Guild Wars 2

Ok, so how does one go about finding those “charged lodestones”?

Currently, the only reason I’m still playing GW2 is to craft my Dwayna’s Wing

-100 Mystic coin: got them from my 700+ hrs of play
-Eldritch Scroll: will buy from Miyani when ready
-20 Superior sigil of Purity… going to be a bit expensive, but I should be able to afford them
My problem is with fricking Gift of Light:

-I actually farmed AC to get the tears necessary to buy gift of ascalon, despite me being a dungeon-hater and farming-hater (still am, even more now actually).
-ori ingot and cured hardened leather don’t seem to be “too” expensives…
-I’m currently leveling an alt and having it learn Armorsmithing, but getting to 400 will require me to buy mats since I already finished my stocked ones, so yet more gold thrown away…
-The recipe for Gift of Light, 10 more gold thrown at Miyani…fine, whatever….

But 100 KITTENING CHARGED LODESTONES… wtf, those things are worth 3 gold A PIECE (at current market price, and they’re likely to go up…)

In my 700+hrs I don’t think I’ve ever even seen ONE!

I wanted to craft Dwayna’s Wing rather than buy it of the TP, since it gave me an actual goal rather than having to farm for gold (anti-farm) , which isn’t possible in this game anyway (in my 100% map completion time, I got about 8g, never actually buying anything but salvage kits…) and also because carrying around something I crafted myself just isn’t the same thing as just buying it, but this game as became beyond ridiculous for me…

Most of my gold (almost 300) I got from wasting time on the TP, and that took me 8 months…

So, what ways are there to find those “charged lodestones” other than:
-Buying them off the TP (which would cost more than buying Dwayna’s Wing directly from the TP…how the hell do the people selling them make a profit?)
-Farm idunnowhichmobsormaps for hundreds of hours (I won’t)

I’m a hardcore believer that games are meant to be “fun”, and that when you don’t get any fun out of a game anymore, and keep playing without really knowing why, then it’s time to quit.
So far, the possibility of getting Dwayna’s Wing and W3 were the only things I still found “fun”, and now my W3 server is starting to get all serious and stuff and I find myself playing W3 less and less, so if getting those Charged Lodestones is gonna be either buy at an exorbitant price or farm for hundreds of hours, then that’s it for GW2…

I’ll get it straight: if you’re aiming such kind of weapon, there will be farming.

Probably a LOT (not how much for a legg, but a quite large share).

And Charged are by a long shot the worst lodestones to farm.

Around 3 possible ways to do so:
-Coe (DG) chests have chance to drop charged cores/lodestones. On the other hand the dg itself isn’t the easiest one (if you’re not a usual dg lover/runner – nothing unbeatable, but might give ya some issues), it’s not either really fast (unless you’re speedrunning – doubt you’re doing it if you hate dgs) and drop rate not really great.
-farm gold (in any way), buy cores/lodestones from TP.
-farm sparks (mobs) in malchor’s leap/CS. those mobs have terrible drop rate and are situational spawns.
(if you have a bunch of karma you can trow it in orrian boxes, but it’s so unrealiable that it isn’t almost an option.)

Farming the sparks when Dwayna’s temple is held is one of the few spots. And the drop rate is horrible.

You will be better off farming gold and purchasing them. Really. You will go insane if you try to farm them.

Oh.. forgot.. another option is to farm COE. It will drop the occasional lodestone, but you will see a charged core drop more frequently. These cores can be upgraded to lodestones.

COE is fun and not that challenging once you learn the Subject Alpha fights.

I generally get a couple of cores or a lodestone per run of COE. Its still a long, boring slog if you are doing it just for the rewards but its actually a fun dungeon to run with friends as long as you dont do too much in one go.

HAHAHA…. No CoE is NOT fun. And it’s b/c you have to fight Subject Alpha 3 times in every path, and he’s one of the worst designed fights in this game. Glitchy, Gimmicky, and Tedious as hell. 6 months ago We told them (the Devs) directly 1,000 times that they HAVE to overhaul this dungeon or atleast every fight against Alpha. And they still haven’t done jack about it.

So do the wise thing here Engel…. Take a vacation from this “Endeavor” until Anet finally feels generous enough to make Charge Cores & frags & stuff drop from more Mobs and more events and more chests all around the world in general. There’s no excuse for their Laziness in the Drop-Tables. And the more Legendaries involving Gift of Light that get crafted in spite of it, the less likely Anet is to quit screwing around with Tounaments & Holiday crap to fix these obviously broken oversights in the main sections of their game.

IE: don’t be an “Enabler”… and don’t validate any other deluded ppl who claim it’s a “Reasonable” grind

ProTip: The people who say he’s not so bad…. are using the Exploit that gets him stuck & stunned on the Geometry. Don’t do that. Lest you forget what happened to all the people who were exploitnig COF.

Since they lowered his health, he’s much more tolerable.

ilr.9675:

ProTip: The people who say he’s not so bad…. are using the Exploit that gets him stuck & stunned on the Geometry. Don’t do that. Lest you forget what happened to all the people who were exploitnig COF.

meeehhhhh, no. Just decent dps and a party that knows how to play. Did path 1 last night, the hardest part were those darned lasers. Alpha fights were all unremarkable.

I still have 86 of these to farm… YaY me right ? 1lodestone per hour @165MF.
My girlfriend: 1/hour @40MF
My farmmate: 2/hour @202MF.

Go figure, this thing is broken. Some legendaries require nothing majorly hard except precursor. I’m stuck with 100 Charged requirement.

razn.7160:

My girlfriend: 1/hour @40MF

I actually got 2 that hour ^^.

For CoE tho, I don’t think alpha is harder than any other boss. If anything, i found CoE to be one of the most enjoyable dungeons so far and I don’t know anything about an exploit. The laser part is difficult but it’s also challenging which makes it more interesting !
As for the Lodestones, I still think drop rate is " acceptable ". But you do need to farm those quite a bit. You can go back near Dwayna 5-6 times a day for an hour ( taking breaks for DR ) and you will also be making rares with you can salvage or sell, and blues greens jewels etc. And with that money you can buy more lodes. Overall, if you do that you can get quite a few a day and you should be done in 10 days, 2 weeks tops ?

The final chest of the meta event involving dwyana and malchor also has a chance to give a charged core, and rarely a charged lodestone.

ilr.9675:

HAHAHA…. No CoE is NOT fun. And it’s b/c you have to fight Subject Alpha 3 times in every path, and he’s one of the worst designed fights in this game. Glitchy, Gimmicky, and Tedious as hell. 6 months ago We told them (the Devs) directly 1,000 times that they HAVE to overhaul this dungeon or atleast every fight against Alpha. And they still haven’t done jack about it.

So do the wise thing here Engel…. Take a vacation from this “Endeavor” until Anet finally feels generous enough to make Charge Cores & frags & stuff drop from more Mobs and more events and more chests all around the world in general. There’s no excuse for their Laziness in the Drop-Tables. And the more Legendaries involving Gift of Light that get crafted in spite of it, the less likely Anet is to quit screwing around with Tounaments & Holiday crap to fix these obviously broken oversights in the main sections of their game.

IE: don’t be an “Enabler”… and don’t validate any other deluded ppl who claim it’s a “Reasonable” grind

If you are the 1% of the dungeon runners that believe coe is not an easy dungeon then maybe you should reconsider stepping outside of the comfort zone of cof you have built your thoughts on. Tedious, being the word that lead me to believe you don’t think it’s easy.
Alpha is a poorly designed boss fight, a fact I am willing to admit and agree with you on.
1. He can be pulled into a corner and meleed down in about 1 timewarp, save for the last encounter which only really takes 1 timewarp and about 30 seconds more of fighting.
2. His crystals are buggy, other than that he seems to work as intended.
3. He is rather boring, “Red circles?” waits aprox 2 seconds, dodges other than thakittens just hitting him, the only skill required is to be able to count to 2 and press your dedicated dodge hotkey, otherwise is is just simple I don’t see it as tedious, but definately unforgiving if you mess up.

What i find frustrating is that expect for 1 encounter of alpha they are all the same, he doesn’t change drastically depending on which path is chosen, just leads me to think that little effort was put into him.

As to OP running coe P1 and 3 daily can take as little as 25 min and net you 1 to 2 cores along with enough coin to upgrade them and have a bit extra. With other chances of lodes and more than 6 possible cores if i remember right it seems like a fair trade in time, but please do not think that a little 100 charged lodestones is enough of a grind to rage on the forums about. Considering sunrise requires 6 to 700 more gold than your bow.

I played 1330+ hours and I only have a grand total of 1. I have been to Orr and have opened thousands of bags and run many dungeons and kills hundreds of sparks when I was at Lyssa. Maybe I should kills thousands or if possible millions of sparks the next time I visit Lyssa….

Your last sentence about sums it up. You will have to farm (gold or cores), sorry. Buying will become an even worse proposition in the near future as more and more precursors are made available, the demand for lodestones (especially charged) will only go up.

CoE is not that hard and I feel your pain Meteorlogicus cost me 100 charged as well.

-I ran CoE Daily and multiple times at that since it was all about getting cores/lodestones.
-Farm gold and place buy orders (CoF, Selling Rares etc..)
-FoTM Maw chest

There is no simple way to get them, its gonna take work.

It seems you may be more interested in buying the lodestones than in farming them from the dungeon and sparks. In that case I suggest you stop salvaging things and start selling them (just the regular old merchant vendors). Play whatever/wherever you want and save up the gold.

I personally couldn’t believe you got to 100% map completion and made that little gold until you said you only bought salvage kits. Then I realized you must be salvaging it all. Selling drop items well net you a handful of gold a day. I generally make 3-5 gold in a few hours of running around doing wvw or orr events, or just the daily + some wandering without trouble.

Anyway, I also echo that CoE is not a hard dungeon. Submarine path is very easy once you learn it (a handful of runs with people who know it). I had good luck with drops while I was getting tokens for a longbow. Got maybe 10 lodestones while farming it? I was a bit luckier than my guildmates though in that respect. (No magic find gear, just raw luck.)

I get charged cores from fractal runs (lower tier is MUCH better for this -level 4, 6 and 8 seems to be the sweet spots). I’ve also piled up a few from CoE. They are chest drops so MF is not desirable or helpful.

You can buy them for just over a gold each – I recommend buying them only 1-3 at a time. You put an order in for 30+ at once and you guarantee someone will out bid you rather than wait for your order to process.

The lodestones themselves can be farmed somewhat painfully by killing sparks, air elementals, and veteran air elementals at SW Malchor’s Leap and the very northern edge of Cursed Shore, while the Pact controls the Temple of Dwayna. Bring your magic find and if possible bring 2 friends. Groups of 3 can be very efficient at this. Larger groups actually outstrip the respawn rate.

I’ve also gotten a modest number from Orrian Jewelry Boxes (bought with kharma). If you have all karma buffs you can rack up +75% karma and the liquid karma return from the boxes can keep the cycle going a LONG time. Buff up completely, guzzle two or more months of daily karma pots and open a few hundred boxes for less soul-crushing results. The drop rate for each type of lodestone seems to be about 1%.

I just reached my 102nd charged lodestone – only 148 to go for Infinite Light…

shimmerless.4560:

He’s a bit like Lupi….

Stopped reading right there. You clearly don’t even know the exact physics of either.
Lupi’s “red circles” are wrong half the time and then ppl get 2-shotted by the wildly misdirected projectiles…some of which “home in” regardless. Alpha’s indicators have the same “mis-queue” problem. In order to avoid the biggest Spams, you have to stand INSIDE the pattern of red circles, not waste endurance trying to get completely out of it. That makes it a broken Visual. And certain builds can just gimmick their way around the entire issues while everyone else who does what the encounter instructs of them…. just gets worn out or dead too quickly.

Dempsey.8760:

If you are the 1% of the dungeon runners that believe coe is not an easy dungeon then maybe you should reconsider stepping outside of the comfort zone of cof

I don’t run COF. Infact it’s the last dungoen on my list with only 1 path completed so far. Every other dungeon in the game I’m 3/4’s on or 4/4’s on. No idea why you attacked a strawman here when the bulk of your post actually supported the evidence of “Gimmickery” and needlessly drawn our & recycled mechanics

In other words, once you learn the encounter it is easy.

And the fight is a bit like Lupi.. you either know the fight or you don’t. If you don’t, you will pretty much get owned. Once you do know the fight, it is relatively easy.

Not sure why “they HAVE to overhaul this dungeon”, but whatever. If you know the subject alpha fights and have a competent group of people you can farm this dungeon very easily and it can be nearly or more lucrative than COF.

Nike.2631:

I get charged cores from fractal runs (lower tier is MUCH better for this -level 4, 6 and 8 seems to be the sweet spots). I’ve also piled up a few from CoE. They are chest drops so MF is not desirable or helpful.

Ah now we’re getting somewhere… That’s an instant Admission right there on Anet’s part that they already knew the drop rate was too low. The fact they included a Wine-Substitute on the Laurel vendor also indicated partly that they know there’s a problem here when it comes to certain Loadstones in general. … there’s a few glimmers (pun intended) of hope here…

My question is: Is there any place that could possibly farm Shards from to make into Cores?

Anywhere with large quantities of air elementals. There’s a big nest of them in Deirdre’s Garden (jump puzzle in Maelstrom) that has been put forward as a possibility. I don’t know of any other mid-to-high level air elemental areas (aside from the spots I mentioned previously). Shards would come from sparks quite a ways down the level scale. 50’s maybe?

The wine substitute is a joke. Its a horrifically expensive alternative unless you are processing large batches of lower rank materials. If you are dealing with cores-to-lodestones you’re better off using your laurels to buy unidentified dyes and selling those for coin to buy proper wine. And all other uses of laurels pale compare to getting a necklace with a utility slot – first for karma buff to speed up Orrian Boxes acquisition and second a separate MF necklace for farming the air elementals. After both of those are in your toolbox, maybe, maybe mystic binding agent. Maybe.

Ah, thanks for the ProTips…

I didn’t say that what Anet added was actually going to work of course
…just that it was more or less an admission

If I’m not mistaken, Urban battleground fractal chest can give charged cores/lodestones too. It is an easy and fast fractal so maybe worth giving it a try.

I will just put this out there … if you are going to set yourself to farming cores and shards, you might as well do the actual lodestones themselves. AFIAK, the drop rates for all those are the same so if you are going to use your time farming, might as well target the actual item you want.

BTW, I have frequented Dwayna temple quite often. MF @ 150 and with approximately 2-3 kills per minute, the veteran every 4 minutes, yields me a average (a statistically valid one) of between 1-2 per hour. That doesn’t include the 60 silver per hour of vendored junk that drops.

I do 9 paths CoE every day (3 per char) because I like the dungeon and it’s huge profit because of the core/lodestones. In avereage i get about 0.7 cores per run and rarely a lodestone. So gift of light will be a lot farming.

Have fun

I get all my charged from fractals. I get mostly cores.

I run some CoE, but don’t get much. Maybe 1 or 2 cores per 3 runs. A friend got 2 cores and 1 ls in one path. So yeah, it’s random.

I did farm Dwayna, but after only 1 ls in 10h of farming (over two weeks) I gave up.

Also, in total, I got 3 charged lodestones from WvW since they revamped the loot.

To all who may concern, in this post Colin Johanson hints about new way of “obtaining” Lodestones in the future.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/T6-Dust-Crisis/page/7#post2193354

I think we could wait for these “solutions” to craft our gifts of light…

shimmerless.4560:

ilr.9675:

ProTip: The people who say he’s not so bad…. are using the Exploit that gets him stuck & stunned on the Geometry. Don’t do that. Lest you forget what happened to all the people who were exploitnig COF.

Well, you don’t have to pull him into anything and he’s still not that tough. One time in the first room I had a wipe with a PUG, and I managed to finish him off on my own, even though I was the only one alive in DPS gear, because all of his attacks are predictable and hugely telegraphed.

He’s a bit like Lupi in that he’s very much an either/or boss. Either you know how the encounter works or you don’t. In that sense I can agree the burden of knowledge is rather high but once you do have that knowledge, he becomes trivial.

yes path 1 and path 2 are very easily solo’able, even with dps gear but i highly doubt you solo’d him on path 3, his rock cone attack will hit you at least once or twice and with dps gear thats a one shot.

First of all. If you want 250 Gold you have to farm. No question.
Or pray for the RNG gods to drop you a precursor. (Not workin)

Secondly: Dont aim the 300 because its far less if you act clever:

Buy charged cores and use the MF recipe to create charged lodes.
2 Charged Core + 1 elonian wine + 1 T6 dust + 1 Crystal ( skillpoint trade in)
2,12 G + 0,26 G + 0,12 Gold = 2,5 G / lode
By 100pc it will cost 250 Gold instead of the 280-300 gold.
Boom you spared 1/6 th of the farming.

gaborkaldy.3210:

Boom you spared 1/6 th of the farming.

But by then… (late September… AKA: Anet’s “later this summer”), their Drop Rates will all have been rebalanced by this stuff Colin’s finally let us in on. …which hopefully also comes with a HUGE nerf to COF, aka: Inflation CENTRAL

ilr.9675:

shimmerless.4560:

He’s a bit like Lupi….

Stopped reading right there. You clearly don’t even know the exact physics of either.
Lupi’s “red circles” are wrong half the time and then ppl get 2-shotted by the wildly misdirected projectiles…some of which “home in” regardless. Alpha’s indicators have the same “mis-queue” problem. In order to avoid the biggest Spams, you have to stand INSIDE the pattern of red circles, not waste endurance trying to get completely out of it. That makes it a broken Visual. And certain builds can just gimmick their way around the entire issues while everyone else who does what the encounter instructs of them…. just gets worn out or dead too quickly.

Dempsey.8760:

If you are the 1% of the dungeon runners that believe coe is not an easy dungeon then maybe you should reconsider stepping outside of the comfort zone of cof

I don’t run COF. Infact it’s the last dungoen on my list with only 1 path completed so far. Every other dungeon in the game I’m 3/4’s on or 4/4’s on. No idea why you attacked a strawman here when the bulk of your post actually supported the evidence of “Gimmickery” and needlessly drawn our & recycled mechanics

Bad players are bad :-) Subject Alpha is very easy. Depending on the path, path 1: crowd around him, the whole party, ppl will automatically get out of the crystals and heal up due to AoE heals etc. path 2: his AoE is the most devastating attack, rest is peanuts. To dodge the AoE count down from 2 to zero, then dodge. You can than even with the squishiest toon kill him, be cause he will never hit you with this attack. Occasionally, ppl will get stuck in a crystal, but this shouldn’t be a problem: they are destroyed within seconds. Lags is the biggest issue there and getting down happens, but you should get back on your feet fast (2 or 3 players rezzing you from down state). Very rarely (happened to me only once as necro), the double tap for dodge didn’t trigger and I got down, then after a second the next aoe hit me, that was very bad luck. But it almost never happens.

Who are you calling bad?

And if it’s me —> then aren’t you verifying exactly what I just said when you state:

crowd around him, the whole party, ppl will automatically get out of the crystals and heal up due to AoE heals

?? …. please, clarify, and also be aware that this forum has a T.O.S…