Heavy clay farming worth it?

[data9724]

Im now at 216 pottery, and still not sure on how to proceed. The immediate plan is to get to 222 on opal steins, then i would prefer to farm heavy clay in Gorge of King Xorbb to make the unfired succor item till 236 skill.
But is the droprate and skillup on this worth spending all that farming time on? Or am i better off throwing materials for 4 stacks of vials to each of the guilds chanters and tell them to make some when they got a min free and mana to spare?

[Calabar]

It all depends on your situation. For me, farming the clay was the best rout to take since I have a very limited income. If you have a lot of money to throw at pottery then there are much faster routes than farming heavy clay. As a 56th level monk you won’t have any problems plowing through the mobs. I’ll take my spirit puppy and farm about a stack of mud an hour. I assume you could kill the mobs even faster and you may be able to get slightly more per hour. And you won’t have to worry about the weight. In spite of its name, heavy clay is stackable and weights only 0.1 per stack.

As for skill gain, I didn’t notice any significant difference in making crucibles of escape compared to anything else I attempted. Though as with any other combine you’ll be at the mercy of the RNG. And one benefit of making crucibles is you can save a few of the unfired ones and fire them later. They make great gifts to any druids or wizards in your guild.

[BienaFV]

Think you will be dissapointed.

My plan was making crusibles from 212 to 236. It became trivial to me on the wheel at 223. This was after the 6/16 so the patch of 6/4 probably changed the trivial.

Sitting with 3 stacks of heavy clay in the bank.


Did post a trivial update http://mboards.eqtraders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8575

[atonic]

Worth farming heavy clay = nope

Probably better off farming a cash source and buying things to make your pottery tries.

[data9724]

Bah, oh well, farmed 13 so far, guess ill get to 223 on them, and then get to the other steins or bands. Too bad, my guild chanters gonna hate me, was bad enough with the XXXX vials for othmir fur caps, this is gonna be even worse.

[Mendan]

[Tue Jun 17 04:35:23 2003] You have become better at Pottery! (236)
[Tue Jun 17 04:35:23 2003] You have fashioned the items together to create something new!
[Tue Jun 17 04:35:25 2003] You just dropped your Unfired Crucible of Escape.

Trivial is the same as it always was, as shown above. I found crucibles to be a very good way to skillup from 222 to 236 for someone with little cash to spend. Although I plan on never entering King Xorbb's Gorge ever again. :P

[data9724]

Ahh, sounds good. Im used to big losses from tailoring, but still bothers me to make 80 combines at opal steins, get 2 skillups and have to sell 76 steins for under material cost.
Gonna do the crusibles from 222 to 236 then. My monk can clear Gorge of King Xorbb on her own no problem.

[eldibar]

I tried this route, but after 2 hours, I'd only picked up 6 heavy clay.

Was I just having a bad day, or is this normal ?

I need to get a pet....

Rostic
52nd level noob Druid of the Rathe

[Cakaris]

I've been doing crucibles in between some other things (ceramic bands mostly), and find them to be not too bad. It's taking about an hour to get a stack of them, maybe a little longer. Make sure you're clearing all wanderers (minos, ee's, goblins) so that you get the most spawns out of it. I just keep running in circles around the whole zone, it's not that big. I wouldn't do them exclusively (you'd probably go mad from farming), but they're nice for breaks. Spend 2k on buyable combines, then farm a stack or 2. Alternate back and forth.

Also make sure to loot all the other stackable clay/ore (the unstackables are too heavy IMO) and sell to the vendor. I find myself walking out of the gorge with 20 heavy clays, and enough cash from the sale of other clay to afford half to 3/4 of the succor scrolls I need. Very cheap method.

[data9724]

Dont know how effective druids is at farming the Gorge. My monk can kill most of zone and have repops again when shes dont (And leaving the named evil eyes), and from what i got so far, i would say i can get a stack a hour or so.

[Calabar]

For this type of farming, where there are plenty of green mobs, you want to be able to kill as quickly as possible. My shaman pet does okay, but I think my ranger slices through them faster. Druids are great characters for getting from point A to point B for farming, but they aren’t very efficient for hand-to-hand combat against greens. My level 51 druid smacks spiders and such to death with his Staff of Living Sand. It works but he’s not very fast. I’ve read many posts where casters get half the zone chasing after them in places like East Karana and then cast an area effect spell to kill them off all at once. This might work well for you if you have the right spells. Otherwise a druid is not likely to pull in clay as quickly as a melee class of the same level.

[Mendan]

As a druid it wasn't exactly easy to farm, but a melee would have no problems. I would normally grab a KEI and nuke muddites with firestrike. This would kill minors in one shot, and an extra engorging roots would kill elders. If I couldn't get a KEI I would wolform for the +atk, firefist, +str buff, ds, summon a pet, haste it, and finally sow it. Then I would go around meleeing stuff with my epic and pet, tossing in an engorging root to take out a chunk of hp for little mana. But I found the fastest way to farm was just find a muddite, nuke, loot, and repeat.

[Brilo]

Probably just the RNG being strange, but I have had remarkably good luck with skillups doing crucibles compared with star ruby steins. I have averaged a skill up every 10 combines on the crucibles on about 100 combines, versus a run of 58 steins today with only one skillup. (These combines have been done with WIS ranging from 324 to 340 for what its worth). As to druid farming, I just use root twice to kill most anything in the zone - each root is a bit over 200 damage.

Brilo

[Teaamillie]

AOE. I'm a druid and I can go into Gorge and nuke AOE style take down 20 in a shot. Get an interrupt every so often.

[Linea]

as a wizard who farms east karana just for the hysterical sight of killing them all at once i entered gorge hoping to do the same thing to the muddites. unfortunately i discovered that the poor little things cant keep up with run3 and tend to get left behind and then forget about me. so i found myself just running from one to the next doing single draughts