036 - Farming Temple Sector

All kills within Temple Sector

In post 014 about the droprate while farming I already said I often farm the Temple Sector.  Temple Sector is not the best for CoT or Andermant, but it is the only dungeon where you can kill level 40 monsters on your own.  Therefor it's also the only dungeon you can get solo a unique level 40 item.

For a list of unique items I refer to the wikia page.

The temple sector has both level 39 and level 40 monsters.  She houses also some level 39 and level 40 special monsters.  Personally I think the chance of getting a unique drop is greater at those special bosses.

I wanted to know if the level 40 monster where distributed evenly throughout the whole dungeon or not.  So I did a run and made notes of every mob I killed.  The result of this you can see in the image on top.

Temple Sector divided in different area's

It looks like the distribution is fairly even.  Although sector 2 and 9 aren't that dense populated with level 40 monsters.

If I clean the whole sector I use the following route : 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 -5 - 6 -7 - 8 -9 -10 - 11 - 12.  Now that I know where all monsters are, I looks better to use the following route : 1 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 7 - 12 - 11 - 10 and leave sectors 2, 8 and 9 aside.

Anyway, I'm not sure yet.  It's just an idea I had and wanted to share.  Underneath you can see the full numbers.

numbers of mobs across all sections

035 - Beginners Guide : Tip 5 - Use Ctrl to see drops

Use the control button

When farming, or just in normal gameplay, it can be difficult to see where to drops are.  In the example underneath you can see such a situation.  The terrain masks the drops.

Drops are hard to see

However, when you hold down the control key the drops are clearly visible.

Holding down the ctrl button

014 - Droprates while farming

In my previous post, 013 - Beginners Guide : Tip 4 - Learn to farm, I explained why farming is important, especially for a F2P player, (to get ingame items without paying) and how to do such farming in Drankensang Online. 

When you take regularly notes of the drops while farming, you'll notice that the droprate is not the same in each dungeon.   In this post I want to show some statistics of several dungeons which I usually farm myself.

Droprates at Wildherz Cave

Droprates at Hailstone Mountains

Droprates at Temple Sector

Droprates in Q5

Above you see the droprates of several dungeon and Ammons Quest 5.  The most important line is the avg / hour number.  How many items can one farm in 1 hour ?

Wildherz Cave

As you see, Wildherz Cave is the best to farm in general.  It gives the highest number for CoT (Crystals of Truth), andermant and gemstones.  Sweeping time is just over 15 minutes (from town to town).  But keep in mind a dungeon has a reset time.  If you farm only Wildherz Cave you can only farm it around 3 times an hour.

Hailstone Mountains

Hailstone Mountains is the best for farming Gold (almost 4 gold per hour) while the other stats are still decent.  The high amount of gold farmed comes partly from the 3 quests you can easily do while farming.  The first 2 can be done in 1 run and are also good to do your daily quest quickly.

The 3 quest are :

1. Gnome Mining @ Torild -> 7 silver 83 copper
2. Soul Saving with Axe @ Sverre -> 16 silver
3. Din of Trolls @ Rikke -> 9 silver 53 copper

3 Quest at Hailstone Mountains

Temple Sector 
The Last dungeon I often farm is the Temple Sector.  Droprates at the Tempe Sector are certainly lower than in the other 2 dungeons, only Ancient Scrolls of Wisdom do drop here more frequently (because scrolls only drop from worthy monsters).  Yet at farming 10 scrolls per hour, this isn't a real alternative for the daily quest which gives 250 scrolls. 

Besides the lower droprates, sweeping time is, with a little over 30 minutes, also a bit long.  Still I continue the farm the Tempe Sector because of the chance of getting a unique drop.   At the German wiki page, someone wrote the he found Keens Steps in the Temple Sector.  I think this is the only place where you can farm solo for a unique item when you're level 40.

Note that the high amount of gold farmed at Temple Sector also comes from 3 quests.    

1. Caught in the Snare @  J'Ulda -> 37 silver 66 copper
2. Jitterjelly Invasion @ B/Elbial -> 31 silver 71 copper
3. Zorlobb Hunt @ B'Ala -> 59 silber 32 copper

3 Quest at Temple Sector

Ammons Quest 5
Finally a word about Ammons Quest 5.  Normally droprates  at Ammons Quests haven't been that good.  But Q5 looks to be an exception.  Q5 seems a good compromise between farming for CoT, andermant and the like and still having a chance for a unique to drop.

 Underneath a map of all the dungeon I spoke about.

Dungeons to farm

013 - Beginners Guide : Tip 4 - Learn to farm

A good drop during farming

Bigpoint profiles Drakensang Online as a free to play mmorpg.  There has been much debate whether DSO is really free to play or not.  For me it is certainly possible to DSO for free.  But if you want to compete with the best, you will need to invest some $$ or learn to farm.

What is farming ?

What is farming actually ?  Underneath the definition taken from mmoterms.com

The act of accumulating currency or items by constantly killing a mob or repeatedly performing a series of actions.

In Drakensang there are 2 reasons to farm.

• The first one is to obtain Crystals of Truth, andermant, health potion or blue essence. This is done by clearing, mostly lower level, dungeons.
• The second is to obtain unique items.  This is done in group by killing a boss over and over again until he/she drops the unique item.

To measure is to know

If you want to start farming it is good to know what to expect.  The question you should ask yourself is where do I get the most of the wanted item(s) in a certain amount of time?  The only way to know this is to note every drop you got and do some statistics on them.  After a while you will notice that not all dungeons have the same droprate. 

note : I will give the droprates of several dungeon in one of the next posts

Keeping statistics about droprates has a few other benefits too.

• If droprates change you will be able to know soon.  This was the way I know droprates at gorga normal has changed, despite what Bigpoint says.  Read the post about the end of gorga normal farming
• You will farm more because you will farm in the best places
• You will farm more because you will often do an extra run to get more number for your statistics
• Keeping records makes farming less boring.  To be honest, this is not the most exiting part of the game.

Best way to farm at Drakensang Online

Underneath a way to farm for Crystals of Truth, andermant, and so on.  Unique farming, at bosses, is different.

1. Find the map of a low level dungeon.  You can make one yourself (screenshot and paint) of the wiki pages can help you too.
2. Study the map and try to figure out the shortest route possible to cover the entire map.  Quick runs are important because you can do more runs in the same amount of time.
3. Start clearing the map.  While doing so, make note of your drops.  Excel is a good program for this. (make your notes first on paper, import them later in excel)
4. While clearing, pay attention where the treasury chests are.  Make a mark on the map where there are.  You'll see that the chest are not in the same place every time.  But they do have dedicated 'slots' which are worth reminding so you can find them easily in the future.
5. Take notes on how long it takes to clear that dungeon
6. After 5 runs or so, start studying your results.  Use the formula function in excel to calculate the average drop of a certain item per run or, even better, per hour.
7. When you've done this for several dungeons, you can decide which one is the best for you.

008 - The end of gorga normal farming ?

After release 086 Gorga normal disappeared.

An empty sea after R086

 Many were upset because gorga normal  was a good place to farm for gemstones and unique level 40 gear. Very quick Bigpoint communicated that gorga normal wasn't meant to disappear and would be back online asap.  A little later a hotfix for R086 came out which brought gorga normal back.

One can think that things or back to normal now.  But allow me to doubt that for 2 reasons.

First.  An admin on the English forum, in the thread gorga normal is missing, said the following, and i quote :

As a level 39 monster, Gorga will continue to have the same chance as any other monster in the correct level range for unique world drops.

This would mean gorga normal wouldn't drop any level 40 uniques anymore.  However gorga still showed 'level 40' on screen and the admin stated that is comment was a human error and gorga nomal would still be level 40 including unique drops.  But still ... ...

Secondly.  I keep records of all drops I get. (you'll see that within a few posts ;) ).  Since the patch I had 2 drops of 10 Crystals of Truth in 35 runs.  Although this is good, I never had them before.  So something DID change.  Maybe they just added CoT to the drops.  But if they did that, they could very well erased the drop rate for uniques too ...

We can soon know this if someone who has a level 40 unique drop at gorga normal AFTER R086 reports this.  So if anyone had a level 40 unique drop at gorga after R086, please post a comment here ;)