So far the method I am using with my very limited time is - farm Frozen Aesters (around 50 per hour but its ultra boring).
Then put 4 on the Altar on Ascendant and try to go to small places with lots of chests to get Voidmarked ambushed.
What is everyone else strategies to maximize your time?
What if you add Aesters on Ultimate - is there a significant difference in drops per hour vs Ascendant (considering the HP bloat there with 4-5 activations on the altar?
Would be cool with “frozen aster totem”
I think you use too many asters, in my experience you already get quite a lot of voidmarked chests for just one aster, so if you put in 1x aster + 4x ashes is enough to earn back the ashes and get max droprate for echoes
Thanks - Iill give that approach a try!
Any suggestion for best farm route?
I have been putting ashes in the altar and going on about my life in the game using a mobile build (like 3 movements skills e.g warlord, blademaster, etc…).
By moving fast you are able to open more chests and get more than enough voidmarked chests. Once you can beat Nemesis fast it adds up additional soul fragments.
Skeleton dungeons are great, with lots of containers. I would also recommend ugdenbog / gloomwald (easier, lots of containers, and can farm Beast Nemesis).
Make beavers drop aster semi-rarely
Now everyone loves fighting beavers
Not sure if this is the best way but I use the altar to:
Then run around finishing up old quests/ rep, any boss I kill often will drop fragments as will many totems etc. Nemesis & Dread are also good.
Top search result so might as well bump this:
After trying out multiple things, the best methods seem to be either:
If you want to target farm Echoes and nothing else matters:
x5 Ashes and target farm bosses. Just hit as many purple named bosses in as short a time as possible. They seem to have a pretty good droprate when fully boosted by the Altar.
For general gameplay and passive gain, e.g. going through the campaign/cleaning up Ultimate:
x2 Ashes, x3 Aster or x3 Ashes, x2 Aster. Still can’t decide on what the best ratio here is. You want to maximize hero encounters, so Voidmarked is a no-brainer. But the base Echo drop rate from regular heroes seems very low, so boosting it with extra Ashes is desirable.
Reading the entire thread it seems that the endgame is always 0-5 asters + 0-5 ashes.
In your case on deciding 3-2 vs 2-3 I would probably check which one results in less HP buff to the monsters so that the farm is overall a bit faster.
I am testing with 2 totems + 3 ashes +whatever element you want to target farm for - i feel like farming Totems is quite more efficient vs void chests but my sample is small.
I was planning to get a definitive answer to this question by running multiple tests in SoT, back to back, and collect data about number of Soul Echoes / Fragments per run.
But my tests were completely pointless, because the variability is HUGE
I would do 2 runs in exactly the same conditions (route + altar), and one would get 40 echos, and the other would get 160 echos.
Turns out what dictates how many echos you get is how many Dreads spawn in the middle of your farming route, which is completely random.
So maybe the best Altar setup to farm Echoes is 3 Ashes + 2 Celestial Essences… which only works if you have a spare buildup of Essences that you never used from before the DLC. This is non-sustainable ofc.
Edit: That being said, if you want to run Asters + Ashes and click lots of small chests, go Valbury, not SoT. Valbury has the most chests per distance traveled of any other rogue-like dungeons in the game.
did you not get dread reliably with a voidmarked boost from all the extra mobs spawning? 
because i legit felt like i had to turn off the dread spawn completely running dungeons 
The Dread spawn is wildly inconsistent too. I’ve never used an essence on the Altar yet, but in some sessions, it almost spam spawns, in others, it shows up once every 30 minutes.
If we exclude the Dread, 2 Asters + 3 Ashes seems to be the better variation than 3/2. But yes, as said, the effectiveness of Asters depends greatly on which area you are running and how densely the lootables spawn there.
Yeah I’m also experiencing very high variability in Dread spawns. I’ve seen 2 Dreads spawn 10 minutes apart. Other times, I go farming for 2 hours before a Dread spawns.
I think it’s intencional, to feel unpredictable for the player.
But for the tests I was planning, I can’t simply “exclude the Dread” if it is the number 1 source of Soul Echoes. It’s like attempting to exclude the average and keep only the standard deviation… bad data.
But I understand your preference for 2 Aster + 3 Ashes. I personally am running 3 Aster + 2 Ashes simply because I also need to farm for Nyarlathon’s helmet. So the base spawn of chthonians interests me, even at the cost of fewer Soul Echoes.
are you guys counting regular nemesis spawn in the 2 asters/3ashes-3asters/2ashes combo, - specially if running DDs that increase spawn trigger ?
*not gonna pretend i mathed it out remotely, and as mentioned in another post i’m kinda nervous the game apes us on fractions , but when multi Nem spawns are involved from Dangerous Domains "speed"spawn, it feels like more higher ratio of ashes is good, since nems can also drop whole frags instead of just echos
Hey - after farming tons on 5 different characters i summarize the best RoI for Souls is:
For 1 hour grind through 3 out of the 5 Rogue dungeons i made:
Obviously you need a fast/reliable build to kill fully juiced Dread but that was the biggest income source of souls!
I’m assuming you meant 28 Fragments and 76 Echoes. They really need to change the naming, makes no sense that the big one is called a Fragment and the little “fragment” ones are called echoes.
Indeed! I confuse them all the time…28 Big Ones 
Btw let’s say that I don’t have a build that can handle altar’d up Dread (at least builds that I like and find comfy enough to do that), what would be the best way to farm souls? Max out the altar with Dread off, or don’t touch the altar with Dread on?
There’s also the third option of putting Celestial Essense in the altar (seems really worth it since there’s not a whole lot of enemy minions), but I barely have any around
You can always just disable the Dread to not spawn - honestly i do that on all melee builds since that is the worst way to play GD FoA (difference between caster/ranged vs melee is completely different game imo).
You dont need the Dread to get a solid income of Echoes!
As always with arpgs you need to find the sweet spot for your build in terms of echoes per hour.
You can try different routes- many prefer to just go with 5 Ashes and do fast Altar clears and Rogue dungeons - that is one of the fastest ways.
Or go with 2 Ashes and 1 Aster - run places with lots of Chests for higher chance of Voidspawn etc.
The Celestial essence route - it doesnt guarantee Dread spawn - just reduces its timer/kill number needed to spawn. Also those are so rare - you might just save those for when you can kill him fast.