Guild Wars 2

Yeah, these essences drop from the undead, which explains their overabundance in the TP. I haven’t really been in Arah that much but I hope they aren’t found in the boss chests there.

So far I’ve obtained them in 3 different ways:

1. Drops from elementals.
Nothing fancy here, fire elementals drop molten stuff, earth elementals drop onyx and so on. Pretty abysmal droprate though.

2. Drops from dungeons.
These follow a similar pattern so I’d expect molten stuff in the citadel of flame for example. There may not be enough instances for all types of rares, since i’ve never seen one drop in the ascalon catacombs, only magic dust, and I doubt there are lodestone-drops in the second instance. As for the ‘size’ of the drop, i’ve only ever seen lodestones.

3. Bags.
I’ve had some of the lower variations drop from those tiny bags you find in humanoids. Never bigger than the second lowest tier though, and I wouldn’t expect anything but a stick of butter nowadays. If only there were butter lodestones…