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[Imbuing] Crystalline Blackrock - how do YOU farm it?

startle

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I had hoped to avoid making yet another Miner on my new shard, Siege - but I may have no choice... I can not find any Crystalline Blackrock for sale period, and since it's needed for the highest levels of skill imbuing - I simply need to go get my own...

I went to the Yomotsu mines and killed no less than 20 Dull Copper elems which yielded zero Crystalline Blackrock... That's simply too much time invested for too little reward and I won't do that.. So I went and killed a bunch of rats down in the Cavern of the Discarded, again zero Crystalline Blackrock.... This is nuts...

So, apparently it's only Miners who don't have to spend more than an hour to maybe get a single Crystalline Blackrock? Right?

Or am I missing something? How do you farm the stuff?:rant2:
 

CorwinXX

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Dull Copper elementals are not 'true miner' elementals. Kill elementals that have 25 ore as loot.
There are Shadow elementals in Yomotsu mines. There are Gold elementals in Blackthorne dungeon. There are all kinds of elemental when you use a Gargish pickaxe. It seems that higher types has more chances for blackrock.
 

startle

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I was wondering about that. Ok, then I'll try Shadow or Golds... Is there a difference in the drop rate of Blackrock between the two?
 

Yadd of Legends

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How about off the gold elementals underneath blackrock? They drop crystalline blackrock like crazy
 

Yadd of Legends

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How about off the gold elementals underneath blackrock? They drop crystalline blackrock like crazy
Or do you have to have mining for the crystalline blackrock to drop on these golden ellies? I'll test this out later today when I can into the area.
 

Yadd of Legends

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This is what I have advised in the first answer. ?
Yes, indeed, didn't mean to minimize that advice. Just pointing out from my experience, the drop rate from the Blackthorn gold elementals has been astronomically higher than anywhere else. And re earlier post, I did get a chance to test gold elementals without mining, and the blackrock crystals drop just the same without it, if one is just after blackrock crystals and doesn't care about smelting gold
 

startle

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Since this thread is regarding Crystalline Blackrock, I have a 2nd question for you miners:
Is CB in any way tied to the type of vein you mine? In other words, is the drop totally random - regardless of what ore you've found?
 

Yadd of Legends

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For me it has been random, not related to type of elemental - this is mining various places in fel


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startle

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Thanks Yadd.... What about the shovel "choices"? Does it matter (in regard to CB, of course) if your shovel is set to "Ore and Gems" or just "Ore" ?

My new miner is GM and is wearing the +5 Mining Gloves. I've been mining in Ter Mur for 3 hours and not a single CB.... bah
 
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Yadd of Legends

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As far as I know, all that matters is you're using a gargoyle pickaxe for elementals to spawn. But setting to ore only would increase the chances of getting ore with each swing and thus causing an elemental to spawn. As far as mining in general, it's far down my list of favorite activities, and I only do it all because no vendor on legends ever sells ingots, no offense to any miners who consider it relaxing.


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startle

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Yea, same here.... I've gone to all the trouble to get a soulstone and train up a miner from scratch - simply because there's zero CB for sale here...
CB does spawn for a miner without having to kill an Ore Elem, right?
 

Yadd of Legends

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Those gems like dark turquoise and fire rubies just pop into your backpack, but crystalline blackrock is only looted off elementals - unless you're mining in ter mur, which I don't, or some abyss spawn


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startle

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I am mining in Ter Mur.

This is one imbuing resource that needs to be looked at... It's way to hard to come by.
 
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Yadd of Legends

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I think the golden elementals under blackthorn have solved that problem. I've gotten 240 crystalline blackrock in just a couple hours. If you were I'm my shard, I'd just give you 100


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startle

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BTW... Do you know if luck plays a part in CB drops?
 

startle

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Ok, thx a bunch for helping me understand...
 

startle

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I think the golden elementals under blackthorn have solved that problem. I've gotten 240 crystalline blackrock in just a couple hours. If you were I'm my shard, I'd just give you 100


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They must have changed the drop rate then. I just non-stop killed them for 3 hours and got a grand total of 4 CB.... dang.
 

Yadd of Legends

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Wow, sorry to hear that. I still get tons of them - will test again tonight - do you have gm mining and +5 mining gloves?


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Yadd of Legends

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I just went back down to the golden elementals and got 5 crystalline blackrock in 5 minutes - the usual drop rate. I think this only works with GM mining. Maybe that's the problem for you?
 

startle

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Wow, sorry to hear that. I still get tons of them - will test again tonight - do you have gm mining and +5 mining gloves?
I thought the mining was only needed to bring up an elem.... Are you saying that you have to have mining on the char that kills the gold elems???
 

azmodanb

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You get crystal black rock zero mining skill on gold eles ... I farm it in blackthorn. With a malee char
 

Yadd of Legends

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That's what I thought... Thx az
Right, like Az said - I just put mining on sampire to rack up gold ingots along with crystalline blackrock - what I couldn't figure out from your post #23 was why you were killing elementals and not getting any blackrock while I was getting tons of it
 

startle

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The only thing I can think of, is that I went right after they brought the dungeon in and haven't been back since. I suspect they tweaked the drop rate up....
 

BeaIank

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Yeah, I get almost 90 of those per hour at my golden elemental runs.
Not sure if the drop rate on siege is different, though.
 

Yadd of Legends

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You get crystal black rock zero mining skill on gold eles ... I farm it in blackthorn. With a malee char
FYI, I tested this by killing the golden ellies with my sampire with and without mining skill and got the same drop rate for the crystal blackrock.
 
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Tuan

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IF you're going to farm blackrock in there, you might as well loot the ore and drop it on the ground too, come back w/a fire beetle and smelt that. I get ~12K ingots or something per hour.
 

Yadd of Legends

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I agree it's a waste killing elementals and ignoring the ingots - I just did it as a test. But the fact is that on Atlantic, every time I've gone there before this morning I've seen a couple of greater dragons parked there farming arties, gathering neither ingots nor blackrock. The only way I managed to get in was be there at 6 a.m.
 

Tuan

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I play a less full shard, and I use Fel. I've only ever seen maybe 1 other person in the dungeon, let alone farming the arties. It also helps that I am in Europe, so playing at off times is no problem for me.
 

Yadd of Legends

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Do you get more ingots and blackrock in fel blackthorn than in trammel blackthorn?


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Tuan

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Hmm, I don't know. I get 25 big ore, and black rock about 1 in 10 or so (a big estimate here...) elems. I have never been to the blackthorn in tram...
 

Basara

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doing a little thread necromancy here (I'm the mod, my prerogative).

I was mostly away when the Blackthorn dungeon was introduced, and only recently ventured in there to resource gather.

I don't know if it was before when this thread was active, but the forge in the room can be smelted on now. So, if you're farming gold eles with a miner (say, a melee miner or a T-hunter with mining), you can smelt as you go, as long as you draw the eles in to you. The hard part is the corpses stacking and finding all the corpse to loot.

In about 30-40 minutes, I collected over 4200 gold ingots after smelting, and 21 crystalline blackrock - and that's not even at optimum speed, as I let the eles that wandered off at low HP continue to wander, until I double-checked all the corpses a few times.

Half the elementals have about 100 HP, the other half have about 400 - and that, strangely, they take the SAME number of hits to kill. Both show as being affected by the same Enemy of One spell, yet with my elemental slayer blackthorn's Kryss, the 100 pointers would drop after 4 hits of 23-28 HP, while the 400 pointers were taking 100-120 HP per hit and dropping after 4 hits like clockwork. Absolutely no damage levels in between. And, what HP level one of them spawned as, of the two, was completely random. You could have 2 low-HP, 2 high-HP, or one of each - and all of them took 4 hits to drop.
 

Tuan

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I think the forge has always been usable - at least for the last 2 years, I think.

If you're in the EC, you can make a one click looting macro where you auto loot a corpse, smelt on the forge, and hide the corpse from your object tagging (ctrl shift) so that when you kill one, you can just hit your looter/smelter macro to bring up a target cursor, ctrl + shift, target the tag - and all while killing the next elemental...

The low HP/High HP, High Resist/Low Resist phenomenon seems to be across the dungeon. At least, I've noticed the same phenomenon among the balrons off the south hallway, but even among the MASTERS too. It seems that its about 2/3 have low hp high resist. Personally, I prefer the low resist/ high HP masters - because my leeches work much better when I'm double striking for 180 dmg than when I am AIing for 110.
 

BeaIank

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With the EC, you can collect about 10K golden ingots in an hour (ctrl + shift only shows bodies that you haven't looted, so you can find the right one in a second) and 70+ crystalline blackrock.
And 70+ of each small gem for imbuing too! No more shopping for gems for your imbuing needs.
 

Bax

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I have been farming gold ellies in Blackthorn dungeon both Fel and Tram for quite a few weeks now and I am lucky to get 5-6 CBR for every 5k gold ingots. Have tried with luck suites and mining and neither makes a difference. Seems like some people have extreme luck (+70 CBR an hour???) at this but I cant see how. I get more farming val elementals with gargoyle pickaxes, the drop rate seems about 1 CBR every 3 elementals.
 

Yadd of Legends

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I took my sampire with mining instead of anatomy to Blackthorn tonight to check the drops. In 30 minutes I got 30 crystalline blackrock, my usual rate of one a minute. I also got 6500 gold ingots, which meant (at 25 ingots per ellie), I killed 270 ellies. Dividing 230 by 30, I got about one crystalline blackrock for every 8 ellies. Killing about 8 ellies a minute gave me about one blackrock a minute, or about 60 an hour. This was in tram, with 0 luck - I don't think luck affects crystalline blackrock drops at all.
 

Finley Grant

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I took my sampire with mining instead of anatomy to Blackthorn tonight to check the drops. In 30 minutes I got 30 crystalline blackrock, my usual rate of one a minute. I also got 6500 gold ingots, which meant (at 25 ingots per ellie), I killed 270 ellies. Dividing 230 by 30, I got about one crystalline blackrock for every 8 ellies. Killing about 8 ellies a minute gave me about one blackrock a minute, or about 60 an hour. This was in tram, with 0 luck - I don't think luck affects crystalline blackrock drops at all.
have you seen a differece with or without mining?
 

Yadd of Legends

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I did try it without mining once just to test and did not see a difference in crystalline blackrock drop - although I felt bad letting all the gold ingots go to waste - but I'll try it again to see if anything has changed and update this post
EDIT: Yep, same drop rate with or without mining
 
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