My Life character, Christo UnicornHorn, is working on the "Craft Services" quest. I am to make 5 Stingers of the Scorpion and 5 Constellation Jewel. Each item requiring eight pieces of scrap iron.
Let us do the math, shall we: :?
5 rings require 8 pieces of scrap iron is 5x8 = 40 pieces of scrap iron :-o 5 athames require 8 pieces of scrap iron is 5x8 = 40 pieces of scrap iron :-o
So in total I have to collect 80 pieces of scrap iron to complete this quest. I started working on finding the ingredients at 9:00 pm MDT. It is now 12:45 am MDT and I have only found the grand total of 3 pieces of scrap iron.
So if I were to continue this quest it should take about 80 hours to find all 80 pieces of scrap iron.
Can you see the insanity to this yet?
I am now about turned off to this crafting idea. I really think you should rethink this here. I am reading in message boards here on www.wizard101.com and www.wizard101central.com that I am not alone in this attitude to crafting.
Thank you for your attention, and please make ALL crafting quests actually able to be completed.
Crafting has nearly beaten be with the rarity that is black pearls. I say nearly because I do occasionally spend a few hours looking. But at the rate I'm doing it, it'll be over a year before I'm done on all my wizards.
That said, scrap iron is very easy compared to black pearls, and you should actually be able to get all you need for one wizard in a few hours. So all I can say is if you spent that much time and only found a few, look somewhere else, or just go buy them in the bizaar. In a few hours, I'm pretty sure you could buy all you need in the bizaar. [I just checked to make sure and they do still seem to be available quite regularily in the bizaar.]
I am a grand mother and enjoy playing Wizard 101 with my grand children and also my own children play. It has been so much fun up until now with trying to find these black pearls. I am finding the lotus OK but you hardly ever get a black pearl and it would take months for me to get enough black pearls to do my project. I think that KI should hide more black lotus around and make the game more challenging and not so frustrating. There are plenty of places in Mooshu that the black pearl could be hidden. Please consider this because even though I am retired I do have a life too and Wizard has been a pleasant part of it until now. Thank You in advance for reading this.
I am a father with three children playing this game. I totally gave up on the crafting. After the diamond nightmare came black lotus and black pearl. Black lotus was easy to find but the black pearl wasn't worth chasing anymore. KI hasn't made any changes, until they do, crafting is out. I am about to give up on the whole game. I fought Kraysys several times a day all week long for the best death shoes, no luck. I have fought Malistare numerous times for the death robe, no luck there either. I did win a crate of chickens though, ha ha. I have won useable items from him though, the ring and dagger but the death robe has become a constant quest. I will give the game more time before I make a decision to totally quit. KI has made changes before and I am sure the long term players will see positives, KI does listen when enough people complain.
I also am a Grand mother and until recently had my daughter playing with me. She quit because it was getting frustrating. I am on the black pearls and find that I can get one a day if I am really lucky, Buy that I mean that I can run around for about 4 hours and may get that one pearl. I like the game but since I am finished all the other quests I am wondering about continuing to pay for the game. I have only finished one of the robes and understand that after this if I ever finish I will need the same number of pearls for the furniture. NO FUN and I am getting really tired of running round and round in cirles for that one pearl a day. Please do one of two things either make the pearls required for each item less, or make more pearls so that we can get the crafts completed. I am not spending a year on trying to finish the robes.
Father of two, one of whom has already given up on W101 and returned to Toontown Online. I would like to add my voice to the clamor over black pearls. Scrap iron taught me to realm-hop. Once I found the right areas, I realm-hopped my way through scrap iron no problem. Diamonds taught me to work the bazaar. It took a while, and was tedious, but I was able to consistently score 5-10 diamonds in a one-hour session of W101. Black pearls are evil.
In my last four hours, I have picked up 60 black lotus. And not one black pearl. I have made countless trips to the bazaar, and not once have I seen even a single black pearl listed. (Trust me, I would buy any that I saw!)
I'm not a commercial pharmer (read the book Play Money -- it's bizarre!). I'm just a guy who really enjoys the challenge of Wizard101, and appreciates that this is something I can do with (one of) my kids. But 2+ hours with zero payoff? Even the worst dungeons in Dragonspyre at least taught me better strategy in that time, plus the bonus of the various drops from the monsters I did managed to put down along the way.
KI, you've made adjustments before, you can do it again. If commercial pharmers are becoming a problem, tweak your code to offer a lowball price in the bazaar for black pearls, but still charge top dollar for them. Then make the black pearls slightly more frequent drops. Say, once every 20-30 lotus. Because as it stands right now, I'm getting more frustration than enjoyment out of W101.
UPDATE I may have found a bug! (Or at least an "unfriendliness" in the UI.) While browsing message boards earlier today, I noticed a comment about having more than 999 reagents. So, on my visit to the bazaar this evening, I unloaded most of my cat tails, ore, and all of my black lotus. I then went back to my usual black lotus harvest area, and picked up 32 black lotus...and 3 black pearls!
Overflow is bad enough -- the thread I read was from a frustrated player who thought he was picking things up, but wasn't (because he was at the 999 max) -- but that rule was established with the backpack / bank model in the beginning. What bugs me is that the software appears to not even offer the rare drop once you are full. If I'd seen Black Pearl appear on-screen with the usual regularity, I would not have wasted so many fruitless hours, as I would have checked my reagent status after the first session and discovered that I hadn't actually picked any pearls up. That said, I think it would be even better if there was a visual indicator on the reagents page to signal when the player is full.
I love W101, but i havent been able to get black pearls, let alone a lotus. I can farm ore easily in the cave of solitude, and it only took me about two weeks for me to complete the quest. But KI REALLY needs to put more lotus in the game. Even if you have a low black pearl drop rate, you need to have some lotus arount too! i suggest putting lotus concentrated in an area or two, like ore in the cave of solitude, and then scattered around mooshu, like ore in other worlds. I still have quests to do and other things in game that make it worthwhile, but i fail to understand why crafting can't be one of them Please add more lotus and pearls
Also, the quests provide a large sum of cash, but I think that it should double, due to the time consumption and effort to make the items, along with the fact that they have expenses too. Then there is the problem with the time slots. I have three and I am an Adept Crafter. I have friends who are Master Artisans, and they have three also. For finishing the Master Artisan quest, I think that it should fill up your page. If not that, then cut the time it takes to cooldown in half. I think this only makes sense so PLEASEEEE MAKE THIS HAPPEN!
to complete this quest. I started working on finding the ingredients at 
I am a grand mother and enjoy playing Wizard 101 with my grand children and also my own children play. It has been so much fun up until now with trying to find these black pearls. I am finding the lotus OK but you hardly ever get a black pearl and it would take months for me to get enough black pearls to do my project. I think that KI should hide more black lotus around and make the game more challenging and not so frustrating. There are plenty of places in Mooshu that the black pearl could be hidden. Please consider this because even though I am retired I do have a life too and Wizard has been a pleasant part of it until now. Thank You in advance for reading this.