how do I farm for Purple IO drops

What is the best way to farm for these?
I've already got the Ouro badge.

One of my characters has never receive a single purple drop, the other two have got about 8 of them from either ITF or LGTF. ( which tends to make be play one character more than the other for obvious reasons, even though I prefer the no-drop character ).

Should I be doing AE missions and doing reward rolls? Should I just be doing TF for Merrits and buying cheaper items that sell well so I can afford to just buy the more expensive stuff? Is there a particular set of parameters that make purples drop better ( -1/0 , +0/0 or +4/8 )

Purple drops are random. You cannot get them through AE or AE tickets however. They only drop from level 50 foes. There is no trick to getting them. Obviously the more foes you defeat the greater your chances are to get a drop.

I believe you can get them through A Merit rolls however, I just dont remember how many A merits you need to save up.

BTW you dont need purples to be highly effective.

Airhammer covered most of the basics.

• The foe must be level 47 or higher to have a chance to drop one.
• The foe must not be in a Mission Architect mission.
• Because it is how most of the drop mechanics we do know work, it is presumed that the chance for a LT to drop one is higher than the chance for a minion, and the chance for a boss is higher than that for a LT.
• The odds of any given foe dropping one is very small. The most optimistic number we've seen estimated is on the order of one in three thousand. That number was actually averaged across ranks (minion, LT and boss), so the odds for a minion are probably lower than that).
• Play solo. Every defeated foe that drops an invention gives it to one random person on a team. That means your average chance to get a purple on a team of N people is reduced to 1/N of its usual chance. While 8-man teams typically defeat more foes in less time than someone solo, only very good teams are going to consistently defeat X foes in the same time one player could defeat X/8 foes.

And just to add a bit to what Uberguy said....

Purples will drop from any normal (ie non-AE) mob that can drop level 50 receipes.
So, basically, any mob of level 47+

However, incarnate shards only drop from level 50+ mobs....

So if you're going to be farming anyway, and you've opened up the alpha slot on that
character, you're best bet is to farm the highest quantity of level 50 mobs that you can
handle in a timely manner.

That way you're (potentially) getting purple drops, incarnate shards, and max level set IO drops all at the same time.

purple recipes drop in AE if you do Dev's choises arcs and you choose normal rewards option, instead of tickets...

i had a purple drop this way, 6 months ago.... i don't know if it is changed since then, cause i don't keep in touch with AE in the patch notes

Here is what I do because I like variety so farming one mission over and over is boring to me. Note this is when solo. Certainly if you are going to team you may as well do the high end taskforces and might even want to run the 2 new ones they made for Incarnate 50s.

With my level 50 I run level 45-50 Ouroboros' arcs that are suited to their powers. For example my warshade loved Unai's "To Save A Thousand Worlds" arc because of the large number of outdoor maps and very few EBs (1?). Purple drops are so hit and miss that this isn't the reliable means of course. I then take the reward merits and convert them to hero merits to buy goodies to sell.

Meanwhile I had (relatively) lowball bids in the market on the purples I wanted (both recipes and enhancements). It takes a long time for them to fill and if too low they never fill but it's worth a shot. Once I got both the recipe and the enhancement so I sold one back.

I was running tip missions and getting hero/villain merits but there's a limited number of missions and it got boring.

I'm not attempting to start some type of forum conspiracy, but the RWZ arcs have always been my source of purples. I always seem to get 1 per arc, even when running at +0/x1.

I do the same for the Mender Silos TF, but it isn't consistent.

For some weird reason, it seems like Carnies have a higher purple drop rate than other foes. It's most likely just an illusion due to the random number generator being nice to me, but after a span of 3 months or so where I got ONE purple drop, I got 4 in the space of 2 Carnie missions. (I ran one mission and got two, got none for a few more missions, and got 2 more in another mission)

Like I said, it's probably just coincidence, but since the character that happened with cuts through Carnies like a hot knife through melted butter (BS/DA scrapper), I'm going to continue fighting them. Works out nicely, since they pop up in several tip missions, and I'm in the middle of Harvey Maylor's arc.

Otherwise, your best bet is to run a character that can defeat lots of enemies quickly and just run 47+ content. In my experience, it doesn't seem to make much difference whether you're farming one mission, or just running normal missions on x8.

Sniff...

The simple truth, you have bad luck; just like me. I been playing for years and have demolished droves of bosses, ebs, and mobs to only see team mates get them.

I always have suspected that the random number generator may draw a random seed to base its randomness from perhaps your account ID number, and thus it may explain why some people are so consitently lucky or unlucky. In our case, our ID number just suxors. There will not be a time, where all your bad luck goes away and tidalwaves of good fortune strike us, its frankly an urban myth or for the past 6 years has not yet happened to me; can you imagine after 6 years of pathetic luck having 6 years of exceptionally good luck? Heck I have not even have 5 min of great luck yet!

I recommend you do TFs and Hero/Villain Tips for the merits and A-Merits respectively. Convert those merits for very rare recipes, craft them and sell them for a small teasure. To my great surprise a LoTG 7.5 can be just as expensive as any other purple. You will find that since we are just so unlucky, it is faster to just do TFs and Tips and eventually buy our purple than grind for a purple that frankly will never drop for us.

Stormy

Don't feel bad, I haven't gotten a single purple since this I started playing back in 2007.

My greatest success for purple drops is solo street sweeping around Portal Corp in PI. I seem to get about one every 2-3 hours with a fast sweeper.

The best way to "farm purples" is -1/x8, although I recommend you do +0/x8 instead because if you get any non-purple drops that are worth getting on -1, they're heavily devalued.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

I was talking about the Ouro day job badge, which states you will get a recipe drop for completing a mission for a short time if you log out in the Ouro. It doesn't affect your chance for a purple other than you've got one more change for a drop at the end of each mission.

When I'm looking for purples I usually run the wall in Cimerora. I can't say for certain if its the most effective way or not, all I can say is that it has worked for me. Could just be a case of 'random is random' but I usually get a purple drop within an hour and a half.

I like +1 or +2 x8 to keep tehre from being too many of those pesky lvl 49 mobs on the map.
Personally, I prefer AE arc #1012. It's close quarters most of the way so there's not a lot of running around.

N x 8 mobs you're strong against. Repeat ad infinitum.

My luck with purples varies, last summer I was getting one a week. Now, lucky to see one after two months of farming. Weekends for some reason seem to be better, don't know why but it wasn't due amount of my time spent playing. Of the task forces, I've gotten a few on ITFs.

Mostly its just grinding mobs till the dice roll your way. I can farm my fav map for eight hours and just get junk. Other times, I load up the map and start getting worthless crap... then "BOOM", a purple!

So its better to just learn to play the market, get the cash and buy the purples you want from fools like me. But don't think purples IOs are the end all, super good choice for your slots. Most of my builds, the max I got slotted with purples are usually only three powers since I stay away from higher price sets (like melee). With the Alpha Slot option now, you could not even need a purple in your build if you so choose.

I farm +1/+8 mobs around four hours of game time a week. In two years, seen about 30 purples total on 4 toons. In the first year of having a lvl50, I didn't see any purples.