This is my 3rd ever witches festival on Tamriel. If you are no stranger to holiday events, you know the damage that they do to your inventory space. Completing daily tasks to get your event tickets subsequently burden you with more motifs, recipes, rune boxes and memento pieces than you know what to do with. And each year, more items get added to these event boxes. Needless to say, I am relieved to see that ZOS has implemented a way for newer players to collect the iconic treasures of previous witches festivals that is separate from the usual daily task rewards. I would go crazy if I got another damn “Apple Bobbing Fenwood Ladle” (a fragment for the apple bobbing memento), I already tossed the 37 I got last year in the guild bank.
For the first time ever, players now have the option to buy a “Witches Grab Bag”. An item from the impresario that contains bound items from previous witches festivals that are no longer available through the regular plunderskulls that drop from this event.
Some of these items include the Hollowjack motif pages. The only way to acquire this outfit style now is by purchasing these grab bags for 2 event tickets each. All of the contents inside are character bound, meaning they can not be traded.
This change has terminated the supply of tradeable Hollowjack pages. Instead of playing with RNG, players can then opt to buy the Hollowjack style from guildies so that they can complete their halloween themed achievements.
Because of the demand for these spooky garbs, and the knowledge of the tradeable hollowjack style pages no longer being acquirable, the prices for these pages have skyrocketed.
Before, you’d be lucky to get 1k from selling one of these motifs in season. At the time of writing this, most motif pages go for 40k a piece, with bigger pieces selling for closer to 100k.
Fortunately I had stored a lot of my old Hallowjack motifs in my storage boxes, and evidently I wasn’t the only one! To give you some numbers: I’ve made about 15mil over the past few days from selling Hallowjack motif pages that I had collected and put away throughout the years.
Unfortunately, I have also seen a lot of people kicking themselves for vendoring their old Hallowjack pages, thinking that after years of excessive distribution, they would never be worth anything. And you can’t blame these people for thinking this way, as the implementation of a “Witches Grab Bag” has been very recent.
So What Does This Mean?
What happened to the Hollowjack style begs the question: what else will this happen to? For next year’s witches festival, will the Dremora Style no longer drop organically as well? Will the only way to acquire the Dremora motifs be through character bound grab bags that cost event tickets and are RNG based?
If so, then do not make the mistake of selling your Dremora motifs to the merchant for mere peasant change! Hang on to those motifs! It may very well be worthwhile to do so in the event that the Dremora motifs get the same treatment as Hollowjack motifs so as to continue to allow ample space for NEW Halloween treasures for witches festival veterans like myself.
Another question that arises is whether or not other events will also get their own respective “grab bags”. What items will no longer be able to be acquirable through completing daily tasks, what items will be locked behind these bound grab bags?
It may pay to think twice about getting rid of all of your holiday event junk. You never know when your trash may turn into treasure!
Tamriel Trade Secrets 