Spiral Knights - Fehzor's guide to farming for rarities, crowns, item drops, everything

Fehzor's guide to farming for rarities, crowns, item drops, everything

29 replies [Last post]

Thu, 03/12/2015 - 08:10

Fehzor

I want this thread to be useful to everyone, including players like myself. In order to do that, I'd like to open with the raw facts players have gathered, as I feel this would be much more useful than just my saying "buy this here!"

USEFUL LINKS

Lancer Knight's data regarding drops:
http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Lancer_Knightz_%28Guild%29/Missions#Rariti...

Skepticraven's thread describing how good the current gates are for radiant fire crystals:
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/107719

Skepticraven's data regarding the number of boxes on various levels:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16VBTxodPjQFluDYXzXrZ9ifIBy4x2OKa...

The bulk of reported weapon drops across the history of the game: (note that this is to be taken with a grain of salt)
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/11128

The finding of a regal slime node wall, a never before seen item-
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/109270

The newest mission, Dreams and Nightmares:
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/109748

Here is where everything is as a rule of thumb:

To summarize all of the links together in a way that you can remember...

Orbs are found from treasure boxes in their respective areas of the game.

First half of T1 = 1* orbs = garbage

Second half of T1 = 2* orbs

First half of T2 = 3* orbs

Second half of T2 = 4* orbs

T3 = 5* orbs

Orbs can also be found rarely outside of their areas by a few depths

Fire crystals are found alongside orbs in their respective areas.

Merchants in the bazaar = 0/1* crystals

T1 = 2* crystals

T2 = 3* crystals

T3 = 4* crystals

Depths 27/28 = 5* crystals (they can drop earlier, just not as often)

Fire crystals can also be found outside of their areas by a few depths

The 10-2 mission, Dreams and Nightmares, averages around 22-23 radiant fire crystals per go

Treasure boxes are found on most levels, but particularly in the following areas:

Arenas are the number one area

Treasure vaults are the second best arcade level, but are harder to encounter

Clockwork tunnels are the third best in the arcade if you do danger rooms

The danger mission provides a large number of boxes; this is especially nice if you're in T2 and can run it.

Aurora isles and scarlet fortress are also good levels

Graveyards, compounds and decon zones are awful; avoid these.

The boxes after Seerus are bugged and will give you less radiant fire crystals

Crowns are found primarily from monsters, and are more dependent on level + location in stratum than in tier.

Arena's are by far the best level to farm

The gauntlet and firestorm citadel are the nicest missions

Aurora Isles is also a nice level

Early on, the sovereign slime has a relatively nice payout

Boss token items can be sold; this includes rock salt on the auction house and ancient set to merchants

Recipes can be bought+sold on the auction house for a profit if you know which ones sell

Materials are found primarily from monsters, and are dependent on depth and level type.

Higher tiered materials drop later on

Materials are associated with monster family and status type

There is a material finder in game when you go to craft; use it

Materials are relatively cheap

Item drops appear to be based on where you are and how deep you are.

Some items drop much more frequently on certain levels

The better item drops, 4*/5*, are much rarer and found deeper

There is always the possibility of finding something truly unordinary- like a regal node slime wall

Based on this, the best place for a darkfang shield is likely Iron Edge Arena: Wrench warfare

Based on this, the best place for a regal slime shield is likely Iron Edge Arena: Slimey showdown

No one really knows these things for sure, and there have been exceptions.

For more information, again, the sources are listed above and I encourage you to read through them or keep them bookmarked as a guide.

The mid-game

This is where the game requires you to find orbs first, as all of the 0/1* items and some of the 2* items are handed to you through the mission system. My honest advice for you is to just go on runs intelligently, meaning to hunt down high priority levels and go on "good runs", as well as bosses. If you see a gate with several high paying levels on it, then that's the one you should go on.

Your main priority should be orb drops. Crowns will come naturally, and you'll find recipes in the hall of heroes and on auction house from crowns. But without farming the correct areas, you won't find orbs. These areas are as outlined above. Fire crystals will also come naturally, and are typically more common than orbs in this part of the game by any rate.

If you don't find orbs and have leftover crowns from recipes, you can turn your crowns into energy and buy the orbs you need. I would recommend doing this, because there is definitely a good chance that you'll encounter a dry spell or three when farming. It's only to be expected, and it doesn't mean the game hates you or anything. Crowns on the other hand do not have any dry spells, and can free you from having to find orbs for a bit.

If you need crowns, stratum 4 is going to be your friend. Focus on finding arenas towards the end of stratum 4, and running bosses.

I NEED SHINNING FIRE CRYSTALS- you're going to have a hard time believing this but you probably don't need any shinning fire crystals yet. In tier 2, your 4* gear will be just as strong at level 1 as it is at level 10, the one exception being the charge time reduction that it picks up along the way. When you get to tier 3, you'll find MASSIVE amounts of shinning fire crystals everywhere, and will quickly have a good 15,000 left over.

The endgame

If you can run all of tier 3 competently, then farming for the lower tiered orbs is good if that's what you want to do, but not necessary as you can produce enough crowns to just flat out buy the orbs faster while farming for the one thing that matters most to you- radiant fire crystals.

And I can already hear it- "BUT I NEED ETERNAL ORBS OF-", again, you really don't need that. Even on D27 and D28 alone, you'll be finding a higher ratio of eternal orbs to radiant fire crystals, meaning that like shinning fire crystals, you'll very quickly have over 100 eternal orbs that you can't use. The solution: Disregard shinning fire crystals AND eternal orbs in favor of the one true rarity: Radiant fire crystals.

The kosher way to get radiant fire crystals is to hunt them down in D27 and D28 arenas, and then invite your friends once down there so that everyone gets them. Yes, even at 4* and as you're just entering tier 3. If there aren't any arenas, clockwork tunnels work for their danger rooms (mind the difficulty gap) and failing that firestorm citadel is always around. And failing that, you can run T2 for those rarities which will still save you some crowns.

More on firestorm citadel- players are going to make it out to be a big deal, like it's THE mission to farm and that it's THE ONLY BIG CROWN THING- and it's not. It's just not. But it's good and the benefit to it is more that there will be a party waiting for you at all times. While you enjoy going on it and learning to become master of the slag is entertaining you, you should grind it because all in all it's still a nice payout and fang of vog is an awesome trophy to have. But don't fall into the trap of playing nothing but firestorm citadel unless you really really like it. Arena hunting will be much better and more interesting than just killing slags all day.

Eventually, you'll be able to run Dreams and Nightmares which consists of 2 cheap+easy levels that you can run through and 1 slightly harder level that you can't. As soon as you can reliably speed run this level, I would recommend doing so to attain radiant fire crystals- 22-23 per run is a fairly solid number for what comes out to about 2 levels worth of challenge, compared to running the entire arcade for slightly more, depending on the levels. An important thing to keep in mind is that Dreams and Nightmares does not give many materials or crowns. If you're interested in either of these, you may want to stick to other levels.

Your average farming day goes as follows:

1. If you need something specific like materials, boss tokens or prestige, go on a run for those.
2. If there is an arena etc. in an applicable area that interests you, go on that arcade gate.
3. If you have a mission that you like and that gives you what you need, go for it.
4. Do a random run or farm a random area of your choosing for crowns.

Remember to actually have while playing fun video games

Time flies when you're having fun.

This is by far the most important part of farming. If you're not having fun, you're going to be getting less loot because you're not going to want to be there and so will be less motivated to play the game in general. If you get twice as much loot and play the game a third as much you're not actually getting more loot. So if you think the jelly king is fun, don't go mess around with sewer stash, because playing the jelly king will still get you the orbs, or crowns or whatever you need.

Thu, 03/12/2015 - 08:53

Trats-Romra

It's a great guide, Fehzor. Nice work.

Thu, 03/12/2015 - 11:08

Skepticraven

↓

A few things to mention.

1. I can never stress enough that having fun playing a game should be the most important part of playing a game.
2. 1* orbs appear on the first half of tier 1. 2* orbs are the second half of tier 1.
3. When mentioning orbs, they can appear up to 2 depths outside their most common areas in very rare chances. [Similar to D25-26 radiant chances.]
4. Bopp has a nice related FAQ on the wiki.

Everything else looks good.

Thu, 03/12/2015 - 17:02

Ankokuflare

This guide is good guide

Wanted to share it with a few of our forum troopers.
Hope you don't mind Fehzor. o:

http://aurorask.forumotion.com/t604-fehzor-s-guide-to-farming-crafting-s...

Thu, 03/12/2015 - 18:20

Lokits

guide

: )

nice

Thu, 03/12/2015 - 19:12

Fehzor

Awesome and thanks, glad you guys liked it, though I will say that I'm just good at writing these kinds of things and the real credit should go to the links mentioned above, who actually took the data etc.

I am going to be updating it with Skepticraven's information that he posted because it's good info and I was rushed a bit finishing up, so you might want to copy+paste it to your site again.

EDIT: Updated the T1 info, added a note about Seeruseses boxes, and fixed a few typos here and there.

Mon, 03/16/2015 - 12:39

Shadorian

Bookmarked.

Sweet info; a nice hub for all the info I've been trying to keep track of. Also handy for determining depth:rarity. Thanks.
EDIT: Oh, and where do Wolver Dens fall on the loot box spectrum? I've heard they aren't so great, but they do have some loot and are pretty short.

Mon, 03/16/2015 - 13:04

Fehzor

Skepticraven's link states that they are ranked 11 out of 15, and are therefore a relatively poor depth.

Fri, 03/27/2015 - 19:31

Fatalitizer

I can't remember how to make this blank

This is an awesome guide and needs to be seen by more new players.

Tue, 03/31/2015 - 10:22

Hexzyle

Hold on a minute... Shinning Fire Crystals?

Wed, 05/13/2015 - 17:47

#10

Fehzor

Updated with information regarding the regal slime shield that was found, as well as a link to the data thread for the new mission I started.

Sun, 06/28/2015 - 23:12

#11

Fishysh

HoldupHoldupHoldupHoldup

U say that Dreams and Nightmares drops 22-33 rads? They drop in threes, and 22 isnt divisible by three.

Mon, 06/29/2015 - 08:16

#12

Vohtarak-Forum

I'm vohtarak, call me by that name

Fehzor made a thread and calculated the average radiants per run, it was 22.6something
Obviously it wasn't going to get a clean number

Mon, 06/29/2015 - 11:03

#13

Fehzor

Indeed. It never actually drops 22 or 23 radiant crystals, but if you go on enough runs that's how many you'd expect to get on average.

The actual number of fire crystals per run varies quite a bit as well- the standard deviation was around 7-8, and the first/third quartiles (i.e. 50% of the drops) were 18 and 30 crystals respectively.. which means that 50% of the time you would expect to get a considerable amount or a considerable lack of radiant crystals.

Regardless, I fixed the language on that statement to say "averages", to clarify.

Tue, 06/30/2015 - 07:57

#14

Forest-Lord

Amazing guide!

Thank you so much for this! I have been playing for a while but I didn't know some of this stuff.

Wed, 07/01/2015 - 09:10

#15

Solotron

SK forum fun

http://serjinxable.deviantart.com/art/SK-Forum-Fun-Fehzor-silkwing-guide...

Wed, 08/26/2015 - 10:34

#16

Fehzor

Bump so that people can still find this thread. And I did see Solotron's post above and liked it.

Wed, 09/23/2015 - 20:33

#17

Theknightofquantum

THX

this was very useful though I still need lots of eternal orbs and I actually have many radiant fire crystals coz I don't have much 5* gear to upgrade

Tue, 10/20/2015 - 13:24

#18

Tiraid

BUMP ALL DAY

*SEE ABOVE*

Wed, 10/21/2015 - 01:00

#19

Neometal

til that compounds are better than graveyards box-vise

Can I find data anywhere which shows how many boxes are there on each individual map of the 'set' areas (concreate jungle, aurora isles, dark city, scarlet fortress, jigsaw valley)?

Wed, 10/21/2015 - 07:22

#20

Bopp

Neometal

I am not aware of a data set that shows treasure boxes on each individual deterministic level. But there are some similar data sets:

This thread's original post links to the Lancer Knightz treasure box counts for each mission, and to Skepticraven's treasure box counts for different kinds of levels in the Arcade.

I can also report that Lancer Knightz nowadays records treasure boxes on each level of each mission. But you can't see that in their reports yet. I think that they don't have enough data to break that out yet.

Wed, 10/21/2015 - 10:13

#21

Neometal

I guess I know what I'll be doing this weekend. :)

I did count the boxes for the aurora isles multiple times, but the only thing I can remember is that jf1 has 12+8 boxes (8 being behind the energy gate) and thus the most total out of those 4 depths.

Wed, 10/21/2015 - 16:11

#22

Skepticraven

↓

While my data doesn't differentiate the deterministic from the random sets, you can quickly check the raw data from deterministic sets to get a count...
A quick ctr-F on this sheet shows:
JF = 20 boxes
JF2 = 13
Low Gardens = 14
Stone Grove = 13.

I'll just make a note here about it (as I have in other threads) - Aurora Isles is a great levelset for boxes, since ANY of the 4 levels puts you in the top 1/3rd of average boxes. If you pick The Jelly Farm and pay for the gate, you are getting the clockwork tunnels average without risking the 50% chance of a danger room (but fewer red boxes).

I'm a bit lazy to find the rest, so you are welcome to do them. The only note is you have to sum up the red and green boxes (add columns G-K and O-F, skip the rarities because they are "added" drops).
My data assumes that all gates are opened.

Also, be wary of typos in my data - it is difficult pecking in all those numbers without errors. I caught 1 or 2 myself when I ran the average for depths and saw arenas weren't averaging 31 (when in fact they always have 31).

@Bopp
While the primary outcome of my data was drawing conclusions about the arcade, it actually does include missions as well (which were incorporated into Lancer Knightz' data). You'll notice there is quite a bit more data for Built To Destroy! in comparison to other missions (there are 25 elite runs in my dataset). You will, however, find my data on missions very... limited in comparison.

Wed, 10/21/2015 - 16:21

#23

Bopp

yes

Yes, I understand that your data are about the levels, whether they are accessed through the Arcade or the missions system. But it's good of you to clarify this point for other readers.

I hedged while explaining your data set because I don't quite understand it. Are your box counts per-level or per-stratum? I guess per-stratum in the case of Dark City. Are there always three levels in Dark City, even if it's in Tier 3? I have trouble extracting the information I need.

Wed, 10/21/2015 - 17:11

#24

Skepticraven

↓

@Bopp

My raw data is strictly on a per-level basis.
The summaries... well depends on which summary. The link in the OP is averaged over whatever depths I happened to play and record in each stratum.

There are a variety of Dark City depths:
Dark City Ritual Road, Dark City Ritual Road II, Dark City Ritual Road III, Dark City Sinful Steps, Dark City Sinful Steps II, Dark City Plazamonium, Dark City Stygian Steeds

There are two themed triplets (ending with plazamonium and stygian steeds). Sometimes in the arcade, it only comes in a pair (my data doesn't show this information).

"I have trouble extracting the information I need."

Unfortunately, anyone that wants to pull out interesting information needs to do 1 of 2 things:
1. Figure out how I organized the data, copy it, and run your own database queries on the raw data.
2. Interest me enough to run the queries.

I'd totally be interested in differentiating out individual levels by depth (instead of stratum) and individual name (instead of named group), but it is a fairly sparse matrix with only a bit over 500 depths recorded. (23 playable depths, 131 separately named levels - a 17% chance that I have 1 datapoint for a specific named depth). To really show how sparse the data is, this sheet shows the 23 playable depths separated by the 15 level group. T3 Clockwork Tunnels is the only area that might have sufficient averages.

Edit:

"Yes, I understand that your data are about the levels, whether they are accessed through the Arcade or the missions system. But it's good of you to clarify this point for other readers."

Yes, although I did access them in both. Specifically for IMF, I can tell from the dataset that 25 runs were from the mission menu and 2 were from the arcade (because the name changes between Built To Destroy! and Ironclaw Munitions Factory, and were recorded as such).

Tue, 12/29/2015 - 21:19

#25

Sono-Forum

Lemme just bump this

Wed, 12/30/2015 - 18:01

#26

Fehzor

I'm going to discontinue this.

People don't want a guide, they want to give their own advice so that they can pretend like they're relevant to the meta. It doesn't matter how many times people ask about brandishes, because the big takeaway isn't that combuster is preferred, but that someone got to sit there and answer it and that someone else got to sit there and read the response.

I shouldn't kid myself into thinking that anything I'll ever do is going to be meaningful; the beach that is the world knows no mercy on the sandcastles we create.

Wed, 12/30/2015 - 18:13

#27

Bopp

yes, but

You can't count on players to read your guide. They will always post repetitive questions. But once they post you can at least point them to your guide. This lets you help the community (giving advice to newbies) without spending too much effort (writing new text every time a question is asked).

You're right that even many of the askers don't really want quick, correct, thorough answers. Instead they want to have a conversation. There's nothing you can do about it. But your guide still has value for sincere askers.

And many responders don't care that you've already given a quick, correct, thorough answer. Instead they want to have a conversation. But still your guide has value for sincere askers.

In the end of course it's up to you. Cheers.

Wed, 12/30/2015 - 18:45

#28

Fehzor

The point was never to educate people, but to attempt at generating some sort of lasting change. My hope was that by appeasing as many people as possible I could get others to endorse the information, which is to say that when random people fail to research the information the guide would show up in someone's comment, be quoted, something like that. Today I saw the topic being asked again and being answered as if nothing happened, and I thought back to what you said in this thread. I either need to just agree with you and leave or somehow do better because right now I'm losing the game, and we're still on the track of getting phone games instead of Spiral Knights.

Wed, 12/30/2015 - 20:53

#29

Bopp

good luck

Well, I've seen several posters refer to your guide. And I link to it in my FAQ. So it does get spread around. Probably it has appeased some players.

I don't have any advice for the larger issue. Good luck.

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Fehzor's guide to farming for rarities, crowns, item drops, everything