1) Talk to everybody you can BEFORE you get a "defeat and collect" quest 2) go what you need to
This way, you can collect from multiple quests during the same battle. The most notable worlds where this worked were Zafaria and early on Azteca. If you fight once, but collect on 4 quests at the same time, it helps speed things up dramatically.
What world are you in? Because collecting in worlds like Celestia and Avalon take a considerably longer time than worlds like Krok and Mooshu. Long collecting times could also apply to Zafaria, but after the update, it is MUCH better. Besides, the point of collecting is to do multiple battles to slow it down a notch and help you gain small amounts of experience, as well as introduce you to the different battle strategies/ techniques of the different schools. What fun would it be if you collected everything on your first try? For worlds like ZF, yes, the collecting rate was ridiculous, as half of the quests in the Savannah include some sort of collecting. But now, it is much easier. Just keep battling! ( hint: it helps if you solo some street fights, you collect faster when you are the only one attacking.)
Ok, so every time I get a collection quest I get mad. Here's why:
Whenever I fight the enemy it asks me to, I almost never get the item.
and
it takes forever!
Who agrees?
Alia Winterwhisper -
I so agree kl need to make it not take forever I can't get help in the last world because everybody busy or offline doing there own quest and no one ever on them and in zf well it was a nightmare it had to many collection quest made me want to scream! so plz fix it or make it easy to collect the stuff kl
Ok, so every time I get a collection quest I get mad. Here's why:
Whenever I fight the enemy it asks me to, I almost never get the item.
and
it takes forever!
Who agrees?
Alia Winterwhisper -
It really depends what world I am in and how much I enjoy the world. Worlds like Celestia and Zafaria, collecting quests sicken me. But in Avalon, I didn't mind as much because I really loved that world. And in some worlds (Celestia) the quests take FOREVER and drive most people insane.
I think there are several ways KI could address this issue:
First, increases the drop rates. Simple.
Second, make it so that collection quests require gathering more items, (like 10 versus 6) but make it so that these items drop every single time. This way the quest is still time consuming, but we will at least feel like we are making progress after each fight. Seeing that "Did Not Collect..." message time and time again is very frustrating.
Third, when you do add collection quests allow us to gain the items from more than one type of enemy. One of the problems I currently have with collection quests is that they have you fighting the same exact enemy duel after duel after duel. It gets boring after awhile. If we could get the item(s) from multiple types of enemies then at least we could pick and choose who to fight. Who knows? It might make it more interesting.
Fourth, switch out quests that have you gather items from generic enemies in favor of quests that send you after bosses. Tying into point three, fighting bosses is much more interesting and engaging than fighting the same generic enemies over and over again. Having more boss fights and less "go defeat generic enemy 10 times" would be more fun in my opinion.
Honestly, I think they should just get rid of 'collect' and change it to 'defeat'. I have two wizards parked in Azteca right now because I just don't have the mindset to do the 'Collect 6 eggs from those nasty Myth Quetzals' quest. I've taken 4 wizards to Promethean and this is the quest I hate hate hate more than anything. Even killing them in 2 rounds with my fire took forever and a day, and I just don't have time for it.
KI devs, wouldn't you much rather have me engaged and happy and progressing and spending my crowns than stuck and frustrated and not playing?
Perhaps the collection chance could be not completely random but scale with successes and failures. Say KI designs a quest that they want to average 20% success rate to gather 3 items. On average, you would have to kill 15 of the critters. But some players would get lucky and complete the quest defeating half a dozen of the target creature, others would need to defeat 50+ creatures. The latter obviously would get very frustrated. Change the system so that instead of a fixed chance of success every time, each failure increases the success rate. Eventually, after a long enough string of failures, success chance becomes 100%. Contrariwise, players who get lucky and succeed on the first try could have the future success chance lowered until they have enough failures to make the quest fall in the difficulty range the designers intend. None of these numbers need to be visible to the players, but the result would be a noticeable decrease in the sheer randomness of quest difficulty, but still leave some tension in the system as the player doesn't know if the collection item is going to drop or not after any given fight.
I actually gave up questing on my Balance wizard in Pitch Black Lake because I spent an hour and half battling those pincher things and just couldn't collect, not that other things didn't help have me done there but that just help decide I was done. I am currently there with my Ice wizard having the same results. So far I only have my Life wizard past that point which was done when AZ first came out and I don't remember it being such a problem.
Long ago I spent 2 days trying to collect from Water Matrons, others came and went I was still there and almost as much time with those nice Lions in Savanna Zafaria - these have improved now. That was back when I played the game a lot more hours, so when I run into these now that I only play a few hours here and there they could really be a game stopper.