Possible regression in starting gem dropping per instance

At some point after the starting gem was added in 0.9.9c, I'm 95% sure the game was setup such that once you killed the zombie and took the skill gem, it wouldn't drop again, even due to instance expiration. The weapon did, but the gem didn't. That quest state was persistent (which was picking up the gem). I say 95%, because of how people were worried about quality might drop (which a dev confirmed it wouldn't) and farming the starting weapons alone for wisdom scrolls was more or less "a waste of time".

It seems this has been reverted at some point, not sure exactly when, because I just noticed it the other day. This is bad because you can pretty much easily farm any color skill gem for use in vendor recipes with a little automated work. Since gems don't have ilvl, and it's pretty easy to kill the starting zombie and pickup the gem, repeating until inventory is full. Then, you can go to town by hand and deposit the gems. Delete the characters and start all over again.

When the game hits OBT and people can make more accounts, the instance delay becomes negligible, as all you need is enough accounts running to chain something being done ever ~8m. I'd not put it past people to do such a thing, so I hope this gets fixed. :)

I can confirm this exploit is happening easily in open beta.

Once you have 3 characters you can rotate between them one after the other and the starting gems re-drop.

This does not seem to work between only 2 characters, so I am guessing you thought it was fixed.

We are better off having the starter items reappear than we are with the possibility of a new player failing to get these items.

You can't abuse the starting item drops. The gems drop with no quality, and the weapon is not valuable.

You get as much benefit from running normal content as you would from rerunning the starting area.