Farming - The 300 ALT Challenge

Incoming Necro.

I don't know if anyone still even checks this, but I saw this thread and thought it was really neat since I have been an Alteration farmer ever since I started playing in Open Beta.

My character used was a Shadow wander using Kinetic Blast for AoE and Power Siphon for Single target. I averaged a 66-70 blue or rare map clear time of 4-7 minutes, (occasionally doing a 72-74 for a change of pace) and overall thought that it went rather well. I picked up nearly every currency item dropped, (excluding most scrolls and sometimes Augmentations) and snagged every 3-link chromatic vendor item I saw as well.

Below are my results:

300 Alts on the nose (well, 7 shards over :P)
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57 Whetstones
112 Armourer's Scraps
84 Augmentation
52 Transmutation
7 Glassblowers
136 Chromatics
124 Jeweller's
19 Cartographer's
15 Fusings
12 Alchs
6 Scouring
11 Chaos
6 Vaal Orbs
6 Regret
1 GCP

And then some random Rares totaling ~30 chaos in value if sold. I vendored nearly every unique I found as they were almost without exception garbage. I also found close to a dozen quality gems, none of which were high enough to sell on the market.

All in all, I would say I was at a total net gain of 4-5 exalts.

Total time spent: 6 hours and 36 minutes. This includes everything that I did for this project... farming, ID'ing, sorting, selling rares found, vendoring, and breaks.

Interesting experience, and very intriguing to set aside a tab and just look at what's collected as a whole rather than immediately control clicking them into the main currency tab and never knowing what a chunk of time yields in raw currency. I dunno if I would ever record the results like this again, as it was a bit of a pain, but interesting nonetheless.

This looked like a fun challenge so I decided to run it on my level 83 Windripper ranger. For this run my magic finding stats were 132 IIR and 8 IIQ (not counting the Windripper buffs).

For the challenge I ran mostly level 66 maps, with a few 67 and 68 maps on occasion. I seeded the challenge map inventory with maps from my stash, picking outdoor maps for quick navigation. I transmuted each map and augmented it as necessary to achieve 2 affixes. I ran all affixes rolled except for elemental reflect (I would not have run blood magic but did not roll that affix).

I mostly ran master missions but did not put high priority on completing all of them; if the mission was for a master which I had at level 8 and/or completing the mission would slow down looting too much, I skipped it.

Here's a summary of my results:

Time elapsed: 5 hours, 40 minutes over 2 play sessions
Maps ran:
Dried Lake: 7
Dunes: 7
Tropical Island: 9

Cemetery: 3
Ghetto: 2
Mountain Ledge: 2

Mud Geyser: 2
Reef: 2
Springs: 1
Wharf: 1

I also completed 3 Zana missions:
Strand level 66
Jungle Valley level 67
Palace level 67

Total maps run (including Zana mission maps): 39
Average time per map: 8 min, 42 sec
Note: Time is all inclusive of running the map, selling loot, etc.

Loot Acquired:
304 orbs of alteration and 14 shards
36 orbs of transmutation net (36 spent on maps) and 16 shards
39 chromatic orbs
27 orbs of alteration and 1 shard
76 orbs of augmentation net (some spent on maps)
83 jeweller's orbs
7 orbs of fusing
22 orbs of chance

44 blacksmith whetstones
81 armorer's scraps
1 glassblower's bauble
1 gemcutter's prism (as well as sundry gems totaling 71 quality)
8 cartographer's chisels

4 vaal orbs
4 orbs of scouring
1 orb of regret

16 chaos orbs
3 regal orbs
1 blessed orb

22 maps net (maps found minus maps contributed towards challege from stash)
14 sundry leveled gems from gemcutter's lockboxes
8 sundry magic rings (saved for chaos recipe)

1 semi-worthwhile unique (Malachai's Artifice). Vendored all other uniques found.
=======

In retrospect, I think I spent way too much time picking up scrolls of wisdom, portal scrolls, armor scraps and other low worth items. If I run this challenge again I won't pick up these items to see how it impacts completion time.

"

VixTrader wrote:

I used to look at em, and in all the time I've played I've never found an armor, shield, sword, mace, two handed shit, or any of the other garbage items in the game worth selling. There's only a handful of rares that can even be worth anything, why bother looking at the rest...

When making statements like this you should specify league at least. It can be very misleading to new players. Especially when, at the start of new leagues, rares with a life roll and a res roll will sell for chaos.

6 more "300 ALT" runs:


Run 1: 2.06 EX / Hour
Run 2: 1.94 EX / Hour
Run 3: 1.68 EX / Hour
Run 4: 1.46 EX / Hour
Run 5: 1.51 EX / Hour
Run 6: 1.54 EX / Hour

Average of all 6 runs: 1.7 EX / Hour


Of course this is just for currency / map drops and doesn't include any item drops, but here are a few of the notable items I found along the way making the 6 runs even more profitable than map running already is:

I love data and statistics in this game. This thread has been fun to follow. I'm kind of doing my own 300 alt thing too. I wish we could use 3 party programs just to keep track of them through a league.

Just a warning though: Saying you are running at x exalted per hour is extremely misleading when you just base it on everything you find and their theoretical ratio to an ex. Some things are easily convertible to an ex (fuses/chaos) which relates more easily to an accurate estimation. But come on, no one is interested in buying 30 blessed orbs or low level maps so including that in your ex/hour calculation is just misleading. Especially when you don't factor in the time it would take to make some of those sales of these types of uncommonly converted currencies.

The same relates to the hypothetical sale of items. You guessing boots you picked up are worth x should not be included in any total unless you factor in (a) the time it takes to make that sale, and (b) the actual sale price.

"

whitelytning wrote:

Just a warning though: Saying you are running at x exalted per hour is extremely misleading when you just base it on everything you find and their theoretical ratio to an ex. Some things are easily convertible to an ex (fuses/chaos) which relates more easily to an accurate estimation. But come on, no one is interested in buying 30 blessed orbs or low level maps so including that in your ex/hour calculation is just misleading. Especially when you don't factor in the time it would take to make some of those sales of these types of uncommonly converted currencies.

The same relates to the hypothetical sale of items. You guessing boots you picked up are worth x should not be included in any total unless you factor in (a) the time it takes to make that sale, and (b) the actual sale price.

The currency prices I listed are the easy sale price that people buy at, not the spamming forum for days prices you sometimes see people try to sell at. And I guess I would know right as I do these kinds of runs constantly and keep all stats on them. I would argue more than most, so I'm not one of those guys that posts stuff just to mislead people. I have absolutely nothing to gain or lose by this, I'm just sharing info on my experiences. Those EX's per hour, were ACTUAL sales converting everything to EX, with almost no time spent because I do it while i'm in a map. I just post a thread something like: "selling 42 fusing for 1 ex" and then play the next map. Someone comes in game, we do the trade, a minute later I'm back in my map.

Now it might be true that prices have changed since I did the first run, honestly I don't play much so the early runs are a bit dated, but in the interest of keeping things consistent I kept the same spreadsheet throughout.

Also, you notice I've included the COST of the maps and alcs at the same ratio I added them back in. That's the only fair way to do it. You're not suggesting I remove those prices are you? You can run DOM for free, but running maps costs currency. Of course I'm going to deduct those costs from my runs. There is no more fair way to do it. When you start a 300 alt challenge, right from the beginning you're already down the cost of the maps and alcs / vaals that you used. My spreadsheet includes all expenses as well.

Lastly, no items at all were included in the EX / Hour. The staff, the boots, the unique maps, everything there was NOT included in the EX per hour. I think I stated that in every post I've made in this thread. I only included currency, maps I used, and maps I found, as it should be. RNG is the same no matter where you run, and would never be included in anything I track.

Sorry, I never sell alts, I use them for crafting

"

Dr1MaR wrote:

Sorry, I never sell alts, I use them for crafting

Not really the point of the thread, but yeah I agree they are way more valuable to use for yourself.

Me, I probably average 0.1 exalts per hour. lel

I used to sell everything, except the ALTS / Regals / Scouring and keep them for crafting. But since they nerfed the hybrid phys roll from Masters, I don't find crafting any fun at all anymore so I just sell everything for EX now.

Hopefully they will bring back crafting in the next major patch. Map running builds up the crafting mats super fast, but we need something to do with them again besides just sell for EX's.

@VixTrader

Hi VixTrader. Would you mind posting the gear you use for these 300 alt runs?

Thanks in advance.