Pristine Megalodon Scales and Teeth: An Analysis

Ok. So what is the analysis of all this in say…play for 6 months?

Are you expecting to finish every “new” achievement/commendation in a week/month? After release.

No @burnbacon, I think this analysis points out that, in a game with approximately 1,400 actively available commendations, finding the items to satisfy requirements for 2-6 of those commendations takes longer than comprehensive playthroughs of games like Cyberpunk 2077 and KCD2.

Commendations are a component of the game, so it's reasonable to assume that the expectation is for players to interact with them and complete them. Is also reasonable to assume that people would like the completion of these commendations to be realistic and not an endeavor that will last longer than the heat-death of the universe.

@i-marmot-i Some of the commendation requirements are so insane that the only way to get them within a human lifetime is to exploit.

@obscureberry192

While you mentioned you got pristine scales & teeth from Megalodons, you don't use them in the calculation of scales/teeth per hour spend.

You probably would have enountered more Krakens and Megs if you spend less time on islands looking for Wallows, and as these 10 Megs and 2 Krakens gave almost as much as the wallows ...

95 hours that's about 32 sessions of 3 hours in which you probably would encounter at least a Meg per session if you had spend more time on the ship (maybe you missed a few when you were on the islands ?). I don't have the numbers, but 2 krakens and 10 megs in 95 hours seems low.

@i-marmot-i

I dont see it.
Over time, they tend to change and butcher the requirements down into the dirt. Until you simply pick up a fish and boom, 50 unlocked.

Players getting bent because they cant complete the game 100% (which...isnt gonna happen) is what makes people go mad. There always be more to do, endless cycle and with the game expecting to go past 10+ years now. No reason to rush into things.

Who knows...MAYBE down the road they increase the drop rate during events or such? Never know...people wanting to finish things quickly will always come back here or Reddit and complain how "We have nothing to do"

Exploiters, alliance servers. Kids ruin the game yourselves :p by turning a simple grind into a chore.

@BurnBacon

Over time, they tend to change and butcher the requirements down into the dirt. Until you simply pick up a fish and boom, 50 unlocked.

I'm going to need a real example of that.

Players getting bent because they cant complete the game 100% (which...isnt gonna happen) is what makes people go mad. There always be more to do, endless cycle and with the game expecting to go past 10+ years now. No reason to rush into things.

1. I'm pretty sure 100% completion hasn't been mentioned here.
2. "which...isnt gonna happen" You're acting like this is a law of nature rather than a design flaw. Again, commendations are a feature created and added into the game experience. One would imagine that adding something to a game means there is a desire for it and an expectation that it is meant to be accomplished. What other feature would you say should be added but NOT intended to function reasonably.

And the fact that "There always be more to do" highlights the point that commendations don't need to be unreasonably hard to accomplish BECAUSE they are going to continue to accrue and if you have a multitude of commendations that require insane time input or unrealistic scenarios then that's when it becomes undoable and frustrating.

Who knows...MAYBE down the road they increase the drop rate during events or such? Never know...people wanting to finish things quickly will always come back here or Reddit and complain how "We have nothing to do"

You are conflating the desire for reasonable commendation requirements with desiring them to be done quickly. You're also making it sound like something taking less than 95 hours is a handout.

Long term commendations are not a bad thing. "Hunter of the Shrouded Ghost" easily takes folks thousands of hours to get, but it has value in its rarity. On the other hand "Bountiful Giving for All" is asinine and so situational and contrived that the only way to accomplish it (30 times) is to set out with direct intention to. I have played the game for over 1k hours and not even notched towards that accomplishment with standard play.

Exploiters, alliance servers. Kids ruin the game yourselves :p by turning a simple grind into a chore.

Exploiters and alliance servers actually exist in large part BECAUSE the requirements for many of these commendations are unrealistic.

No one is saying anyone has to complete 100% (or even any) of the commendations, but there is over 1000 of these in the game, so there is developmental effort going into them. The crux of this thread is pointing out that a system developed in the game does not seem to be functioning reasonably.

I needed my last pristine meg tooth as I was 19/20. I started the game at 9am, took a break around noon, logged back on at 2pm, logged out around 9pm. During that time I managed to find 3 pristine meg scales, which I didn't need (that's already done). Next day, I repeated again, and finally found my 20th tooth after several hours.

While it's a chance-of-a-chance for you to find a wallow that has what you're looking for, I realized to increase my odds, I had to visit more islands per hour. After some trial and error, what worked best for me was to dive to Wild Rose tall tale. The first island I went to, was Lone Cove, followed by Cannon cove, to Crescent, to Wanderer's, then down to Snake, Crooks, and then reset. With 4 of the 6 islands relatively close to each other, it meant I was able to visit more islands per hour. I didn't bother with Smuggler's because it's such a large island, and I'm trying to maximize chances of wallows per hour, not spend 20min to see if a large island has it or not. It also goes without saying to have a friend(s) searching on different servers as well. The more elligible islands you're searching per hour, you increase your odds. The added bonus, is the sea post near the end of the route so you can sell!

I've seen several posts pertaining to this subject a few times now, and at this point, I'm not sure if they're going to make changes to their rarity or not. For myself, I'm assuming they're not, so I just kept at it until it was finished. Good luck.

I can't help but feel I've had a similar experience.
While playing and doing other commendations, I stop for every meg, and every kraken, which are not spawns the player controls. So far I've gotten 4 Pristine Teeth and 2 Pristine Scales, I'd argue as part of regular gameplay.

I recall it used to say on the Wiki you could get more then one Pristine Tooth or Scale, but that seems to have been removed, in fact looks like the Wiki omits them entirely. I have however gotten two boar tusks from a Meg, which felt weird.

I've gotten 1 tooth from a meg, I've gotten 1 tooth and 1 scale from Boar's wallow, the rest from organic megs.

Is there a point to this scarcity? Like if I sink a skele skip, I get skulls from my order of souls, if I find a message in a bottle with a riddle map, I get buried treasure. When I engage with an emergent threat or opportunity, why is it ONLY Hunter's Call that get the short end of the stick?
Its been months now since the HC's loot entered the game but it has not gone into any emergent or random loot pools. The only way to get their loot, is to do the quests. Which if you don't want people to get HC rep from doing other things, which seems inconsistent with the fact we get random fish from barrels and shipwrecks.

So how come when we engage with Megalodons, Krakens or Boars, unless part of a HC quest, do we just get loot from other factions? Instead of Hunter's call, which is supposed to be associated with them? (Loot from the quests also kinda suck).

I am not demanding to swim in meg teeth, but even if you added 100% drop of one teeth/scale, there is still RNG there, where you might get 30 teeth and 10 skulls, but at least it feels more manageable.

They really need to look at where the loot is showing up, as well as fix the issue of no loot spawning the boar wallows, because that's just bothersome.

Over a week…
45 Meg kills, 6 krakens, 30 boar wallows with loot…. ZERO pristine teeth, 2 pristine scales. The drop rate is atrocious.

After completing everything else in Hunter's Call, I've decided to just give up on the pristine teeth and scales. It's too absurd.

@obscureberry192 Please fix this already

@obscureberry192 The problem that doesn't help with megalodons is that being sunk, scuttle, changing servers (forced by the game, by a change of server for a quest and arriving directly at the destination) totally ruins the arrival of a megalodon.... having finished everything the rest of the game can offer and killed more than 400 megalodons since the milestones and probably 400 before the arrival of the milestones, (never seen shrouded among my 800 megs) and 7k hours, the hunt for immaculate teeth/scales as well as the shrouded ghost is becoming really ridiculous at the moment.... sometimes they are bugged and even with 20 days at sea they do not appear.... in general if all goes well day 5/6 without problem of changing sessions it should spawn but at the moment I really have the impression that it has become difficult to obtain megalodons without spending your life on the edge of the map.... courage to you

@d3verdier
Fix what?