Resource farming for new players

[Coda]

Follow straight path to Magroth or clear lefts & rights too? Just for essence

SoA is not the most efficient for Essence. SoA used to be the best for gemstones, and the highest yield came from Zerg-style runs, straight to the boss.

For Essences, run 4-47.

[ShotDead]

The most efficient "old standard" is Siege of Anderhelm (SoA).

Follow straight path to Magroth or clear lefts & rights too? Just for essence

[Coda]

For gemstones, the old standards, The Broken Dragon (TBD), The Temple, Crucible of Mawrth, or City of Malador, are probably better choices.

The most efficient "old standard" is Siege of Anderhelm (SoA).

[nightshade3]

Analysis of farming Morgenheim[/B]

Many players are farming Morgenheim for crafting materials, however, some people go directly to the end of levels, other clear all enemies and opens all boxes. I made a small experiment to check what is the better way:

- Step 0: note the amount of gold/gems/gemstones/materials before starting level
- Step 1: kill all enemies but do not open any boxes (including the two ones at the end level), calculate the gains. The reason of not opening boxes in this step is that we need to calculate what we get from killing or from boxes
- Step 2: open two boxes at the end of level, calculate the gains for this step
- Step 3: go back to open other boxes (7 at sides, 2 in middle), calculate the gains

The results are follows:
- Step 1: gains +5 gems, + 8443 gold, +10 rough gemstones (exactly 4 rough + 2 common), + 3 silver ores, no essences, + 15 (silk cloth, cured leather, iron bar)
More important: 9 green (uncommon) + 4 blue (rare) gear items
- Step 2: gains +12900 golds, +2 greens items
- Step 3: gains +10681 golds, + 7 gray (common) items, +7 silver ores, +1 (silk cloth, cured leather, iron bar)

I repeated the experiment several times, numbers changed little, sometime I got epic (or even legendary ) drops from step 1 and rare items from step 2, but nearly the same for step 3.

The conclusion:
- The absolute majority of crafting material gains is from killing enemies. Beside crafting materials, you get also gems and gemstones (where boxes do not).
- On the full clear, you can get more materials in comparison with going directly to the end of level because you kill more enemies, not because of opening boxes.
- It is not worth opening other boxes except for the two ones at the end of level (unless you need gold desperately)

#Update => Farming Morgenheim gives 0 gems now

[Ozymandius]

Great guide! I want to ask though, which level is better for farming Gold+Gemstones+Gems? Morgenheim, Darkhold Citadel or Drakenmoor Catacombs?

Most of the discussion on farming Morgenheim was based on salvaging for essences. As far as essences goes, there isn't that much difference between Morgenheim and Drakenmoor Caracombs, though I also do some runs on Darkhold Citadel to break up the monotony of a 30 minute "essence" farming run. The consensus is the Normal level is most efficient because you can run through it faster (otherwise I have not noticed a difference between levels in terms of salvage drops).

For gemstones, the old standards, The Broken Dragon (TBD), The Temple, Crucible of Mawrth, or City of Malador, are probably better choices. During the timed event most players will probably run gemstones at TBD because its faster and a lot of players will not run story board once they finish Act1 and pick up Robin as their third companion.

[nightshade3]

Great guide! I want to ask though, which level is better for farming Gold+Gemstones+Gems? Morgenheim, Darkhold Citadel or Drakenmoor Catacombs?

[narf]

Guide updated according to comment/advice from NoSuchReality .
narf : If you agree, we can leave only your first comments (post #4) and delete the rests of our discussion (post numbers #5, 6, 7, 10, 12). I already updated the guide according your comments, so now the discussion is off-topic.

Travis : Can you delete the posts (if narf agree).

I like to keep those discussions, they might be useful in some way later. As long as the original post is up to date, it's usually fine.

[Alica2122]

Guide updated according to comment/advice from NoSuchReality .
narf : If you agree, we can leave only your first comments (post #4) and delete the rests of our discussion (post numbers #5, 6, 7, 10, 12). I already updated the guide according your comments, so now the discussion is off-topic.

Travis : Can you delete the posts (if narf agree).

[Travis | Support Mgr.]

::sigh:: The original "Analysis of Farming Morgenheim" thread was deleted by mistake when I moved this thread to the guides section. Just in case anyone still needed the info from the OP on that thread, here it is:

Analysis of farming Morgenheim

Many players are farming Morgenheim for crafting materials, however, some people go directly to the end of levels, other clear all enemies and opens all boxes. I made a small experiment to check what is the better way:

- Step 0: note the amount of gold/gems/gemstones/materials before starting level
- Step 1: kill all enemies but do not open any boxes (including the two ones at the end level), calculate the gains. The reason of not opening boxes in this step is that we need to calculate what we get from killing or from boxes
- Step 2: open two boxes at the end of level, calculate the gains for this step
- Step 3: go back to open other boxes (7 at sides, 2 in middle), calculate the gains

The results are follows:
- Step 1: gains +5 gems, + 8443 gold, +10 rough gemstones (exactly 4 rough + 2 common), + 3 silver ores, no essences, + 15 (silk cloth, cured leather, iron bar)
More important: 9 green (uncommon) + 4 blue (rare) gear items
- Step 2: gains +12900 golds, +2 greens items
- Step 3: gains +10681 golds, + 7 gray (common) items, +7 silver ores, +1 (silk cloth, cured leather, iron bar)

I repeated the experiment several times, numbers changed little, sometime I got epic (or even legendary ) drops from step 1 and rare items from step 2, but nearly the same for step 3.

The conclusion:
- The absolute majority of crafting material gains is from killing enemies. Beside crafting materials, you get also gems and gemstones (where boxes do not).
- On the full clear, you can get more materials in comparison with going directly to the end of level because you kill more enemies, not because of opening boxes.
- It is not worth opening other boxes except for the two ones at the end of level (unless you need gold desperately).

[NoSuchReality]

The Celerity/Fleet Footed discussion is more an optimizing discussion and misses the forest for the trees, IMHO. Optimizing farming runs comes much later. It's a mistake I made coming out of the last ANB and then the intro of crafting. As a new Champion, you don't want to be farming gold/gems/salvage beyond what's needed to built a set of competent DPS jewelry and have enough gold to craft them and buy all the recipes for gear.

In this case, perfect is in the enemy of good, and advancement. The difference at low level Champion between a perfect jewelry and good jewlery at this level is 10+ full boosters of farming runs. It's a massive time sink and one that get very little marginal gain. You can farm and farm and farm Morganheim and you will not have enough to be crafting up all the set or named gear you want. You can maybe craft a single named weapon, and it may have lousy stats.

I made this mistake. You are not salvaging and crafting your way up the trial ladder.

IMHO, after a completing only two or maybe three boosters for farming runs, you should be able to upgrade all jewelry into a solid set of 240ish stat abilities. These will carry you far into the Trial Levels which, IMHO is where new Champions need to be spending the bulk of their time. You want to farm XP on the highest TL that's efficient. The reason is two fold, TL's above 30 drop Epic and Legendary set gear and at low CL, you will buff levels really fast.

Honestly, I'm thinking the Morganheim farming run isn't a new Champion discussion at all, it's really a post TL 80 discussion.

Don't get me wrong, it's a good guide and good write up on Farming. If we're getting into optimizing it, it's no longer newb, it's a mid to late game discussion, IMHO. That may be what needs adding is the guidance that we shouldn't be farming that much.

Step 0: Know why you're farming.

If you want to upgrade your gear, you should probably be doing trial levels unless your buffing C. Orbs or Enchantments.
If you want to advance in trial levels, you should be grinding XP in trial levels.
If you want perfect jewelry, okay, is it to have perfect jewelry or is it to advance trial levels, do story mode faster? Will solid legendary jewelry get it done? TL80+ without perfect jewelry is easily doable.
If you want to craft a specific piece of gear, okay, farm away. Just be sure you're picking the right piece of gear.

[Alica2122]

Guide updated, correcting about Fleet Footed, side boxes, adding section about gems and go to trial. Thanks all for comments, especially narf , Nhat

[Alica2122]

We all agree that any player with CL can farm 4-47, faster or slower. We are only discussing about two points:

- whether Celerity or Fleet Footed passive would help a low-level BH to farm faster? My opinion is that Celerity would be more important (killing faster) and narf Fleed Footed (movement).
- whether it is faster to farm with or without companion?

narf : my mage, with the gears according to this guide, has little different number, only ~75-80k damage. It may be the cost of EG/XP on gears: it take two slots, eventually ~2x80 points of each piece. If we change XP points to damage, we could have 9x80=720 points more for power/haste/... and boost the damage to your number.

[NoSuchReality]

You can actually run it with less. It slows you a bit and you need to be careful over engaging groups but a 100K DPS and it will take about 2 minutes. You dont need set gear or unique weapons to farm Morganheim. A normal Epic gold set, don't bother with XP yet IMHO, is disposable. The purpose of the first set is getting enough gold and gems to build decent DPS jewelry.

[narf]

You are still using Arc Lightning lvl 10 + Apprentice 6 + Immolate lvl 10, the most powerful combination in whole game in your test. Try to remove at least one piece of the set for disabling Immolate. And if your weapon has some enchantment (Rune of the Storm), use another one.

Try to clear the level, turn on Celerity which add about 10% to your attack speed, then off again and feel the difference in time needed for killing.

Ok, then here we go with something more realistic: ~120k damage, 2 uncommon, 5 legendary(4 Apprentice), rest rares(including 3 rings), 5 radiant damage jewels, no CP, no passives... goes through normal with relative ease. That can be definitely surpassed after one week(time needed for Arc 10).

[FendyBt2]

Nice write-up, worth moving to the Guides section in my opinion - since there's not much there right now for "starting out" players.

I'll second that... got my vote too...