[Suggestion] Silver Scales, Supply & Demand.

[Friyn]

If the title didn't give it away yet, I'd like to point out some problems with current Silver Scale acquisition rates.

 

As you know Silver Scales replaced Blackstones as a next tier upgrade material some time ago. Current primary means to obtain Silver Scales are the three Solak dungeons(Drowning Deeps, Ransacked Treasury and Sandstorm Temple) which have a chance to drop a single Silver Scale, and their respective daily quests which grant you a total of six(6) Silver Scale Fragments each day.

Now let's look at how many Silver Scales a player needs. Aransu Stage 9 requires 45 and the new Starbreaker/Divinity Bracelet requires 19, this adds up to a total of 64 Scales. The aforementioned two items are what you would consider as high priority upgrades, ideally you would like to upgrade them first.
That's not all of it though. If we look at the lower priority upgrades such as Stage 3 Awakened Temple of Eluvium Necklace(15) and Skybreaker Belt(19) the total amount of required Silver Scales is now 98.
There are also the new accessories from Nightfall Sanctuary which require 10 Scales each and some PvP accessories which require 19 Scales each. I'm not going to include these because PvP accessories are seen as luxury upgrades and Nightfall Sanctuary accessories aren't accessible to the vast majority of the player base.

It would take you from 3 to 5 months worth of daily quests to accumulate enough Silver Scale Fragments depending on how you prioritize the upgrades. Here you might point out the Scale drops from dungeons and here in lies the problem. The Scale drops are way too scarce in general, not even guaranteed from hard mode.
With the addition of new items which require Silver Scales, how the requirement to purchase said items was lowered down from 100 dungeon runs to 10 and how it has became easier to reach the point in gear progression where Scales are required the demand for Silver Scales has increased tenfold while the supply has remained unchanged.
Now this next part is subjective. These past few weeks I have been running dungeons for Silver Scales and they seem to go for ~70g each on average. This is a lot of gold when you take into account the amount Scales required. You need to be ready to either pay a significant sum of gold on the Scales or accept that it is going to take you a long while to gather them through dailies and an occasional lucky bid.

Let's go back in time and take a look what it was like when Blackstones were still used in place of Silver Scales. When we were at roughly similar point of gear progression normal mode dungeons could drop multiple Blackstones and hard mode dungeons could drop stacks of them, up to 4 in total if my memory serves me right. Blackstones were also made account bound.
Now we have a chance to drop a single(1) Silver Scale regardless of dungeon difficulty despite the demand being higher than ever before.

Before going into suggestions there is one more thing to mention. The pricing of Silver Scales/Fragments when it comes to events and cash shop. Be it a free to play event, cash shop event or F10 daily deal there's one thing all these have in common. The absurd pricing of Silver Scales/Fragments. This depends on how you value untradable items, but the technical prices for a single Silver Scale through various events is in several hundreds of gold. This needs to be adjusted.

Let's use the currently running events as an example. A single Silver Scale Fragment costs you a Stage 3 Fleeting Pet Aura. If you were to purchase a Silver Scale with Journey Tokens it would cost you 12 Journey Tokens. In contrast you can purchase a Sacred Vial for 7 Journey Tokens which is worth approximately 390 gold, or 60 Moonstones(540 gold) for 12 Journey Tokens. Again, it depends on how you value untradables but I trust that you are able to recognize the problem here.

So I'd like to suggest the following:

• Normal mode can now drop up to 2 Silver Scales, drop rates increased slightly
• Hard mode is guaranteed to drop at least 1 Silver Scale and can drop up to a maxium of 3 or 4(?) Scales
• Adjust the pricing for Silver Scales and Fragments throughout events to make it more consistent and reasonable
• Add Silver Scale drops to Temple of Eluvium, Scion's Keep and Nightfall Sanctuary? This might be pushing it a bit too far maybe

Just my two cents.

[Pikabebo]

I agree, silver scale are too hard to get and the fragment takes awhile. 

[Grimzy]

Silver scale is not hard to get at all...just run Sandstorm Temple as it drops there very often. Thats how we all got our scales needed for weapon upgrades. If we could do it with a full group so can you.

[RavTH]

2 from sst

2 from rt

2 form dd

6 frag per day

2 days = 1 scale and 2 fragments

[DevilTDriver]

Reposting, but keeping it short. I like the idea, but disagree about whole scales, instead have fragments drop 1-2 in normal and hard mode. In addition to hard mode have 1 fragment be guaranteed in dynamic box.