I believe at one point, @Nimhain posted something about them considering going to full random, like console. Having some sort of influence over the stones you get from PvP would be infinitely better in my opinion (as I went into detail on, I believe in that linked thread), but really this has been a nagging problem for a long time now. With us now going to a one arcane pack per week schedule and those arcanes also inexplicably repeating in colors in a very short periods of time, we are also facing that hurdle.
Full random would be bad because your chance at a specific runic is somewhere around 1/60 and your chance at a specific arcane is about 1 in 1050, meaning endgamers that need a few specific colors aren’t really moving toward any goal at any reasonable, either. You also may get more variance on Arcanes this way (over a very very long period of time) but keep in mind that 16.6% of your runics and minors would still be yellow. Home kingdom influence (through revenges, like previously, would be one way) makes the most sense.
Whitehelm, Wild Plains, and Pan’s Vale are the “good” options, really, I only included Pridelands because of the discussion in the thread, and I also included relative amounts for kingdoms with no glory tribute. Pridelands, in this case, is the representation of a low glory reward kingdom that you were using some other way. In my opinion, for many people, the hit for using something Pridelands and below is not going to be insignificant, although at endgame it really doesnt matter if I’m buying 16 or 17 of a weekly glory pack when I already have more than I need of that arcane color and I’m certainly not going to spend the glory on Glory Keys anytime soon, even if I am approaching a supply of 100k.
For another data point, this is what my level 80 account looks like after only a couple months in:
I’ve traited only Valk, Mab, Soothsayer, Snow Guardian, Knight Coronet, Goblin Shaman, Giant Spider, Wight and Warg to the point of needing runics, so my actual totals gained are 33 blue/20 green/19 red/32 yellow/20 purple/27 brown. I’ve done nearly entirely PvP, less than 30 treasure hunts total, and completed Zaejin, Zhul’Kari, and Broken Spire quest lines, only a few of the Broken Spire challenges, a few Broken Spire explores (to get my last two blue runic for Mab), and a few quests into Forest of Thorns. Other than doing the most non-PvP stuff for Broken Spire, the reason Brown and Blue are so high here is because people at the low end don’t know any better from changing from Broken Spire yet, but even here, Whitehelm is starting to become an issue. The lack of red, while being still the most-used color in the game, is also concerning. FYI, I’m using Zhul’Kari as my home kingdom on this account.
