I'm running all the available missions, from rich on down, for the lower Grade missions. For Grade 1, at least, there are 2 listed as Rich, one for Power Crystals, and one for Ancient Artifacts. My wife said the same thing, that she still gets purple drops from the missions. I was wondering, as I said, because I have not received any in such a while, whereas before, I was getting them dropped constantly. All the crits have been giving me are larger quantities of the base mats (not really complaining per se on that, as they ARE needed for crafting, after all).

So, I am a fairly new player (maybe a month and a half or so), and have leveled my main character up to Level 80 already, and took the Artifice crew skill along with it's supporting gathering skills (Archeology and Treasure Hunting). All three skills are leveled up to 700. Now, here's where my question comes in to play. On the Grade 10 and 11 missions, I will gather all rarities upon a critical success; however, by contrast, I have not received a single Wind Crystal or other purple drop from the low level missions in almost 2 weeks of running missions for the purple drops for them (and that's running Grade 1 missions exclusively for those two plus weeks, since I passed Grade 6 or 7). Is it a verified thing that crits stop giving purple drops after a specific point or something? You would think that they would get MORE frequent for the lower missions as the levels get higher and your crew influence rating goes up, even if just for the "rich"-yield missions, not LESS.