More Greensteel Questions

[AaronB]

I'm playing my first high-lvl character, and just finished my first round of the Vale quests and 1 shroud completion so I'm starting to get an idea of what's involved in greensteel crafting (it's hard to grasp just looking at a planner). It appears that you get 1 large ingredient per shroud completion, with 1 completion per 3 days, and it's possible to get other ingredients without completing the shroud so you don't have the 3-day downtime. So, assuming 2 large ingredients per week, an 18-large ingredient item like an earthgrab hp cloak would take about 2 1/2 months. A 32 large ingredient item would take about 5 months. This can be reduced by buying or trading for ingredients, but they're extremely expensive for a fairly new player (and of course I don't have other high-lvl alts yet to help farm).

On the other hand, a tier 2 item with no large ingredients could be made much more quickly - just a round of the 5 vale quests and then faming the small and medium ingredients. One really helpful item would be a holy/goodburst kama. This would serve as a zombie slasher, and have a clicky to true ressurect once per day. I've heard some other classes make mauls for skeleton smashers with the tr clicky, but I haven't seen it discussed for monks with kamas. Another possibility is flaming/shocking burst kama with a 2/day displacement clicky. Tier 3 could be added later for greater disruption (on the holy one) and permanent blur (on the flaming one), but that would take months of farming. I probably wouldn't do that until I had everything else I wanted for all my characters.

The questions are, do my observations seem about right? Would it be a good idea to make a set of those kamas? Any other really good tier 2 only items? Thanks

[aldan]

Not much for monks in GS. A good option would be to create a guard item with hit points. Run the shroud religiously and drop before completion at part 5. Most raids, a someone drops a dimension door and allows all those who do not wish to finish, the option to take the dd and drop group. This way you can run a few shrouds a day and get your gear way quicker.

Another good and viable option is to increase the amount of toons that can run the shroud. this way you have a fighter, monk, cleric, etc, so you can get into more parties if they need a specific class.

Get yourself some metalline of pure good handwraps and call it a day. Kamas arent bad, but you really wont use them that much as the wraps are really where its at so IMO you'd be wasting alot of ingredients.

I tend to like guard items like corrosive salt with the 45 additional hitpoints. The earth elemental clicky is nice as well.


Good luck and happy hunting.

[sephiroth1084]

There is something like a 50% chance for a large ingredient to drop in the part 4 chest and a 100% chance for the part 5 chest. That said, high energy cells (charged or uncharged), large splintered horns and supreme shards all appear to count as large ingredients, so you could get 2 pulls of ****. By the same token, you could pull 2 large devil scales as I have done on more than one occasion.

Also, when counting larges for an item, people generally just count the scales, chains, stones, bones, shrapnel and arrowheads, so a single shard tier III item would be 12 ingredients, while a dual shard is 24. The reason being is that you can trade for uncharged cells rather easily as most people have an abundance of them, and supreme shards tend to go up for a roll fairly often.

From what I can tell, the only thing that's actually very difficult to acquire is the shard of power, as it has a lowish drop rate in part 1, and a super low drop rate in part 2 (apparently). scales and, to a lesser degree, stones cost more not because they are rarer than other ingredients, but because most of the good recipes require 3-6 of each vs. 1-4 of the others in general.

[Dexol]

It appears that you get 1 large ingredient per shroud completion, with 1 completion per 3 days,

You can pull 2 larges from the Shroud per run, 1 after part 4 and 1 after part 5.

A common tactic is to recall after part 5, before the alter is clicked so that you dont complete the raid and can run it again immediatley, but you miss out on the last 2 chests, one of which drops larges.

You can then run the part 4 chest to ransack if you choose

Another item worth crafting is a mineral II accessory such as a cloak with 45 additional hp on it like this, it has +5 ac and heavy fort on but you can make it how you want it.