Colossal Crystals Payout Low

[Credinus]

Has anyone else had a problem with low jade scorpion payouts on colossal crystals? I've been soloing CR16 challenges (at-level) to work on getting some of the level 16 gear, and most of the time I'll complete the primary objective and maybe 1 optional; in other quests, I tend to get anywhere from 120-180 ingredients using this method.

However, in colossal crystals, which I've only managed to complete twice out of dozens of attempts (the difficulty on this challenge really seems to be WAY higher than all the other challenges but that's a story for a different thread; it also doesn't help that hireling AI is apparently extremely poor in this quest, with my hireling often just sitting there doing nothing while being wailed on by Drow), I've gotten a very low payout. The first completion, which included no options, got me 90-something ingredients. The second completion, which included the optional to clear out the colosseum, got me 84 ingredients.

Compared to the amount of ingredients I'm getting in other challenges, this seems extremely low. Taking that into consideration, I've been better off just doing Moving Targets and converting the manuscripts to scorpions at 2:1, since I can complete that challenge in about 12 minutes and usually net around 200 manuscripts from it.

Has anyone else noticed low payout rates with this challenge? Maybe it's a problem with just the CR16 one? Is there a trick to getting more?

[Deathdefy]

Colossal Crystals is actually my go-to for ingredients whenever I can if they're within a 4:1 rate (i.e. the next 2 ingredients along).

Practice (in particular, learning where the crests for your door of choice are) is huge.

Also, if you just want ingredients, don't clear the giant camp (unless it has a teleporter spot and a purple patch), and do use a security crest. The star objectives don't affect your ingredient return, beyond getting nothing if you fail to complete the first star.

In particular, once you're confident that you'll be able to get one big progenitor before time expires, get the purple patches along the way / slightly out of the way before getting the progenitor, since the later you leave it, the more that will have exploded.

I'd be surprised if it was just level 16 that was anomalous in return rate, but can't even be sure I've tried 16. I'd check 15 and 17 since they're only 10% penalty/gains and should be of very similar difficulty.

[Credinus]

Colossal Crystals is actually my go-to for ingredients whenever I can if they're within a 4:1 rate (i.e. the next 2 ingredients along).

Practice (in particular, learning where the crests for your door of choice are) is huge.

Also, if you just want ingredients, don't clear the giant camp (unless it has a teleporter spot and a purple patch), and do use a security crest. The star objectives don't affect your ingredient return, beyond getting nothing if you fail to complete the first star.

In particular, once you're confident that you'll be able to get one big progenitor before time expires, get the purple patches along the way / slightly out of the way before getting the progenitor, since the later you leave it, the more that will have exploded.

I'd be surprised if it was just level 16 that was anomalous in return rate, but can't even be sure I've tried 16. I'd check 15 and 17 since they're only 10% penalty/gains and should be of very similar difficulty.

I'll certainly try those two levels out tomorrow, because I've never gotten under 100 ingredients on completion in any of the other challenges so something definitely smells fishy about it. I wasn't aware that completing the star objectives didn't increase your ingredient payout, so I'll keep that in mind (though I only did it that run because I had some time to kill but not enough to get another progy). I've gotten most of the crest spawns down pat, but a lot if it boils down to whether or not I get lucky with where the circles of power spawn. The mobs here seem to have significantly more health than other challenge areas, and protecting those progenitor crystals on long hikes to a teleporter is risky business; the Drow scorpion warrior alone takes me hundreds of SP to kill off.

[Shade]

I'll certainly try those two levels out tomorrow, because I've never gotten under 100 ingredients on completion in any of the other challenges so something definitely smells fishy about it. I wasn't aware that completing the star objectives didn't increase your ingredient payout, so I'll keep that in mind (though I only did it that run because I had some time to kill but not enough to get another progy). I've gotten most of the crest spawns down pat, but a lot if it boils down to whether or not I get lucky with where the circles of power spawn. The mobs here seem to have significantly more health than other challenge areas, and protecting those progenitor crystals on long hikes to a teleporter is risky business; the Drow scorpion warrior alone takes me hundreds of SP to kill off.

The only thing that affect syour return is your score. So you likely had a very low score.

In that quest score is affected only by number of crystals and kills.

Roughly if you do it at lvl:
1 green = 1 point
1 purp = 10 points
1 trash kill - 1 point
1 orange named - 5 points
red named - ~10-15 points

It is a challenging one to solo, perhaps the hardest one, but if you do well, it can offer a very high payout, so its well balanced in that regard.