Talk:Collectable farming

The Four Tiers
Comments refer to the quests available to f2p, and this is an unproven hypothesis. For any given collectable drop site (eg a given bookshelf in a certain dungeon) the drops will always be from one specific tier, and will never drop anything from any other tier. The tier is roughly determined by the dungeon level but there's a lot of wiggle room, and a dungeon can contain collectable drop sites that drop different tiers. eg the easy to get to rubble in Enemy Within (11) is tier 2, but the next crude altar you get to is tier 3.


 * (1) Tier one consists of the four collectable sets with collectors in the Harbor. But tier 1 drops are limit by dungeon level (approximately) not geography.  About level 1-3.


 * (2) Tier two consists of the seven collectable sets with collectors in the Marketplace except for the Morbid Curios set (Funerary Token, Mark of the Keeper, necromantic Gem). They appear mostly in the f2p dungeons level 4-9.


 * (3) Tier three consists of ten of the collectable sets with collectors in the various four enclaves. They are Apparatus, Document (Cryptic Message), Lyric, Beetle, Fungus (Sour Darkcap), Talisman, Medicinal Spore, Intelligence, Omen and Soarwood sets.  They appear in the f2p dungeons level 10-15 maybe.


 * (4) Tier four consists of (at least) three of the collectable sets with collectors in the various four enclaves. They are Ritual Paraphernalia, Text and Drow Artifact.  It also includes the two sets in the Lordsmarch Plaza.


 * That leaves the following seven sets: Morbid Curios (from undead mobs), Elemental Essence (only from elemental mobs?), Infernal Essence (only from evil outsider mobs?), the fungus set with Ruddy Fungus, the Herb set (eg Lily Petals), the Necropolis set and the Red Fens set. I don't have much data on tier 4 so maybe some appear in tier 4 but I haven't seen them pop up.  or perhaps there's a tier 5?  What stuff typically drops from level 20+ dungeons?

Presumably the mushrooms in Diplomatic Immunity (level 12), are tier 4. Only the swaying mushroom set from Lordsmarch Plaza appear from mushrooms in tier 4 so you'd be guaranteed to get the same thing each time. The other sets in tier 4 aren't really mushroom material. That's true in tier 1 too, but the other tiers have more than one possible set dropped from a mushroom I think.

Now if this is true then I can tell the tier of a collectable site with a single drop. And on that basis I can rule out the possibility of ever being able to get some of the drops listed from some of the sources listed on the page. To get these lists I ran only of the order of 3-400 drops so I might have missed something. And as I say I have found an exception which is that the cryptmoss set has appeared as a drop in Lords of Dust's (16) moss piles so does that mean it is in tier 4 and tier 2? But it seems notable that running an Adventurer's Pack in Path to Madness 100 times never dropped even a single common of any of the tier 2 sets, whereas running 40-50 times against rubble in Purge the Heretics (6), Tear of Dharkaan (7), Made To Order (11) and a f2p 4th and 5th level dungeon I didn't note the names of (but were probably listed on this page as sources of soarwood), in each of the five cases I found commons from all seven tier 2 sets, but no drops from either tier 1 or tier 3. Elajna (Contributions • Message) 00:49, March 26, 2014 (EDT)

Mob drops
Yeah the page mentions drops for undead, reptiles, giants, gargoyles, elementals and demons. That still leaves a lot of other monster types. The hypothesis here is that if any mob drops from a set then all the mobs of the same type throughout the rest of the game drop the same type. However it seems like undead in the necropolis might drop slightly different stuff? and also gargoyles are monstrous humanoids but I doubt they all drop the same thing...? so exceptions to the rule. Elajna (Contributions • Message) 00:49, March 26, 2014 (EDT)