This is How To Farm the New Collectables System Efficiently

[zehnvhex]

A correction as well. The second node in Cabal for one is Arcane, not Lore.

[dancing_hawktopus]

The cabinet in Protect Baudry's Interest drops Lore, while the cabinet in A Cabal For One drops Arcane. What gives? I'm going to put a disclaimer edit at the top of the OP to disregard my guide until I can account for the anomaly. I went by EllisD's post as to which nodes give which category, but it appears we've all been hoodwinked.

[Connman]

Anyone find a quicker T5 Arcane then Offering of Blood? Problem with OOB is recalling puts you a long run from the entrance.

VON 2, The prisoner. Level 21 on Epic Normal.

Zone in. Talk to the NPC. Turn around and run to the maze ladder. As you are climbing the ladder use your "target thingie" button to find them and the chests from under the floor as you go up.

You can get two bookshelves and a pile of rubble. Also there are two chests. The bookshelves and the chests have a few different spawn points. Sometimes the pile of rubble is in the water, sometimes not.

I did this today and got a bunch of Arcane collectibles.

Death ward, acid resistance and D-Door a strongly suggested.

[EllisDee37]

The cabinet in Protect Baudry's Interest drops Lore, while the cabinet in A Cabal For One drops Arcane. What gives? I'm going to put a disclaimer edit at the top of the OP to disregard my guide until I can account for the anomaly. I went by EllisD's post as to which nodes give which category, but it appears we've all been hoodwinked.

I just went by what the devs stated.

For cultural, look for quests where a bazillion mobs spawn right at the start, kill them all, and take their treasure bags. For example, Kobold Assault is going to be a strong Tier 1 culture farm, I imagine. Similarly, Gladewatch Outpost for Tier 2 Culture. (If the quest has both heroic and epic versions, it appears they only drop heroic culture bags. At least, that's what I'm seeing in VON3.)

Sinister Storage is a strong farm for Tier 3 (normal) or Tier 4 (hard) Naturals. There are 3 natural collectables every time, spawning in random locations. But the entire quest is just a tiny little room, so run in, rapid-fire your auto-select key to find all three (some can be blocked, or up the stairs) grab them and run back to the door to exit. Just ignore that first wave of mobs chasing you. Reset and repeat as necessary. You'll be in and out with 3 naturals faster than the Lords of Dust intro dialogue.

EDIT: As a general rule, I recommend Exalted Angel for a collectable farmer where reasonable. Leap of Faith helps speed things along nicely.

[zehnvhex]

Probably for best 'generic' grabbing in the T4-T6 range:

T4/T5 : Lords of Dust (for the level range) is probably the best 'generic collect' if you're looking to just get a bunch of mats. 3 adventure bags, 3 nature spots and a lore spot within easy distance of the zone and a bunch of easy kills on the way (provided they fix cultural bags for epic levels). You can grab 3 more moss by going passed the trap part if you're hard up for nature.

T6 : EH Precious Cargo probably best for T6 generic collecting. 2 rubble/adventure bags on top deck and 1 nature below deck. Does require doing the first 4 quests in the series first though to unlock.

Haven't done much T1-T3 farming yet as I had a -ton- of those mats from being fake-OCD about hitting them in every zone anyways for the past 2 years. I'm sort of on a mass collection spree at the moment for T4-6 to make my lvl 20 eTR grind suit:

[dancing_hawktopus]

Alright, I stayed up all night and updated the OP for accuracy, expanded to every tier of every category except Cultural, and tested a bunch more quests, which I added. Enjoy! To do list now includes Cultural farm, Challenges, and Wilderness primarily. Someone try out the Epic 3BC port points while I sleep :-)

[btolson]

I'm not sure, but I think difficulty level may impact the rarity of collectables you get.

Very small sample size, but...

On Breaking the Ranks EN, I got 1 rare collectable (Shimmering Spore Pod) out of a grand total of about 160 pulls.

On Tavern Brawl EE, I got 2 rare collectables (Token of the Spinner and Vial of Dragon's Blood Ink) in about 12 pulls.


Now it's obviously possible I just got extremely lucky on my EE Tavern runs, and extremely unlucky on my EN Breaking the Ranks runs, but I think this is something the community at large may wish to pool data on.

[nibel]

The Enemy Within (Level 11 base quest) in House J has a lot of Alchemical Tables. May be worthy if you run the whole quest for T2 and T3.

[Bob_of_QF]

First, I ran Barroom Brawl 3 times HC, then I ran Ran Cabal for One:

4 times on HC
2 times on HN
2 times on HH
1 time on HE <-- completed quest -- one more spawn, and I get some XP due to level.

Oh! I also inadertantly included the monster treasure-bag drops from the entrance, on the way to Cabal, which I ran directly-- I killed maybe 10-20 critters along the way, and splashed the 5 that respawn just outside the entrance to Cabal. I wasn't thinking about being scientific, soory...

Collectable tally:

Chrunched all the loot, except one sword --which would not crunch-- !!!BUG!!!!

Picked from 4 collectable spots, except for HE, which had 5 (last room has one).
See the DDO Wiki map, these are marked with a white square.

Also picked all the treasure-bag drops, and busted all the barrels/boxes, etc. Got a surprising number of crunchable items, if of a lower level. Maybe 4-5? (from boxes/barrels)

Total loot, after dissolving treasure (apart from ONE which would not-- BUG!)
112 Canneth Essence
~1100+ syberies frag
552 kyber frag
2 ancient elvin relics

2 charred soarwood (T3 arcane, arcane)
1 moonstone (T3 arcane, arcane)
2 shaminic totems (T2 rare, cultural)
1 necromatic gem (T2 rare, cultural)
1 amulet of the six (T3 uncommon, cultural)
2 chipped bone talisman (T4 common, cultural)
1 blessed candle (T4 common, cultural)
1 ritual candle (T4 common, cultural)
1 cryptic message (T4 common, lore)
4 amulets of the lost empire (T3 common, cultural)
1 runic parchment (T3 common, lore)
2 singed soarwood (T3 common, arcane)
2 loadstones (T3 common, arcane)
6 ceramic bowls (T3 common, arcane)
1 scholarly notes (T3 uncommon, lore)
1 planar spoor (T3 uncommon, cultural)
3 small planar crystal (T3 common, cultural)
5 mark of the keeper (T2 uncommon, cultural)
12 funerary token (T2 common, cultural)
19 blade of the six (T2 common, cultural)
3 signant of the deverorer (T2 uncommon, cultural)

25 mysterious remnants <<--- very surprised. I was using a lvl 19 WLK, here-- over-leveled, much? Ha! I also had a lvl 13 cleric (the highest non-epic you can buy in Gianthold-- I totally forgot to buy one) and a lvl 17 Owlbear (whistle).

It was fairly quick. I quickly got bored with Barroom Brawl, and only ran that 4 times. I got 4 items (forget which, did not pay attention).

Whereas running Cabal for One, if you don't mind splashing some more mobs, there are 4 spots within easy reach, 5 if you do the last room-- you *could* do everything but fail to grab the Giantish Device, which lets you re-enter over and over.

By splashing the mobs? I got a significant number of treasure-bag drops, but they were all over the place in level. Very unpredictable. Most of the Blades, above, were from bags. Same for the funerary t's.

_________________________________


Well. That was .... not much fun at *all*. What really makes this whole thing ugly? But laughable? I *still* did not get my 2 glass phials that I really, REALLY wanted to get-- wanted to craft a melee with GOOD on it...

Uggg... I loathe the fact that the EFFECTS are NOT SCALED WHEN YOU BUILD THEM.

That sucks great big goat ****.... Used to be? If I crafted a ML 8-10 item? It cost me apropriately scaled stuff. This new UNSCALED system is plainly stupi.

Oh, yeah-- I tried the Free Box from the Store? Absolutely NOT worth 45TP.... not even worth 5... mainly because it is RANDOM.

[Eth]

ADQ2 has 3 quickly accessible adventurer's packs (one after the first gate, 2 at the bottom of the platform: turn 180, jump down, pick up collectible, use the teleport to get back up, run straight past the queen and jump down, pick up the third collectible, DD).

I only did some short testing, but it seems to work like this:
Heroic gives any tier 3s.
Epic gives any tier 5s.

Difficulty doesn't seem to matter in both cases.

[yoderc]

There's 2 Adventure's Packs on the West side...1 is 1/2 way thru the whirly traps to the left, the other is at the key end, under the left stairs beside the crude alter.

Very very good work and thank you very much!

[Tscheuss]

Tier 1:

Adventurer's Pack
Cabinet
Bookshelf

[Silverleafeon]

Quoted here with credit given where credit is due. +1

[dancing_hawktopus]

Just stopping in for a second to say thanks everyone who is helping out with this. I've spent about 14 hours testing all this stuff out. Still need some help on Cultural but I think at this point we now have a decent shot at every Tier for Arcane, Lore, and Natural. Having said that, I have done a few *hours* of farming nodes for my upcoming Palemaster life and I have got to say, my system is the best I've seen so far, but it is still a brutal grind. Zero to 15 pieces really can take a chunk out of your playtime. Devs really need to reconsider the costs, or the drop rates. Ideas like 5 common 2 uncommon 1 rare for a bound affix, or 1d4 craftables dropping per node, would make the system 10x as good. I have made some cool things so far though, stuff I simply could not have gotten random gen.

[Bob_of_QF]

.... Devs really need to reconsider the costs, or the drop rates. Ideas like 5 common 2 uncommon 1 rare for a bound affix, or 1d4 craftables dropping per node, would make the system 10x as good. I have made some cool things so far though, stuff I simply could not have gotten random gen.

^^^ yes.

Even better? Break up the too-many-choices into smaller, specific groups. This drops the odds of any given drop, at any given tier, from very ugly grinding to get a specific set of drops, to barely manageable.

The odds of any single item in the collectable list is infinitesimal. Yesterday (early this AM) many hours of grinding-- on the correct level for the tier I wanted-- AND had a specific node for the item I wanted -- STILL NOT ONE EXAMPLE OF SAID ITEM.

It absolutely sucks, IMO.

[lugoman]

Thought the beginning of EE Tor would be a good place for T6 cultural (mob bags). They did drop a few but all T3. Not sure if this is a bug and if it is if it will ever be fixed.

[Elfishski]

Just stopping in for a second to say thanks everyone who is helping out with this. I've spent about 14 hours testing all this stuff out. Still need some help on Cultural but I think at this point we now have a decent shot at every Tier for Arcane, Lore, and Natural. Having said that, I have done a few *hours* of farming nodes for my upcoming Palemaster life and I have got to say, my system is the best I've seen so far, but it is still a brutal grind. Zero to 15 pieces really can take a chunk out of your playtime. Devs really need to reconsider the costs, or the drop rates. Ideas like 5 common 2 uncommon 1 rare for a bound affix, or 1d4 craftables dropping per node, would make the system 10x as good. I have made some cool things so far though, stuff I simply could not have gotten random gen.

It's exactly as much of a grind as you choose to make it! If you weren't intent on making All The New Things in the first week of a system that's supposed to stay relevant for years (...but due to massive power creep probably only 3 months until next update...), then it doesn't have to be a grind. Just collect as you play, or do the reset repeat thing for a little while every so often between more fun things and it'll be less grind. Otherwise, fascinating thread on the hard work people will do to make things 'easier'.

(by the way, just ran around in heroic Wheloon and the explorer area is full of collectible nodes now, pleasant surprise)

[Tscheuss]

Bringing the Light also has an Adventurer's Pack (any) in the dog pen area.

[Bob_of_QF]

(by the way, just ran around in heroic Wheloon and the explorer area is full of collectible nodes now, pleasant surprise)

Good news!

Alas, I was running 3 barrel cove wilderness today (finishing the dungeons) and I found very few collectibles. No new ones, at least. There are some in out-of-the-way places that I know of, but I skipped most.

[Slominator]

Study in Sable is one of the best places to get T6 cultural collectibles at the moment. The maze has 2 adventurer packs. The attic has a pack next to the golem and a cabinet. The abandoned wing has rubble and a cabinet. The basement isn't worth it though with only 2 natural nodes and requires extra time to run out back after to grab the rat.