Dark Astoria Farming?

[Lexinian]

I've noticed that while there are plenty of people that run 54 x8 PI mission teams on a loop, as well as obviously AE, I don't seem to see hardly any Dark Astoria mission teams. Why is this? Wouldn't the repeatable Dark Astoria missions be best for farming purposes because you get to benefit from being at +3 instead of +1? It seems to me that the extra clearing speed would make DA missions preferable to PI radio missions. Is there something I'm missing? 

I know people farm the Burdens of the Past chapter for Incarnate salvage, that's not the kind of farming I'm talking about, I mean farming for influence/invention salvage/recipes etc.

[Gulbasaur]

At some point between the end of Live and the start of Homecoming, many rewards were made more generous. Incarnate stuff, particularly, was made much easier to access and because of this there is less of an incentive to run incarnate content just for the rewards, compared to the ease of running +4x8 council missions ad nauseam in PI. In addition to this, DA mobs are often harder to just brainlessly wipe though. In terms of reward for time spent, PI wins. 

 

In addition to this, there's just a PI farming culture. Not everyone does it - Founders Falls and Talos both have mission farms that pop up on the LFG and I used to run a lot of tip missions out of Atlas because one overpowered player can carry a team of 8 lowbies very easy. 

 

Personally, I would like to see a peeling back of some of the easy rewards, capes and auras for free, and things like the Cavern of Transcendence trial being soloable as it makes it all feel inconsequential. 

 

tldr: PI is low effort, decent rewards. DA is moderate effort, better rewards, but the path of least resistance takes you to PI. 

[arcane]

People do DA missions and street sweeps all the time, yes

[TheZag]

Farming DA missions puts you against much tougher enemies then you find in PI.  If you arent built for it then they can shred your defense or accuracy.  Farming speed tends to be slower even when including the extra +2 from incarnate shifts.  Farming also tends to focus on fire or smashing and lethal and there is alot of cold and negative energy in DA,  so thats another hurdle as well.

 

 

Edited June 4, 2022 by TheZag

[KaizenSoze]

A while ago I pointed out that these missions were fun.

 

There are few of us that will run them for an hour or so. Now and then.

 

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 hours ago, TheZag said:

Farming DA missions puts you against much tougher enemies then you find in PI.  If you arent built for it then they can shred your defense or accuracy.  Farming speed tends to be slower even when including the extra +2 from incarnate shifts.  Farming also tends to focus on fire or smashing and lethal and there is alot of cold and negative energy in DA,  so thats another hurdle as well.

 

Much tougher enemies is arguable since they're only +1 instead of the +3s you face in PI.

[On-Fire Dude]

I've only done it with other players a couple of times, but I regularly speed through the "Burden" mission for the Empyrians.

[Agorazium]

Oh I love the DA arcs, I run them on all my 50’s…but come to think of it I haven’t seen any teams recruiting while leveling my current alts. Some of the enemy groups are pretty gnarly if you’re bringing lowbies along with you.

[Clave Dark 5]

I've joined so many 50s teams in PI that I routinely skip them anymore.  Always join a DA team when I see one, but they don't come up too often, no.  It is pretty easy to run a "any levels welcome!" team in PI, but DA can eat the wrong low level toons alive, multiple times I speak from experience ha ha).

[Carnifax]

11 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Much tougher enemies is arguable since they're only +1 instead of the +3s you face in PI.

Possibly more annoying though. The snakey-ladies have a lot of visual spam, Knives have caltrops (I still find the knives pretty easy but they can pop a squishy with their Hail of Bullets), Tsoo and the BP have annoyances like Hurricane and nasty debuffs. 

 

I think Claves point about "Any level can join" is appropriate too. I'd feel bad if I dragged a level 15 into DA missions. 

[KaizenSoze]

5 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I've joined so many 50s teams in PI that I routinely skip them anymore.  Always join a DA team when I see one, but they don't come up too often, no.  It is pretty easy to run a "any levels welcome!" team in PI, but DA can eat the wrong low level toons alive, multiple times I speak from experience ha ha).

If you have 3-4 53s on the team you can steamroll with the rest of the team being low level.

 

Still though the amount of AOEs DA mobs throw around will regularly drop lowbies in 2-3 seconds if they aren't careful.

[Shred Monkey]

I think people don't farm DA because it IS post 50.  I think most PI teams are pre50 players getting to 50, ASAP.

 

You are right, however that there is an opportunity there that people don't use often.