Quick question about component farming, I know that Ugdenbloom drops were increased significantly after the initial AOM release, but I’m stumped as to why I never have enough frozen hearts/battered shells.
As far as I can tell they are required to craft each other, and not particularly common. And many of the high end components require them, to the point where I’m happier to see one drop than pretty much anything else in the game other than maybe a blueprint I still need…
Am I missing something here, or did Crate intend for shells/hearts to be so valuable? Seems like if the high end components are intended to require so much farming, Crate could have just left the Ugdenbloom drops the way they were?
The shells aren’t that hard to get, you can find a lot of them by farming the hives.
The shell -> heart recipe was added because the shells are relatively common and hearts are rarer, with the recipe you can convert the shells into hearts.
They aren’t that rare, but it requires multiple runs to get a full one and the number of components they are used in is quite high. Similar to Ectoplasm back before they fixed Ectoplasm.
I get a full shell from pretty much every hive run I feel like doing and 2-3 from any given Ancient Grove run. They’re super common off any sort of bug enemy.
It’s funny because I never had issues with components except for Serrated Spike. Now when I see that particular component I almost freak out to pick it up, lol.
Maybe over-level and area has an impact on these drop rates?
In a few test comparisons of the recommended battered/ corpse dust/ frozen heart areas, I didn’t see an improvement over the Grove rates (maybe even less quantity). I seem to recall higher rates when I was in range - but I could just be rng.
Frozen hearts do indeed get eaten up fairly quickly in some of the advanced recipes.
I was thinking that if I were to start actively trading, these might be my requested currency. For a while I was converting battered-> hearts but then when I wanted to build something with battered… lol…I needed to go find some battered.
I wonder if over-level and area has an impact on these drop rates?
I ran a few of the areas for comparison and didn’t see an improvement over the Grove rates (maybe even less quantity).
I too burn Frozen hearts fairly quickly in some of the advanced recipes, but mostly because I change my items a lot.
I was thinking that if I were to start actively trading, these might be my requested currency. I was converting battered-> hearts but then when I wanted to build something with battered… lol.
Use a lvl 100 on veteran and run the usual farming areas for the component you’re aiming for: you’ll have a lot more component drops this way then on ultimate or elite, plus it’s way faster due to the “no challenge” aspect of it. A bit tedious, though, but it works quite nicely, IMO.
Just ran the Ancient Grove on Elite where I am underleveled. Got half a shell.
I don’t mind grinding for components…well I do, but I understand why crate sets up certain items to require it. But I would much prefer a system with more Killrian’s Shattered Soul type runs, rather than the monotonous slog it takes to find shells.
Seems like widening the net on which monsters will drop shells, adding them to a few of the vendor item pools, or doubling the drop rate on current applicable mobs would be helpful.
Like I said before, this feels like when hours of Ecto farming was required, or when Oleron’s Blood was valuable due to scarcity of chipped claws.
It’s mostly hero mobs which have a high chance of dropping components. On ultimate you can hunt purple enemies and on your way there hopefully run into a few hero mobs. There are 3 purple sliths you can hunt per playthrough which from my experience (50% chance to drop frozen hearts).
But battered shells are honestly not that hard unless you’re going out of your way to skip most of the content. There are a tonne of insectoid areas, ancient grove is not a place I would recommend when you have ominous lair, the hives and forgotten depths.
Grove run on ultimate:
-coven zig-zag to end of first part: 2 full battered components
-roguelike part: 2 full battered components
~1/2 quantity from heroes+
~1 part from every 20-30 suitable non-hero mobs
~could be 1 or 2 parts from chests
I don’t run this specifically for battered, but this run did have a lot of appropriate hero types for that drop. On elite you would see less heroes.
I then did a second comparison -coven zig-zag to end of first part= only 1 part of a battered. I saw few qualifying heroes on this run and no drops from non-heroes.
TDLR: For Battered Shell focus: You would be likely better off farming Twin Falls Hive for fast component runs with typically 2-3 heroes + queen. Or some other spot with more consistent appropriate heros.
The dermapteran hive will also yield battered shells. As Weyu mentioned kicking open the unhatched eggs is also highly recommended as it’s a good source of components.