I am somewhat confident that the drop rate was increased based on my rates. I am, however, killing slightly faster with this patch because of my Override skill which might be confounding this result. Also I'm not 100% sure, but I believe the nodestone drop increase was only for Reboot in the KMS patch notes. I need some clarification on this, though. Anyway, considering you mentioned "buying" and "nodestones," I would presume that you are not referring to Reboot, so if it turns out that the drop-rate increase was only for Reboot, this would explain why you are noticing no difference.
I personally play in Reboot with full drop-gear + kishin and I've noticed my drop-rates going up by about a raw 33% (after 12 hours combined of the past 2x weekend) in comparison to several previous 2x weekends pre-Override, so I'm willing to say that the node drop-rate has increased by about 10-20%. I have to emphasize that my mob killing-rate only went up slightly, so I'm fairly sure there was an increase of some sorts, but I could be wrong.
Also the nerf that a previous poster mentioned is pertinent to the drop-rate formula of items in general (not specific to nodestones). The drop-rate of nodestones will actually be buffed with that same patch, but if we are to receive that update, there will be a net decrease in nodestones not because of the drop-rate of nodestones but because of the re-coding of the drop-rate formula and how it works with drop-gear, just to clarify. If we can convince Nexon that it would be a huge detriment to our community, perhaps we won't get the drop-rate formula changes (but still get the nodestone drop-rate buff ).
5-6 hours is not much for a month-long event for a BiS heart. For those who have spent much longer like 15 hours+, that is a lot of time. But there are several guides out now and I listed some tips above. I'm not trying to say "deal with it!" exactly, but this event is not as impossible as it might first seem. It really comes down to there isn't much challenge left in the game and this event is a large jump (as someone put earlier) from current existing JQ's, so naturally we all are gonna be frustrated. But at the end of the day, this JQ is more than manageable in a week, and then you have another 21 days for farming coins (well 19 at this point but you get the idea).
EDIT: @gvnalmanza: I meant 5-6 hours for the WHOLE thing, not B4 alone. For those struggling on a floor for more than an hour, I highly recommend looking up a guide and it will become easier.
For those stuck on the first set of quests, just give it time. I took roughly 5-6 hours before I got past B4-> completion, but I tried doing it again on another account and managed to finish in in 20 minutes. Yes, 20 minutes. I'm not here to brag but rather to suggest that if you continually practice this JQ, it will get much easier. There are several helpful videos on YouTube and Reddit posts as well, so please take a look at them if you haven't already. I also want to add that this event lasts for 28 days and several players have finished Rhea already (the 2nd set of escaping the facility). Not everyone should have to finish the event in 1 day just for logging in for it to be classified as not hard.
With that said, I do think they could increase the time of safety between some of the moving lasers... you have to get the timing just right.
Some tips for getting through the stages:
-B4: Move past the laser while IT IS STILL IN SIGHT but ABOUT TO DISAPPEAR. So basically you move through the laser the second it disappears, but you gotta start your character moving towards it as it is still visible. If you keep this in mind while doing it, you should get it down pat.
-B4: At the conveyer belt part, don't be afraid to backtrack!!! The spikey wall that comes shortly after doesn't start moving until you jump off of the belt. The tip here is to move your android to the very end of the belt, move yourself far away from the edge, then turn your character so it's facing towards the spikey wall direction. At this point, press d to make your android jump, and backtrack yourself back down the conveyer belt so you don't fall off. At this point your android is at the bottom and you're still at the top. Now you can carefully fall off the belt (keep pressing your -> arrow continuously so you don't go flying off), and then you just whack the vent at the bottom until it breaks and press up to enter
-For those who have made it past B4, B3 and B2 are much easier (if you're struggling, just look for a video and you'll be through in no time!)
-B1: The moving lasers move fastest when they're closer to the center of their oscillation, so this is often the "safest" time to pass through. Some of my friends are telling me they prefer to wait until the laser disappears towards the left side, though
-B1: The steam patterns actually are not very tricky as they might first seem. The hardest part of them is around the ladder (slightly before and slightly after). My advice is to get used to carefully pressing <-- so that you "don't move" on the conveyer belt. Practicing this mechanic helps you just wait out the steams and learn the patterns without watching your character. Also big tip: look for the actual devices that shoot out the steam. This helps you know where they are so you aren't guessing whether you passed over one or not. Also: towards the end of the steam stuff you just want to let your character move down the belt naturally. Do NOT press --> towards the end of the belt to get past the steams or else you'll shoot too far into another one.
-F1: At the very last gate (I believe it's the 3rd gate) move VERY slowly so that you can see the soldiers approaching, then move over and kill them BEFORE going over to the gate. This way you can easily clear out the mobs and the gate without having to rush through the gate and die to the mob stacking hits on you (for those not familiar, F1 is just a mob clear map with no other ways to die, so if you're struggling on B1, know that once you hit F1 the hard stuff is over)
I think a more pressing issue is that the PQ thing you do after completing these is not instanced, so you might be a lvl 200 and some lvl 250 pops into the map and all of a sudden the mobs are lvl 250 and you can't kill them. This is a significant portion of the event coins that we can get. Hopefully Nexon fixes this over the maintenance but it's not currently listed to be fixed as of the time of this post.
When we're put up with the choice of either include a NX method to purchase the medals for Reboot or get rid of the medals entirely, I'd always choose the latter. It's a shame we won't be getting those medals but it's better that than introduce P2W in Reboot.
The secondaries are really hard to obtain; adding a coin shop so we could at least select which one we want would remove a lot of the frustration that already exists with obtaining a random secondary from the box and the low drop-rate key scenario.
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