Are mob totems bugged or just bad?

Hi. Haven't been on the forums for a good while but I felt like posting about this because it's starting to bother me.

I would like to use my mob totems to grind out certain crafting ingredients - ones that drop from common enough mobs, as I know mob totems don't increase the spawnrate of rare mobs. But it seems like every individual totem is personalized and decides based on some completely unknowable criteria whether it wants to work or not.

I tested the totem in multiple places and measured results, and about half of the time it increased drops by about ~30%, and the other half it did absolutely nothing. I tested in caves and on the main road, in places I know to be grinding spots, and other places as well. The ONLY consistently functioning spots were the "grind spots". (Herb cave, for example.) Are mob totems coded to just only work for certain areas?

Mob totems are one of the rewards you get for a rank - it's not much in the grand scheme of things, but one does pay real life money for these items. It would really suck if they were bugged, or had an obtuse use case not explained to the player. I hope I am simply using them wrong or am very unlucky.

 

i noticed this too back when grind spots first dropped and just assumed it to be because they were meant to be used only at grind spots

 

I think the main issue is that mob totems just increase the rate in which mobs spawn, the problem being mobs don’t naturally spawn a lot (or like have a very low cap to how many at once) except in certain areas making the mob totem buff already horrible rates.

 

Yeah, it seems like the way mob totems work is by simulating a "spawn wave" every few seconds. Except what mobs / mob types this spawn wave actually affects is really inconsistent. The main thing is that I can't even try to realistically use a mob totem "properly" by sight alone.

Logic would say that if I found a spot where a lot of a specific enemy was consistently spawning, putting a mob totem there would do something, but it's a complete 50/50. I really do think that mob totems are either bugged or they're so unbelievably specific and obtuse with the ruleset of what it affects that it's just a bad mechanic.

 

I've also experienced the first few minutes of it not really working, but after a few minutes the rates seemed to be really fast. So on top of not being all that helpful, it can also be inconsistent.