Trans/alt/alch shards are very useful at lvl <10, I'd definitely not like to see them removed.
I think you're thoughts are backwards on their existences. It would be better if players were given better access to orbs early on & given WHOLE orbs for trading gear to vendors. There really isn't a benefit to shards for these shards except to SLOW DOWN orb progression
Imagine selling magic items to vendor and ID magic items to vendor and obtaining entire orbs to start crafting ACTUALLY DESIRABLE starting items instead of collecting 5-10 to obtain only 1 orb. It's honestly more practical.
At the very least, the shards themselves should by X/5 like wisdom scroll scraps. It's quite ludicrous for every single currency beyond scraps of wisdom to be X/20
Yeah but that would be asking for a straight up buff, which is probably not gonna happen considering GGG has been focused on making super early game (acts 1-3) harder, not easier.
Yes I actually do pick up rares and even blues early on (first few maps) for trans and alch orbs. Makes early game much less of a pain esp if I'm levelling something other than caster or ranger.
With introduction of gold they somewhat reduced the amount of ground clutter with garbage loot, but it's still bad. Run a IIR IIQ exile map and you'll see.
Shards for transmutes, alchs, alts etc are kinda odd from Harbs which are endgame content. Especially when a random rare mob can erupt into 4 full stacks of this currency.
1) Add divine shards, same rarity as exalted shards
2) Remove low value currency shards from harb loot pool
3) Redesign Beachhead map to make it worthwhile again
I sincerely believe Harbinger is the worst farm strat in terms of profit (I rotate through almost every single farm strat every league) - either you hit it big with a frac shard or mirror shard or you end up at a negative (unless you're willing to pick up all the chaos shards, which I am not)
Definitely not the worst farm, I've done syndicate, expedition and harvest fully juiced this league. 8 mod 40%+ packsize T16 City Square (for fast layout) fully juiced harbinger gave me more currency than any of the other ones with no effort. Dont see people complaining of looting, with my filter that yes shows chaos shards too, its like 2 seconds max looting every harbi boss.
Is literally just bind left mouse to scroll wheel and you loot it instantly, it takes the same time looting a harbi boss than it takes to loot a harvest (probably even less).
I sincerely believe Harbinger is the worst farm strat in terms of profit (I rotate through almost every single farm strat every league) - either you hit it big with a frac shard or mirror shard or you end up at a negative (unless you're willing to pick up all the chaos shards, which I am not)
Definitely not the worst farm, I've done syndicate, expedition and harvest fully juiced this league. 8 mod 40%+ packsize T16 City Square (for fast layout) fully juiced harbinger gave me more currency than any of the other ones with no effort. Dont see people complaining of looting, with my filter that yes shows chaos shards too, its like 2 seconds max looting every harbi boss.
Is literally just bind left mouse to scroll wheel and you loot it instantly, it takes the same time looting a harbi boss than it takes to loot a harvest (probably even less).
I guess it really varies a lot (in terms of player experience that is). I made great profit from betrayal with veiled drops and some lucky scarab drops (didn't pay much attention to the board but I did try to put members with good scarab drops in their respective factions wherever possible). I got 2 lucky mod staff drops from Catarina as well that I sold for several divs.
In the early-mid game I also made good profit from unveiling items which had potential (sold a couple of them for several divs) and betrayal was probably my most profitable farm at that single point.
As for Harvest - it's always profitable. There's no gamble, no hoping for big drops (unless you count the T4/crystallized as "big drop"), it's liquid money. I can't say how profitable it is in terms of currency because I almost never sell my harvest juice, I use it for crafts. But with yellow juice at 5K\div, I assume you can make pretty good money from it.
I'd be really interested to understand where your Harb profit comes from - maybe there's something I'm missing. If you don't drop any of the big ones (frac/mirror) which I did not, you at best end up at net even for the scarabs you use. If you pick up all ancient and chaos shards. Is this not correct?
PS: regarding Xmouse there was some debate at some point as to whether or not it breaks ToS so I uninstalled it when they introduced the right-click full inventory QOL. Scroll bind is probably useful in many other scenarios but idk if there's any definitive confirmation from GGG that it's ok to use, so I thought better safe than sorry.
I sincerely believe Harbinger is the worst farm strat in terms of profit (I rotate through almost every single farm strat every league) - either you hit it big with a frac shard or mirror shard or you end up at a negative (unless you're willing to pick up all the chaos shards, which I am not)
Definitely not the worst farm, I've done syndicate, expedition and harvest fully juiced this league. 8 mod 40%+ packsize T16 City Square (for fast layout) fully juiced harbinger gave me more currency than any of the other ones with no effort. Dont see people complaining of looting, with my filter that yes shows chaos shards too, its like 2 seconds max looting every harbi boss.
Is literally just bind left mouse to scroll wheel and you loot it instantly, it takes the same time looting a harbi boss than it takes to loot a harvest (probably even less).
I guess it really varies a lot (in terms of player experience that is). I made great profit from betrayal with veiled drops and some lucky scarab drops (didn't pay much attention to the board but I did try to put members with good scarab drops in their respective factions wherever possible). I got 2 lucky mod staff drops from Catarina as well that I sold for several divs.
In the early-mid game I also made good profit from unveiling items which had potential (sold a couple of them for several divs) and betrayal was probably my most profitable farm at that single point.
As for Harvest - it's always profitable. There's no gamble, no hoping for big drops (unless you count the T4/crystallized as "big drop"), it's liquid money. I can't say how profitable it is in terms of currency because I almost never sell my harvest juice, I use it for crafts. But with yellow juice at 5K\div, I assume you can make pretty good money from it.
I'd be really interested to understand where your Harb profit comes from - maybe there's something I'm missing. If you don't drop any of the big ones (frac/mirror) which I did not, you at best end up at net even for the scarabs you use. If you pick up all ancient and chaos shards. Is this not correct?
PS: regarding Xmouse there was some debate at some point as to whether or not it breaks ToS so I uninstalled it when they introduced the right-click full inventory QOL. Scroll bind is probably useful in many other scenarios but idk if there's any definitive confirmation from GGG that it's ok to use, so I thought better safe than sorry.
Basically anulls/ancient orbs make it so you break even with your investment(I like to pick chaos shards for the 4c investiment in map device), fracturing shards/orbs are the profit. I was using 3 harbinger scarabs, 1 regency and 1 warhoards, with harbi in map device (and atlas tree for harbi obvs), and 8 mod 40% pack size (harbi only cares about pack size).
Fracturing shards drop to me average every 8 maps(had 3 maps in a row drop them but its luck), and since all the nodes and scarabs I have usually 8 fracturing shards drop, or straight fracturing orb drop cause of node in atlas tree. City Square is the best boss rush map and then clear and use red altars.
As for X-mouse is totally safe (althought I dont use it because I have the razer software that does the same thing), you are simply binding left mouse to scroll up or down (I have both up and down binded), using a macro is against TOS, but binding it to mouse is the same as binding left mouse to the letter "S" of the keyboard (1 keystroke results in one action).
Just start map, rush to boss, use all altars, skip the harbingers that are not bosses (they are not worth wasting time) and repeat, it needs "high" investiment in order to be profitable for the best chance to get frac shards.
Empyriangaming made another video about the strat (using different map I prefer city), and was making 12d/h (althought he was unlucky as hell with the drops).
Last edited by Satan on Feb 10, 1692, 10:00:00 PM
Last edited by FearZGamer on Sep 2, 2024, 5:13:00 PM
Basically anulls/ancient orbs make it so you break even with your investment(I like to pick chaos shards for the 4c investiment in map device), fracturing shards/orbs are the profit. I was using 3 harbinger scarabs, 1 regency and 1 warhoards, with harbi in map device (and atlas tree for harbi obvs), and 8 mod 40% pack size (harbi only cares about pack size).
Fracturing shards drop to me average every 8 maps(had 3 maps in a row drop them but its luck), and since all the nodes and scarabs I have usually 8 fracturing shards drop, or straight fracturing orb drop cause of node in atlas tree. City Square is the best boss rush map and then clear and use red altars.
As for X-mouse is totally safe (althought I dont use it because I have the razer software that does the same thing), you are simply binding left mouse to scroll up or down (I have both up and down binded), using a macro is against TOS, but binding it to mouse is the same as binding left mouse to the letter "S" of the keyboard (1 keystroke results in one action).
Just start map, rush to boss, use all altars, skip the harbingers that are not bosses (they are not worth wasting time) and repeat, it needs "high" investiment in order to be profitable for the best chance to get frac shards.
This was my experience too, didn't had raw fracturing orb, but other than that - almost identical. It helped me get fair share of when I was playing.
Biggest compliments for my crafted items - "bs, they must have been RMT'ed"
I'm disabled, I have rare case of semperduravera, so I can write things that may look rude, but it is because of disability - I'm forced to tell truth using words you may not like.
Basically anulls/ancient orbs make it so you break even with your investment(I like to pick chaos shards for the 4c investiment in map device), fracturing shards/orbs are the profit. I was using 3 harbinger scarabs, 1 regency and 1 warhoards, with harbi in map device (and atlas tree for harbi obvs), and 8 mod 40% pack size (harbi only cares about pack size).
Fracturing shards drop to me average every 8 maps(had 3 maps in a row drop them but its luck), and since all the nodes and scarabs I have usually 8 fracturing shards drop, or straight fracturing orb drop cause of node in atlas tree. City Square is the best boss rush map and then clear and use red altars.
As for X-mouse is totally safe (althought I dont use it because I have the razer software that does the same thing), you are simply binding left mouse to scroll up or down (I have both up and down binded), using a macro is against TOS, but binding it to mouse is the same as binding left mouse to the letter "S" of the keyboard (1 keystroke results in one action).
Just start map, rush to boss, use all altars, skip the harbingers that are not bosses (they are not worth wasting time) and repeat, it needs "high" investiment in order to be profitable for the best chance to get frac shards.
Empyriangaming made another video about the strat (using different map I prefer city), and was making 12d/h (althought he was unlucky as hell with the drops).
Yeah it's starting to make sense. I think my calculations weren't entirely precise, since I never sell annulls (use them for crafts), don't pick up c shards and basically for me the only profit in harb was from ancient orbs (of which I also yolo-ed a couple instead of selling).
Still even if I count the annuls and the chaos, I farmed harb for about 3 days and didn't see a single frac or mirror shard (obv full atlas + scarabs) guess I was just unlucky.
My only "problem" with harbi, is that is the only content in the game that doesnt matter if you have a 100div build or 100 mirror build, the clear speed will be almost the same because you have to wait for mobs to spawn to "damage" the boss.
Every other mechanic, the more you invest in the build with more dmg/speed/survival the faster and faster you clear the maps, harbi when you get to the point of cannot die (that is easy) and oneshot the mobs that boss spawns, you cant improve it further.
