how do I farm for Purple IO drops

This is from a reply to a post that I did awhile back about "farming" for purple ios (before you were able to set difficulty and certain aspects may have changed and not be needed now). I ended up averaging (key word) about 1 every 5 runs but there time where that avg jumped a little bit higher. Remeber YMMV. Sorry for the wall of text in advance...since i am coping/pasting what i replied with.


The mish is the last mish of the ITF. So you must have 1 other person to keep the taskforce open and make sure that the other person is the same as you, meaning a hero or villain so you can sell stuff at the market. Also with that said I will let you know the pattern i use since the runs i do with ppl always skip all these mobs.

Once you enter the mish, go straight up and turn right (there are 2 vators to make it up the wall if you dont have a way to get up there). walk up on said path and there should be a grp of 20 (minions and lts) adjust dif to your liking (remember you want drops and to kill things fast as possible so it doesnt matter if level 50 or 53). once those are done, you should be at the end where you can go towards the towers. On the wall by the towers are another 20. Once you clear those hit the towers (take your time and try not to get overwelmed this is where i sometimes die, if so do use your sg base instead of the hosp so that when you teleport back you will be at the front door...no travel time).

Now remember how I said to turn right in the begining? well the other side has 2 grps of 20 as well so kill those. Now its time to go towards Rommie. But what about all those others with the EB's you say? skip them...not worth the time. Now looking at the courtyard with all those ppl you will see that there are 2 walls on either side of the court yard. 2 more grps of 20, 1 on each wall. clear those and then the court yard. In every group that I listed, there should not be any surgeons that you have to contend with unlike if you decide to farm the front wall outside the mission. All in all you should have killed about 350-450 mobs AND be full on recipes and maybe salvage (2 runs and you will be definatly full. On the third dif i avg 2 mil on kills alone, about 12-15 recipes, and anywhere between 20-40 salvage drops depending on how the game wants to treat you and taking about 15-20 mins a run solo).

Now mind you i run this on my tank and brute. Me and a buddy have been able to make it to the last mission using 2 tank/brutes easy. As far as the first 2 mishes are cake walk (they only spawn for 2 ppl and should be easy). The third mish is the issue. Key is to kill the av's first and make sure to take daedalus (spelling?) with you since he is a rad and keep him alive since he wil debuff the crap out of rom and requiem and make them easy pickings, vet team tp works great if one person stays with him and the other tps to the comp...then do the comp and we found it easier to kill the robots at each wave then attack the comp again. hope all this makes sense. Also your toons will be locked into the tf, so make sure its a toon that you dont mind leaving in there.

[QUOTE=TonyV;3430462]<QR>

The best way? Just play the game like you normally would. No, I'm not being facetious. If you do anything else, you will start finding it tedious, it will lessen your enjoyment, and you'll likely be making it more boring for others as well. Don't get caught up in this "I have to have everything, and I have to have it right now" mentality.
QUOTE]

I could not agree more!

Just do the TFs/SFs with your friends, trade 50 mertis and 20M for 1 A-Merit, repeat wash-rinse and repeat to get your 2nd A-Merit. With 2 A-Merits you can get about anything you want below a purple. If you are picky about what TFs you do, essentially level 50s, you will always have a chance to get a Purple, but since it seldom happens, it really does not matter since you are collecting merits for Alignement Merit acquisition. Trade A-Merits for high end cost WW/BM IOs, craft them and sellthem. With the money you make, buy the purple you want, trust me; this method is way faster than grinding for a purple.

Don't have the 20 million or 40 million for the 2 A-Merit trade? No worries, do 5 tips on day one, then follow up with 5 more tips and the morality mission and bingo you get 50 merits for the first pass, and there after you get the 1 A-Merit. Once again, wash-rinse and repeat and you can have at no cost your 2 A-merits, once you get these 2 you are on your way to fame and fortune!

Hugs

Stormy

I'm going to mention farming the market. It may take a couple hours to learn the basics but I pull down something like a billion per week per character over three characters, and I'm not doing anything spectacular. 3-4 niches each, once in the morning and once at night, mostly stuff that I buy for 15 million and sell for 40 million, or buy for 10 and sell for 25. On those three characters, I'm spending between 30 min and an hour a day. People who work higher niches more aggressively can make a lot more.

You can do this on top of your normal play. (I recommend the a-merits, either directly or by converting reward merits. One a-merit converts to easily 100 million inf. If you don't like ouroboros or task forces or tip missions, you may not actually be enjoying the game.)

EDIT: It would probably be around 30 minutes total [10 min/char/day, approx 120 million inf/char/day] if I wasn't dawdling and playing around.

Heck run +0/+8 with a fast paced toon. (I tend to use my Elec/Elec brute) and within and hour or less you will land a purple and quite a few tasty IO's.

run tips at whatever difficulty you want (+0), based on kill speed/wanted tip speed, and every 2 alignment merits, trade for a Luck of the Gambler Def/7.5% Rech IO proc (i use lvl 25, but i think lvl 33 is the sweet spot), or whatever level is selling the highest, and craft and sell it. i've gotten 150 million each time, and the most expensive purples last time i checked were around 400 million (apocalypse - maybe the melee set is more expensive). for cheaper purples, like confuse, you can get the whole set from selling 2 LotG procs or 1 and a lucky drop.

you will get lots of other drops in the process. sell common IO recipes to the vendors for 100K each (stick to acc, dam, rech, end redux for best sell values, delete worthless ones like range, intangibility, etc). don't craft them, you'll lose money. (if you have a portable workbench, you can craft lvl 50 accuracy and damage IOs and ususally make money if you already have the salvage anyway - craft for 250K and sell for 300K-500K, depending on the market).

then sell anything you don't need at the market and look for recipes that sell for more crafted than the recipe + salvage + crafting cost. sell any recipe with more than 50 stock with no one buying at the vendor for a few thousand extra (tohit debuff, defense debuff, sniper sets, fear, etc - i don't vendor unless there is sufficient market supply). basically, sell everything you can as you clear, and maybe you'll get lucky and get a purple drop too (which unless you need, sell and get the money for the ones you do need - like an armageddon proc which i sold for 400 million XD).

I run Borea missions in the Rikti War Zone on my level 50 + 1 Super Strength / Electric Armor Brute at +1 x 8, averaging one purple IO recipe drop a day. I could do it faster at +0 x 8, but battling blue con mobs just feels wrong.

If you want a no muss no fuss option, The walls in Cim work. Clean the top, clean the bottom, repeat. Boring as snot, but I average 1 purple a week in my spare time while camping global channels for TFs.

The advanatges are as follows...

1. You don't need a farm build.
2. You never get caught in the middle of a map when a TF call goes out, and if you're joining ITFs, Cim is a no brainer to hang out in.
3. No need to adjust your difficulty setting.
4. Romans are junk and can't hurt anyone.
5. They're always 50+ on the walls.

It's not the most efficient, optimized route, but it's the easiest.

And as with anything related to purple drops, the hyperbole is running thick here in some posts...

Regardless of what anyone says here, purple drop rates are spasmodic at best. Doing any of these things will NOT guarantee you a specific drop rate of any kind whatsoever. Even thought I have personally seen 3 purples drop on a +3 x7 mission completed in under 20 minutes with two characters in the mission doesn't mean that is a normal drop rate by any stretch of the imagination.

If you're "farming for purples", expect to be disappointed and frustrated by your lack of success and thoughts of "I must be doing it wrong" interspersed with tiny spurts of pure delight when one or more finally do drop. Expect to grind through many, many thousands of enemies for each drop you do manage to get lucky enough to get.

That being said, doing things that enable you to grind through many, many thousands of enemies in as short a time as possible will definitely improve your chances.

I agree. None of the previous ways of farming purples is a guarantee that you will get one. It's a rare thrill.

I was lucky enough to get 2 or 3 so far just patrolling in Peregrine Island. (Not on the same character, over multiple characters)
I had one drop to a lvl 40 teammate just the other day running a tip mission of mine.
I just do lvl 50 content normally, hoping for shards to drop, then when a purple drops, its like a sweet bonus. Thats how I approach it.