Hey wonderful people, I recently started trying to craft one of those yellow recipes for boots aiming for a specific prefix and now I’m in 4.5m in debt and the IRS are looking for me.
What strategies or places would you recommend - are items worth selling or should one aim only for raw Iron Bits drops, what is your experience with Crucible, SR, Totems, the Rogue-like dungeons and the Dynamite chests, which have you recommend?
Now efficiency isn’t everything if you get burnt out easily so please let me know what is your favorite method as well!
I’m hoping to make this thread into a bit of a resource for Iron Bits acquisition methods and help other fellow players, who were naive enough to make a build that desperately needs Renegade Stoneplate Greaves or something similar, and now they’ve discovered that the true worth of the Iron Bit.
SR is great, gives you about 350k in 5-6mins± your build strength and pilot speed (technically 450k but you pay 100k for a waystone)
i don’t remember the exact numbers on avg, but i think totems were like 30-35-40k a pop, depending on type and spawn rng. Split that out across your totem route farm speed and there’s your comparison to SR
Crucible i legit don’t remember and havent’ paid attention to loot wise in ages
Imo SR is best, it’s relatively fast and reliable with little penalty depending on your char/difficulty(legend v MI payout will differ), downside might be monotony vs world farming/totems tho.
Until about level 70 I pick up and sell every single rare item. That’s the only way to get extra cash in the campaign. After 70 I pick up only the small rare items so I don’t have to go to town as often.
I had to start fresh, because I misplaced my save files, so I’m running a not-fully geared starter toon and hopefully I can push to SR30, I think I got up to either SR14 or 20, whichever gives you all the skill points.
Haven’t actually done Crucible in ages and I’m not sure if this toon is very suited for it, although it is a Vitality caster, the more opponents there are, the more life I can steal xD
Curiously I always pick-up and sell everything while leveling, but I’ve found myself not picking anything up right now because I’m collecting all the Epics(getting ready for the Awakened epics) and seldom have inventory space to spare
I’m still holding onto not doing using stash mods so I have to sort everything (picking the one with the highest rolls) and trashing the rest, suppose I could sell them instead.
alright so i just double checked
SR 26-27(65/66) Ultimate gave 438k +10 greens± left on the ground(so around another 20k bits)
sr 32-33(80-81) on Normal gave 442k + 15greens±, *but Eternal stone costs 150k
SR 30-31(75-76) Normal gave 443k + 12 greens±
so about 440k raw iron bit avg regardless, with roughly 20k extra if you pick up and sell the normal rares
As said the biggest difference will be MIs/Legendaries if you farm normal/elite 30-31 vs ultimate 26-27/30-31
**± because you wont get the exact same amount everytime, and this was just a 1x check
the non MI greens/regular single rare greens at a glance sell for 2-3k each, but there is 2k sell limit on Normal so you’d have to go back to Ult for max sell potential
also remember, if you want that extra 20k/sell the regular rares you now have to pick them up and sell immediately each cashout, since when you reset the SR shard/use another stone in same session it clears the reward room floor, so no piling up and selling all trash later like before
edit.
what i recommend would be based on your speed and overall desires
If you’re purely hyperfocused on money Normal (or elite) 30-31 is probably way to go since it’s faster to clear but you get much less MIs and Legends
if MIs/Legends “full inclusion” is a concern/long term consideration to you too, i’d probably do 26-27 Ultimate, assuming your char is not significantly slower than clearing 31 Normal/Elite
You are golden! (or should I say iron? )
That’s an average of 12.5 pairs of boots crafted per run, pretty good.
‘Full inclusion’ definitely sounds the way to go as the way I play is I theory craft around 10 builds in advance and then as I’m playing I get so many more drops to look forward to! (it also helps decide which class to roll next depending on drops).
Anyway, looking at how much farming there’s ahead of me I’m off to make an Infiltrator build to speed things up, when I gear one of the primary builds I’m trying to get off the ground I’ll test Crucible and drop my findings here.
*keep in mind the stone costs 100k, so it’s 440-100 effectively (± the 20k sell prices if you loot those ofc)/10 boots a run
and you’re very welcome
i’ve not checked MP comparison so that might also be an avenue to potentially consider too, with the caveats it might bring ofc
but potential benefit of MP is you can usually clear super fast too and much higher shards ofc (absolutely broken balance, in favour of player) - will ofc rely on the connection stability of team members or if you crash
And since I really like pet builds, might I also recommend a Pet Conjurer?
They’re both few-active-button builds, and there are builds on the forums, but I’m not sure if you’re interested in following builds or only want to come up with your own, so not posting them here right off the bat.
/off topic reply —
Thank you for the recommendation, I’ve still not done a Retal or a Pet build, actually I’ve done 1 Retal, but I haven’t levelled it yet and I haven’t even started attempting to do a Pet build, they’re like an entirely different universe (I did try stacking player scaling pets once, but I wouldn’t say I had a fundamental grasp of the game’s systems yet so it didn’t work out)
I don’t enjoy following builds exactly, I like trying to do it myself, testing my hypothesis in the real world and then looking at how the pros have done it.
The infiltrator I mentioned is somewhat of a necessity, because I’m going after 1/300 MI’s that require a lot of travel, so I need the 156% movement speed and the 2 movement skills, if it weren’t for the 8% Max movement speed from the Inquisitor, I’d be doing a Cadence (pierce) Blademaster with the Ugdenbog Boltthrower or something of the sort - that and the pierce RR stacking that infiltrators get, I mean you gotta get there fast, but you also gotta be able to do something when you do. — end of off-topic/
Hah, yeah, I’m more of a “monkey see, monkey do” variety of action rpg player
Although, with the two builds I’m leveling (the ones I mentioned), since both of them only really showcase the endgame version, I end up winging it on the gear/components/augments front, to try and get the skills + resistances in a good spot as I level.
I hear you on the low drop chance MI’s though (I assume it’s not so much the MI that’s low chance, but the MI + affix or affixes that you want).
I’m glad that the pet conjurer that I’m currently leveling, the leveling MI’s seem to be quite generous with the useful affixes, so it only took ~3-5 runs around level 50 to get something good enough to then get back to leveling.
When I needed cash for Ultimate merits, I ran the troves in Arkovian docks. There’s one in the docks area, and if you’re lucky, one on top of Tyrant’s Hold. Doing this run also gives you Rovers and Devils Crossing rep.
Very useful info!
You can also farm the Celestial totem there as well, those always have bountiful loot!
I’m seeing a lot of troves in the Arkovian Undercity (which has to be my favorite non-key dungeon imo this should’ve been Steps of Torment)
I’d like to add that I got a very significant cash drop from the troves in the Cinder Wastes while farming for MI’s there - to add to that, doing Cinder Wastes > Fringes of Sanity runs gives massive Barrowholm rep, which has always been my least favorite to grind.
I would not call retal commando low buttons after leveling. You can’t very effectively kill bosses without getting 2-3 extra %rata skills from gear - I have one on Hardcore and the Lokarr fight is just a stalemate until I can get a M. Mask of Infernal Truth, both of us regen too much.
You’re right, while I’m still putting together the build (still at the stage of a partial pre-final Champion of the Light set), using Grenado with rata, it certainly would be helpful to have 2-3 additional rata skills to use on bosses (while Grenado is on cooldown).
But as Gnomish_inquisition pointed out, this build implies that you can very much stack blackwater cocktail to kill the super bosses:
Getting back to the topic of farming, I just tried to gamble for 3 more Bysmiel’s Trinket items for my pet Conjurer.
Blew through the measly stock of materials + iron bits that I have in Hardcore stash, and didn’t get a single one (out of about 10 attempts).
Now back to farming for materials/money, hoping to get the trinkets as natural drops.
Well, farming is a strong word I guess. More: completing all the quests in Ultimate, just to have them completed, and going through Shattered Realm in normal mode.
just in case
You can only do this on Ultimate at the celestial smith in FG (bysmiel trinks specifically)
base game smith wont provide endgame legends(84+), and Bella wont provide FG loot pool items, (which Bysmiel trinks are ofc), and elite they give epics etc or lower level rank stuff
just putting it out there in case anyone wasn’t aware (even if you might already be)
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Retal Commando - BWC caster | 20s dummy | 7k hp/s - Grim Dawn / Classes, Skills and Builds - Crate Entertainment Forum