Cave Farming

[Zaraki 0]

This isn't supposed to be some sort of guide nor is it based on any kind of game mechanics analysis; it's simply my observations about grinding in various caves. As I have seen a number of posts about people farming in caves but the spawns being inconsistent, I wanted to share my observations about how to ensure consistency. This may already be general knowledge, but I haven't read anything similar to what I am about to write so far (only suggestions that you have to exit the cave with 20 seconds, etc.). Also, this may be in the wrong section, so mods, please move it to the appropriate section if you think its necessary.

 

I will use the Orc Cave as an example, since that is the most well known one, but it applies to all caves. When you are trying to grind using caves, there are 2 things to remember:

 

1. Do not loot any chests and such, only loot from monsters.

 

2. Most important of all, you must exit the cave before the monsters you want to fight again "disappear". What I mean with disappear is that, if you ever noticed, once you kill a mob, after some time, it will turn this green sparkly color. That indicates that its about to disappear. Once the green color lifts off the mods body, that monster will not respawn again, unless you restart the server. So you must finish your run and exit the cave before the mob turns green and disappears.

 

So with Orc Cave, first time you enter, there are two spiders and four orc champions. I let the orcs kill the spiders first. Once both spiders are dead, I begin to kill the orcs. Once all the orcs are dead I wait until both spiders disappear, as I described above. Then I exit the cave. From then on, every time I enter the cave, only the four orcs spawn, which allows me to focus only them and get rid of them very quickly. So long as I exit the cave again before an orc disappears, all four orcs continue to spawn. This holds true for other caves as well. Hope this helps some.

[Nakatsu_Hime 0]

Thanks for the disappearing-corpse tip. However, can you clarify it.

 

In order for ALL the cave nasties to respawn upon re-entry, do you need to leave before ANY of the corpses disappear, or before the LAST one disappears?

 

From what I undersatnd from above is this:

If you fight 10 foes, and during the fight four of the resulting corpses 'disappear', when you re-enter the cave you will ovly be faced with SIX foes.

[wolfie2kX 528]

Thanks for the disappearing-corpse tip. However, can you clarify it.

 

In order for ALL the cave nasties to respawn upon re-entry, do you need to leave before ANY of the corpses disappear, or before the LAST one disappears?

 

From what I undersatnd from above is this:

If you fight 10 foes, and during the fight four of the resulting corpses 'disappear', when you re-enter the cave you will ovly be faced with SIX foes.

 

Yup. That's part of the trick in the Orc cave. You kill off the spiders and let them disappear on purpose - and THEN you kill off the Orcs and exit before any of them vanish. When you go back inside, no more spiders, but a full complement of Orcs. Spiders spit nasty stuff at you that makes the cave that much more difficult.

 

And yes, for this sort of thing you want a FAST killing combat art.

[dreeft 9]

I believe what Nakatsu_Hime is asking is, if 1 of the 4 orcs disappears before you exit, will there only be 3 (or possibly none) when you enter on the next run?

 

I'm interested to know this also.

[wolfie2kX 528]

I believe what Nakatsu_Hime is asking is, if 1 of the 4 orcs disappears before you exit, will there only be 3 (or possibly none) when you enter on the next run?

 

I'm interested to know this also.

 

Logically, If the spiders vanish and don't respawn, then it would seem that if an Orc vanishes while you're otherwise occupied, it will reduce the number when you do go back in. Those that haven't vanished should respawn.

[Zaraki 0]

I believe what Nakatsu_Hime is asking is, if 1 of the 4 orcs disappears before you exit, will there only be 3 (or possibly none) when you enter on the next run?

 

I'm interested to know this also.

 

Yea, like wolfie said, once one disappears, it wont come back unless you restart on a new server. So if you want to do orc runs but for whatever reason can't take 4 at a time, you could kill one or two off, wait till they disappear and then kill the rest. That way, next time you enter only 2 or 3 orcs will be there, depending on how many you let disappear.

[Nakatsu_Hime 0]

Never mind, I just wondered. Anyway, I find the Orc Cave vastly less rewarding than wandering about the desert, drops-wise. The tiny scarab beetles have yielded far more set items and good gear than the orcs ever did.

[vaskov17 1]

I love the cave for experience, on every playthrough I usually farm the orcs for at least 2 levels, sometimes 3. For drops, recently the kobolds in the starting region have been giving me a lot of items. What I do is teleport to where the White Griffin is, kill him then go south all the way down to the beach killing kobolds. Doind this I usually get at least 2 unique/set items per run, not including items from the griffin.

[FrostElfGuard 9]

I love the cave for experience, on every playthrough I usually farm the orcs for at least 2 levels, sometimes 3. For drops, recently the kobolds in the starting region have been giving me a lot of items. What I do is teleport to where the White Griffin is, kill him then go south all the way down to the beach killing kobolds. Doind this I usually get at least 2 unique/set items per run, not including items from the griffin.

 

Drop quality is influenced by monster level (based on char level + SB boost + area min/max) + EP/Magic find level (which increases with char level too) and level of difficulty of play. The higher up you go, the better the drops.

 

So... what char level, what level of difficulty do you find the Kobolds give you good drop rate? What is your MF... for me to make sense of your statements I need to know the context.

[vaskov17 1]

My most recent build that I did this with is a Dryad with EP around twice the char level and MF around 45%. The last time I did this run was when she was around level 54 and in 4 runs I found 2 pieces from Daerwain's set, 1 from Detheya's, Unireth's Lighting and one other unique which I can't remember. I was doing a lot of Griffin farming runs following Schot's guide where he explains that killing fast is very important, so I assume the kobold drops may have something to do with this. They die fast and there are a lot of them so this might explain the good drops I get, or I may just be lucky.