AggroChat #412 – Being Sudoku Famous

Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, and Tamrielo

In this show, we start off as we have the last several weeks with a discussion about the Corporate Collapse Speedrun that is Muskrat and Twitter.  We don’t want to talk about it… but each week brand new levels of stupid nonsense keep happening.  Bel talks about his mission to document “camps” and gear drops in New World and how he is having to unlearn some of his “Roleplaying Server” biases.  Tam talks a bit about Battletech, Mechwarrior, and the mods that are currently available for both.  Kodra talks a bit about being “Sudoku Famous” and having a puzzle featured on Cracking the Cryptic.  Ash talks about revisiting Tactics Ogre Reborn now that it is actually on a platform he currently can play on.  Tam talks about the Star Citizen Intergalactic Aerospace Expo coming up this week and some of the progress made for open worlds and race tracks.  Finally, Bel makes a plea that if you are not watching Andor…  you should get on that because it might be the best Star Wars to date.

Topics Discussed

  • Corporate Collapse Speedrun Week 3
    • Fun with Corporate Account Impersonation
    • Real-World Stock Price Consequences
  • New World Loot Drop Camps
    • Documenting Easy 590 Weapons
    • Unlearning Roleplaying Server Bias
  • Battletech, Mechwarrior, and Mod Support
  • Sudoku with Bases
    • Kodra was featured on Cracking the Cryptic
  • Tactics Ogre Reborn
  • Star Citizen: IAE
  • Watch Andor Please

Edengrove Tadeas Stronghold Farm

Good Morning Friends! Today we continue this mission to document gear farms in New World with one located near Valor Hold in Edengrove. Again this entire mission is to present some options for new to 60 players to go out and farm up some of the 590 named items that won’t degrade in level when you use them. This camp in particular is a little bit on the tougher side because it involves three spawns that are a challenge to split up. The one that drops what we need is Taedas an Angry Earth shaman-type creature, but spawning with it is a prowler melee type and an archer ranged type Angry Earth. Essentially breaking this spawn will always be a bit of a challenge, but in theory, if you can drag out your initial kill so that you leave yourself some breathing room between kills, it will make subsequent loops easier on you as they won’t ALL be spawning in at the same time. All three encounters should spawn in at level 57, which is doable for a reasonably geared level 60 solo.

This one is pretty close to the Valor Hold stronghold in Edengrove, which is the southernmost of the two outposts. You can get there by exiting the west side of town and hugging the eastern bank of the lake until you reach a set of ruins called Taedas Stronghold. The first part of your journey will have a lot of very aggro boars, but then will quickly transition into peaceful ones and the occasional random Angry Earth mob. If you hug the mountainside of the shoreline you can avoid most of these. Sadly there isn’t really anything interesting resource-wise to be gathered along the way other than boar hides. As you get closer to the ruins there will be an increased density of Angry Earth and breaking into the camp will involve clearing two sets of prowler/archer spawns. One interesting thing of note, there is an empty room that you can crawl into on the south side of the ruins if you need to take a break while farming.

It was really at this farm that I began to understand the extent of my madness. In order to verify these drops I wanted to make sure that I was able to get all of them. As I said in my last post, the New World Databases have been notoriously wrong about drops and still have things listed that have not dropped in a number of patches. This means that in many cases I have to spend an extreme amount of time doing the same kill over and over. I think on this camp it took me about four hours to see all of the drops in the rotation but during that time I got 4 of the Life Staff, 1 Void Gauntlet, and 1 Hammer which was the last thing I managed to pick up before dipping. Let’s take a look at the notable drops:

As I said above I spent about four hours at this camp and during that time I saw six drops off the 590 loot table. Four of those were the staff, and I got a single hammer and void gauntlet. This is not going to be a fast way to get gear unless you are exceedingly lucky, but it is predictable and can be farmed without a group. This again can be taken all of the ways to 625 with the use of Umbral Shards and the upgrade mechanic for gear level 590 or higher. Tadeas also has a chance of dropping legendary crafting materials, but during my four-hour stint, I did not see any drop. You will also get a lot of high-level potions and assorted crafting materials that drop from Angry Earth in general. It is a bit of a boring farm especially due to the low-lighting conditions within the temple itself, but if you need any of the items above it is worth your time.

I have at least two more of these documented so far, and plan on trying a few more spots over the weekend so expect to see this series continue at least into next week. Do you know any great spots that I should check out? Drop me a line below.

Lepus Ruins Molderhusk Farm

Friends, I am on this weird kick right now of trying to find interesting gear farms in New World. You are either going to get sick of these or benefit from the dumb things I am doing “for science”. The benefit of these 590 named items is that you can use them without having to worry about “level drain” where the effective item level is an average of the actual level of the item and your current expertise level. Named items are just the item level they are regardless of how low your expertise might be, which makes them amazing for starting out. This farm was found when I started searching for 590 Greatswords and stumbled across a real gem. This one is a bit of a quirk where sometimes bosses in New World drop items that are out of range for the level at which you can do them. Molderhusk and his little buddy Fungalstep are level 35 creatures, but they both have in their loot table level 590 items.

Another huge benefit of this farm, in particular, is it is really close to town. Basically, you head out the northern path from Weaver’s Fen and then turn east and follow the coastline until you arrive at the ruins of Lepus. You should be a little cautious as while Lepus itself is not actively Blighted, there are areas surrounding the ruins that are. While none of the maps actually have Molderhusk marked as a proper boss, I have taken the liberty of lifting the boss icon and placing it roughly where it and Fungalstep are located. What makes this farm so beneficial is the fact that both of these mobs spawn at the same time and share a loot table, so with each round of kills you are essentially getting two chances at the loot you might be interested in. In order to see the 590 drops however I believe you have to be level 60.

Because I am mad… I put in the time and managed to get all of the notable drops shown on the table. I did this in part because New World database websites have been notoriously wrong about a good many things. There are mobs out there that used to drop things that no longer do, and others that have new drop tables that have never quite been updated. Essentially take most information about this game with a massive barrel of salt. I can tell you as of November 9th that these items were dropping as I walked away with each of them giving me the nifty screenshot above. Not shown is a sequence of blue quality weapons that are item level 400, but level 30 equippable… so if you are lower level and want to “juice” your character while leveling this might still be worthy of farming. Let’s look at the notable loot tables that they both share:

As far as drop rates… it took me probably two hours before I saw the entire loot table. I saw three of the rings, a single spear, and the final drop I got before checking out was the sword. One of the things to remember is that all of this 590 gear can be upgraded all the way to 625 using Umbral Shards, so if there is an item that you particularly like you can keep using it indefinitely. I think the most interesting thing about this Greatsword is how probably good it would be for PVP, seeing as it gives an ability that doesn’t normally have a slow on it one that reduces movement by one-third. It does not come with a gem in it, which isn’t the end of the world given that most people end up swapping those out anyways.

I have a few more of these farm locations that I plan on documenting, so expect to see more in the coming days/weeks. Do you know any great spots that I should check out? Drop me a line below.

Skysong Crypt Farming Loop

Good morning friends! One of my guilty pleasures in MMORPGs is farming loot and killing bosses. More specifically I love it when you can find a nice tight loop that takes about as long to run as it does for the bosses to respawn. While outdoor named farming does not appear to be anywhere near as lucrative for expertise bumps, it still has other benefits. The loop I am going to talk about this morning is in the North Eastern corner of Ebonscale Reach, in an area filled with Lost called Skysong Crypt. I ran this the other night with my good friend Vernie and while we only walked away with a few expertise bumps, we each got several other interesting drops. More specifically a number of the encounters are capable of dropping very solid item level 590 weapons, that could be upgraded all the way to 625 if you choose via umbral shards.

There are a number of ways to get there, but my personal favorite is to port into the Traveler’s Precipice shrine in Northern Ebonscale and then run up along the Great Cleave boundary and drop down from above into the area surrounding the Skysong Cathedral. Doing this has a few benefits, the first being that there are a number of Iron and Starmetal nodes along this route. A secondary benefit is it allows you to skip a lot of corrupted mobs at Skysong Temple and a number of Lost mobs at a town along the way to the Crypt as well as the bulk of the trash mobs leading up to the Cathedral. You do however have to be comfortable with jumping off a mountain in New World and understanding how to catch yourself along the way to lower your falling damage.

Once we are set up in the Crypt area there is a loop of four named mobs that are worth killing. You start at the Cathedral itself by killing Ivan the Inevitable then looting the big chests up on the altar. The chests are helpful in serving as a loop timer because they will respawn every hour. Out of the door of the cathedral, you run west along the path and encounter Slayer Rosellen again looting the chests after she is dead. Still hugging the wall you want to jump across a couple of fences and outside a shack, you will find Mordici the Mortician. After killing him make sure you duck into the shack and loot the chest in there before running up the mountainside and hugging the wall to avoid as many geists as you can. The path leading to the top of the mountain will have your last boss in the sequence, Farley who hits like a freaking truck so be warned. If you have your logging up to at least 150, you can chop down a few Ironwood trees at the top of the mountain before dropping back down off the side into the Cathedral courtyard and starting the loop over again.

Ivan will have respawned allowing you to begin the loop again. All of these are capable of dropping the Obsidian Gypsum for your three daily boss kills, and all of them have some fixed drops that are available from their loot table. One thing of note is that “named” drops in New World have fixed stats and the 590 Item Level items will always drop at that level so long as you yourself are level 60. Additionally, all of these encounters have a higher-than-average chance of dropping the various crafting materials required to make the level 600 Legendary weapons. We farmed this loop the other night for less than an hour and I walked away with three legendary material drops, and Vernie got a legendary pattern. Let’s go over the bosses and their notable drops:

As you can see there are a good number of interesting things available from this loop. You will of course get your average rate of random drops, some of which can bump up your expertise in addition to a large quantity of max-rank potions of all sorts. However, if you are doing this you are most likely doing it for the specifically named drops on the cycle. Farley is obviously the least beneficial kill but mostly serves as a way of padding out the loop to ensure everything has respawned and serves as a handy way of closing the loop without backtracking. There is another named mob in the area called The Cursed One, but it does not appear to have anything notable on its drop table as the mob is used specifically for a quest.

This circuit would potentially be doable solo for a very highly geared player, or someone extremely good at avoiding damage. We ran it with two and it became pretty easy and did not require us to have a healer. Basically as a result it is a good thing to do when you are looking for something specific that can be done with a handful of folks that don’t necessarily have a strong enough group composition to do harder content. I do feel it is important to emphasize that they have really nerfed the drop rates of expertise bonuses from world spawns. At one point this would have been a reliable method for grinding up your gear level and currently, it really isn’t. They want players in dungeons and doing the grind that way, but I still find a lot of these open areas fun to explore with friends.

If you are down for mayhem and adventure, and the chance for some sweet drops… then this is probably going to be up your alley.