notes have this cryptic line

• Some item drop rates have been adjusted.

There have been many rumors and speculation as to what that means in terms of nodestone, arcane symbol, and droplet farming.
Nexon Korea claims that the base drop rate for these things has been raised, but the effect of drop rate lines on equipment has been reduced. Some KMS players claim that even people without drop buffs have noticed a decrease in their collection rate.
The new drop rate buff formula has not been released, and people speculate that it's "like IED" in that it has heavily diminishing returns and an asymptote at 100%.
But as far as I know there is no proof, and even if there were, GMS is not required to do things exactly as KMS did.

So, I'm trying to find out some facts, assuming that Tespia rates are the same as the eventual live server rates we'll get.

For my first test, I killed 10k wolfruits with no drop gear, familiar, skill, or coupon of any kind.
On Kradia I got 1 nodestone. On Tepsia I got 7.
I did not find any arcane symbols in either server.
I'm aware that the sample size is apparently too small for an accurate assessment, but on the face of it it seems that the base nodestone drop rate did get significantly buffed.

I will continue to test this, and update this post. If anyone else feels like grinding as well, please do so and post your results below.

Edit:
10k wolfruits with Big Spider, on Kradia: 2 nodestones, 2 arcane symbols. On Tespia: 6 nodestones, 2 arcane symbols.
The Kradian results are as might be expected, but the Tespian are odd. Sample size is obviously much too small. But on the face of it, it seems the Big Spider familiar did nothing.

PTS only has 8 slots per account.
If you had more characters copied over, you can use them all, but if you delete one you don't get its slot back.
You'll have to go down to 7 characters or less if you want to create a new one.

bazzy wrote: »

AKradian wrote: »

There are hundreds of other people testing high-level content.
You can test things like character creation, tutorials (read everything), the new way "Tot's Know-How" quests work (or don't), etc.

If we had all these things you ask for, then we'd have the same problem the previous Tespia had, where people would just go "oooh I can finally be level 200 and get good gear and fight Zakum!" or "now's my chance to see how these other classes play at 4th job!" instead of testing stuff they already know what to expect from.

I understand where you're coming from with this, but many lower level players would like to test higher level content. By restraining them from doing so because of their level, Tespia may feel underwhelming. Yes, this was an issue in the last Tespia, but there will always be that curious bunch. The people who want to try out new higher level content, but can't; the people that want to try out and help improve the newest patches. Some of these people may not have the time to play, but still want to help the game in the right direction. (I hope I didn't mess something up in the blob of a paragraph.)

Our Tespia is not a new game's CBT, that's supposed to impress new players and make them buy the game and recommend it to their friends. So "feel underwhelming" is not a problem.
The reason Tespia is open is the fact that, despite Nexon's best internal testing efforts, normal players doing normal player things run into serious bugs within hours of each patch going live. So here we are having a test environment which tries to be as close as possible to the live servers, for us to do normal things in and hopefully run into those bugs before they cause unscheduled maintenances of the live servers.

I mean, sure, I'd like to be given powerful gear and go "test" Hard Lucid, but in all honesty, I wouldn't know if she was glitched or changed from how she used to be, because I never fought her before. So this "testing" would just be for my own personal fun, not something that helps the game. It's better for the game that I test doing my own boring dailies, because I'd instantly recognize if something is amiss with them.

http://forums.maplestory.nexon.net/discussion/comment/47412/#Comment_47412

Rolls wrote: »

Of course. The event list can't even be trusted because of UTC. In the end, every single time related issue leads back to UTC. There would be almost no event timing problems if any at all if it weren't for UTC. Nexon hasn't even kept their promises of "event time consistency starting July."

UTC is cancer. It's either Nexon changes back to an American timezone or we'll keep having to deal with these ridiculous inconsistencies. Because it's more than obvious now that Nexon can't even keep their promises to "make event times consistent" with UTC.

To be fair, even before UTC, we had many many events that ended at 00:00 instead of 23:59 (on the "last day"), so 24 hours too early.