So I realize this is anecdotal, but I wonder if I'm unique.

I'll have a bounty for Emeralds. I go for a hunt and will literally clear learnable creatures for an hour and not find any emeralds. I'll log out for some reason, come back, and find all of them on the first 25 critters and two in a box I pull.

Sometimes I think the trigger for increased drops doesn't turn on. It seems completely random, but is definitely noticeable. I sometimes will hunt a few critters, realize it's "off" and log off and back on until they start dropping.

Anyone else?

Best,
Jim/Tk

The boost turns diamonds into emeralds. It doesn't turn black jasper into emeralds. If you have a task for emeralds and you hunt a critter giving cheap treasure, you'll never see any emeralds (or diamonds or any other gem of that value). If you hunt a rich critter, you will get emeralds, but no diamonds until you have had enough emeralds for your bounty because every gem of the same value as an emerald gets turned into an emerald.

If you hunt a critter that isn't quite rich enough to drop emeralds, you'll never get one. If you log off and no one hunts them for a while they get richer and when you log back in again you get emeralds.

Silvers in boxes give a pretty good guide to the treasure tier of the critter they came from. If you aren't getting emeralds but the boxes are heavy, you are just having an unlucky run on the gem drops. If the boxes aren't heavy, the critters are too poor to have emeralds. Rich critters have high gem chances, so you will tend to find emeralds fast, provided you are hunting rich critters.

I think the way the gem is selected by the AG is by picking a critter in your range and rolling the next gem that critter would drop. This means there is likely to be a critter that drops them at a decent rate, but you could be unlucky and be at the extreme end of the range and its only dropped by one critter and not very often at that. If there is a gem that drops like crazy in your hunting area, that is the gem you are most likely to get tasked for.

>>Yeah its anecdotal I know, but I dropped 2 gem tasks back to back in Plat a couple days ago. They were for low level gems, one was a clear topaz I remember. I tried hunting different areas all within a level or 2 of me but I couldn't get any to drop. It also felt like something hadn't been turned "on". Odd.

Seems to me that it's sometimes hardest to find the cheapest gems (some topaz and zircon, or star diopside) because it requires that you find a creature that is very poor yet still rich enough to drop gems at a decent rate.

I've also experienced that sense that the gem switch just isn't on. It's frustrating to have a seemingly reasonable gem task and see other gems of a similar value drop left and right. But considering how little we can glean of the system, it's impossible to tell whether that's anything but simple bad luck.

Thank the Arkati for jars.

The low-level gems were specifically put in for alchemy - some recipes called for gems that were so low that they never dropped (I think one specific one was a kind of fang in the rift). So the bonus gem is always from the lowest tiers, just in case the treasure quality isn't pushed down enough in that area to drop them normally.

I don't know if they are affected by the bounty gem bonus thingie.

I realize completely how the drops work, I'm speaking of an area that would normally drop them, doesn't, log off back in, same area, starts dropping immediately.

It seems like sometimes the increase drop rate is "on" sometimes and "off" sometimes.

Looks like I'm not alone!

Best,
Jim

Were you the only one in the area you were hunting? When you logged out, it may have unloaded the area.

Green sapphire is a "rare" gem. With a bounty active on them every "rare" gem drop that would have been something else will be turned into a green sapphire until its happened enough times to get your bounty.
Golden topaz is "uncommon". A bounty active on green sapphires makes no change at all to the frequency of "uncommon" gem drops.

"uncommon" is one tier cheaper than "rare". Both are likely to be possible from the same critter.

You need other gems from the same tier as the bounty gem to tell that the boost isn't working. e.g. if you got a green starstone or a violet sapphire while you had a green sapphire bounty, that would show the boost wasn't working.