Fight as many foes as you are capable.
If you can run set for 3 or 4, that's a whole lot more chances to get drops than normal soloing.
Make sure bosses are enabled, they have much better chances to drop shards, and take missions where you know there will be lots of bosses. Tips with hostages for example will have multiple boss spawns.
Big teams work best for shards, so team when you can, the above is for your solo time.
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
A few things to remember:
- Directly, shards are only good for your Alpha slot. All the others will require threads. (I believe there is a conversion between shards and threads. I don't know how advantagous that method would be.)
- Tier 4 will require a small hoard of shards. It's not impossible, especially if you are getting notices from the WSF, but it is quite a task to covert shards to enough components to get Tier 4.
- Most posts I read and people I heard from in game state to set yourself to x0+8. The higher leveled mobs don't give enough of a boost in chances to drop a shard to make it worth it, and it's better to kill lots as fast as possible.
- Likewise, what I heard is contrary to Catwhoorg in that it's better to solo than be in a team. Each shard that drops will go to one person and it can't be traded, so they can't be split up later if they all drop on one or two people. The low drop rate on them makes it better to farm at the highest "+ player" difficulty you can on your own than have others with you.
Now, I am biased against the shards method. I'm primarily a solo player myself. I played for months trying to get my shards for even Tier 3 Alpha. I wasn't using an AOE powerhouse that can mow down hoards of minions in a heartbeat. Then, when I finally did a handful of evenings of iTrails, I had unlocked and had Tier 3 in my other incarnate abilities in no time. Tier 4 just required luck in getting the VR drop or a handful of extra rares. Most of my 50s now have at least Tier 3, and that's in about the same amount of time I spent (wasted?) trying to get shards solo.
Again, it's not that the shards route is impossible, and the devs made sure of that. It's just kinda like putting a camel through a needle: You just need to spend the time in grinding the camel down to small enough bits. 
The shard method for Tier 4 just takes an (IMHO) unreasonably long amount of time farming, especially compared to the alternative.
My suggestion is to see if you can get some iTrials (BAFs and LAMs are great) running in the time you do have to play. If you are focusing on Tier 4, convert merits to threads. While running these, you are also unlocking your other abilities.
My 2 cents, but it's worked extremely well for me.
CoH has been unique in the sea of cloned MMOs.There are years of possibilities still
in such a well designed, well supported and well loved game.Shutting it down now doesn't
make sense on any level except, perhaps, on some spreadsheet�s bottom line. I do not
consider this an act of a company that has the interests of its customers at heart.This
calls into question why I would want to be part of any further ventures involving NCSoft.
Quote:
Shard drops are not like recipes and salvage. One enemy can drop a shard for every single person on a team.|
Originally Posted by Lightbender
- Most posts I read and people I heard from in game state to set yourself to x0+8. The higher leveled mobs don't give enough of a boost in chances to drop a shard to make it worth it, and it's better to kill lots as fast as possible.
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I am not sure but I think that threads work the same.
Arc 52555: Tower of Darkness
Arc 139668: Bob's Crazy Car Dealership
Quote:
Correct.|
Originally Posted by Garrott
Shard drops are not like recipes and salvage. One enemy can drop a shard for every single person on a team.
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Likewise, I am not sure about Threads either, but I suspect they follow mostly the same rules as Shards.
Some of this may depend on your AT - but
consider running the part 1 of the SSA for 10 threads. Being exemped down from 50 isn't much fun, but you'll have all those slots behind those powers making things far simpler for you.
Depending on how long it takes your maps to load, you should be able to finish it in 10 minutes, give or take a few.
After you've collected your hero merit, run it again, then take the 20 merits, then do so again and collect the 10 threads. Inside of an hour, you can have 60 threads (assuming you'd already spent the 20-25 minutes getting the hero merit and the 20 reward merits. )
The way I see it, depending on your server, this could at least fill those times when you just don't have a whole lot of play time.
With regards to shards - by all means, try to fit an MSR or two into your schedule. Get those Grai` Matter pieces instead of using 4 shards.
Very Rare Components are hard to come by. I would not use them for the 4th tier alphas. I'd stick with mainly shards on those unless you just have a bunch of incarnate salvage that you positively know you can't use.
Now that you know how to figure out what the weekly is - this coming week is Kahn, you can be ready. A speedily run Khan can be done inside of a half hour easily. (well, maybe not easily for everyone, but I've seen it done and been on a team that's done it in around 23 minutes or so. )
You might also consider getting Windfall. I think I got twice as many shards as I normally do with Windfall active. (as well as a lot of useless temp powers and worthless recipes. )
And as was mentioned previously, run your missions with your settings set to make you worth as many heroes as you possibly can and not get clobbered.
Bosses may make a big difference in shard rate - but if you're slightly squishy, run with out them. Whatever you feel comfy with.
The best part is teaming doesn't interfere. It's possible for more than one player to get a shard from the same defeated NPC.
Hope those tips help.
"Most people that have no idea what they are doing have no idea that they don't know what they are doing." - John Cleese
@Ukase
Quote:
I stand (or sit as the case may be) corrected. I was indeed thinking of recipes, specificly the topic of getting purples. Still, when possible, I still suggest iTrials and threads over shards if you are going to be teaming anyways. They are generally more useful, since they can be used in any incarnate power. If you have a large team of 50's already, see if you can sting together another couple of teams and get an iTrial going. Depends on how many people can get together and if you have players not 50/incarnate who you want to play with.|
Originally Posted by Thirty-Seven
Correct.
Likewise, I am not sure about Threads either, but I suspect they follow mostly the same rules as Shards. |
For reference, the assumed rates of shards dropping are, for even con'ed stuff (from the Wiki):
Minions: 1 in 1000
Lts: 1 in 150
Bosses: 1 in 50
Not great, but not impossible either. If you're running solo, it really depends on how quickly you can mow down things, especially bosses.
CoH has been unique in the sea of cloned MMOs.There are years of possibilities still
in such a well designed, well supported and well loved game.Shutting it down now doesn't
make sense on any level except, perhaps, on some spreadsheet�s bottom line. I do not
consider this an act of a company that has the interests of its customers at heart.This
calls into question why I would want to be part of any further ventures involving NCSoft.
Quote:
This part's true. If you want more specific details: in the Sig Arc, in mission one (if you can), race to the end room with the CoT boss (ignore everything on the way). Defeat the boss, then race back to the entrance room, enter the "rock door" and race to the exit room in the new map (again, ignore all encounters). For mission two, ignore all encounters again - just head down the corridor and click the three glowing rubble piles as you find them (it might help to have some purples so anything attacking you misses while you are 'collecting' each rubble pile). Once you've got all three piles, race to the end room and defeat the boss. (NOTE: It just occured to me that I've never tested to see if you can just skip the glowies entirely, so that might actually be an unnecessary step.) In mission three (the big Hollows lava map), again, skip everything and go straight to where Lemkin is. Defeat him and his spawn, then defeat Echidna (or whoever she is) and her spawn when she shows up. Typically, that gets Arc #1 done in about 9 minutes.*|
Originally Posted by Ukaserex
Some of this may depend on your AT - but
consider running the part 1 of the SSA for 10 threads. Being exemped down from 50 isn't much fun, but you'll have all those slots behind those powers making things far simpler for you. Depending on how long it takes your maps to load, you should be able to finish it in 10 minutes, give or take a few. |
*I actually LIKE playing content, so, to be honest, I only superspeed through this arc if I'm low on time (like the OP is) and want to collect the bonus rewards quickly.
Quote:
| After you've collected your hero merit, run it again, then take the 20 merits, then do so again and collect the 10 threads. Inside of an hour, you can have 60 threads (assuming you'd already spent the 20-25 minutes getting the hero merit and the 20 reward merits. ) |
But something to consider: if you have multiple level 50s, and only care about incarnate powers on one of them, you can run *each* level 50 through that first arc once a week, and get the astral merit. An astral merit can be spent (at Astral Christy in Oroborous) to e-mail either 1 shard or 4 threads to any other character on your account, so each level 50 can potentially add 4 threads to your incarnate character's weekly tally of 14 (assuming you also convert your incarnate's astral merit into 4 threads). You might not have multiple 50s, but if you do, it's something to think about.
But my real advice (and I'm sorry to say it's a downer): if you don't have time for the iTrials (and, hey, sometimes that's life, unfortunately), then you probably should give up on the t4s. To build a very rare component alone with nothing but threads costs 1360 threads. When you factor in the two common components that you also need for the tier 4, and the fact you have to build a *second* tier 3, the sad truth is even if you have one tier 3, you're still going to need to hoard 1,900 threads to ultimately build your tier 4. Even assuming you have 4 other level 50s to "feed" stuff your your incarnate, and an hour of play time each week, it'll still take you about 1 year and 4 months to gather enough threads to make a tier 4 - granted if you're okay with that, great! But it's considerably easier to get up to a tier 3 doing this than a tier 4 (it'd take about four months in my example).
M.A. Arcs
Intended for high level play: The Primus Trilogy (Arc #s 10931, 283821, 283825), "Freakshow U" (Arc #189073), Purification (Arc #352381, Dev's Choice!
)Intended for low level play: "Learning the Ropes" (Arc #100304), "Cracking Skulls" (Arc #115935), "The Lazarus Project" (Arc #124906)
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Coulomb2
Actually, there's an error here. Except for the very first time you play a particular sig arc (which you can think of as a one-time only "bonus" bonus reward table), you can only pick each reward in the reward table once per week. Note that's once per week per character, NOT once per week per sig arc. So once your character has gotten the alignment merit, the hero merit, the 10 threads, and the astral merit, you've got to wait a week to get them again. No re-running the arc to get 60 threads in one hour.
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Ack! Thanks Coulomb for straightening me out. I could have sworn I did that three or 4 times for the threads, but I forgot that I have identical ice blasters on two different servers and probably confused myself.
Still, 10 threads for 7-10 minutes isn't too horrible. And now with SSA 2, you can get 20 threads in less than an hour. (assuming the leagues are slow to form, this isn't a bad deal. )
"Most people that have no idea what they are doing have no idea that they don't know what they are doing." - John Cleese
@Ukase
Quote:
I don't think this part is entirely true. It is the first time you run SSA 2 but after that both SSA 1 and SSA 2 share the repeat table so once you have taken the 10 threads you can't take it again for a week.
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Originally Posted by Ukaserex
And now with SSA 2, you can get 20 threads in less than an hour. (assuming the leagues are slow to form, this isn't a bad deal. )
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Quote:
Let me go on a tangent here and say, "Don't". My main/badger character who has everything has all Tier 4's. On all my other characters, it's just not worth it. Getting to tier 4 requires more than twice the components as tier 3 for a marginal improvement.|
Originally Posted by Gospel_NA
I've been doing ok with my characters and I seem to be able to get my T3s fine when I get lucky and am around when there are iTrials going, but after this point I just can't seem to get to my T4s.
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If I ever get all my 50's to tier 3's (less than half done on this), maybe I'll keep at the trials for tier 4 powers. Or maybe not.
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
Due to the fact I mostly solo I don't really enjoy the incarnate aspect of the game. Its just a grind having to buy xp more grind cant wait till the solo incarnate option is released. I would love it if they opened all TF's to be started solo, still same difficulty, same spawns just gave the option to start solo.
"if you ever get offered a burger from a clown and its not ronald mcdonald don�t eat it, I learnt that the hard way"
What's MSR?
If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
Quote:
Mothership Raid
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Originally Posted by Sailboat
What's MSR?
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http://www.scene-and-heard.com/cov/covsig.jpg
I know it's not solo play, but a well run Hami raid seems to me to be a wealth of Shards in a short amount of time. For the shard gathering process, I'd definitely recommend as many Hami Raids as you can manage.
For solo play all I can do is second all the other fine suggestions that have gone before. Including just not bothering with T4s. T3 and call it done if you're short on time, imho.
Ok, just wanted to ask advice on how to gather these efficently.
My time is pretty limited to play, so I do TFs whenever I can for shards, and MSRs, but between 21 credit hours at college, working at night, Kempo, and the gym days a week, and preperation for the police academy in the spring I find myself ending up playing on my own during my play time.
I've been doing ok with my characters and I seem to be able to get my T3s fine when I get lucky and am around when there are iTrials going, but after this point I just can't seem to get to my T4s.
I'm trying to do weekly strike targets whenever I can, now that I know how to figure out what they are, but other than that I'm just having a heck of a time accumulating enough shards and threads for the very rare components I need.
So, I was curious as to what the typical strategies are that people use to collect shards efficently? Especially, when you are solo (Though not exclusively). Thanks.