Adamastor

[Shadow Metal]

Adamastor

• Adamastor now only drops Rewards Merits to the same character once every eighteen hours; Amount of merits earned remains the same as before.

 

I was setting a timer and popping over to fight him earning six merits an hour for a few hours a day, the few days a week, I have available to do this.

 

I guess now I'll just go make a fire farmer and make 30 million per run instead. The acceptable exploit.  

[Glacier Peak]

34 minutes ago, Shadow Metal said:

Adamastor

• Adamastor now only drops Rewards Merits to the same character once every eighteen hours; Amount of merits earned remains the same as before.

 

I was setting a timer and popping over to fight him earning six merits an hour for a few hours a day, the few days a week, I have available to do this.

 

I guess now I'll just go make a fire farmer and make 30 million per run instead. The acceptable exploit.  

Do the weekly strike event if all you have is a few hours a week and you're trying to make merits. 

[Ironblade]

A durable, high damage character can earn 20 merits in 5 minutes by doing the Signature Story Arc 1, chapter 1.  This amount can be earned once per week on each character.  Run a bunch of different characters through that and it's serious merits.

[Ironblade]

50 minutes ago, Shadow Metal said:

I was setting a timer and popping over to fight him earning six merits an hour for a few hours a day, the few days a week, I have available to do this.

 

Back again to comment that this is a horribly slow way to earn merits.

Probably the best way to get merits - but which depends on other people's schedule - is Hamidon raids.  On Everlasting, they do Hami raids 2-3 times every day and each time they summon him twice.  You can get 120 merits in about 15 minutes.  This is per character, per day.  They run them at 7PM EST, 10PM and midnight (not sure if the midnight one is every single day).  Plus one in the Abyss on Saturday afternoon.

 

If you're willing to deal with the tedious grind you described, instead transfer a character to Everlasting (or any shard with scheduled raids) and get some easy merits.

[MoonSheep]

worth keeping an eye on the events tab in-game for other merit granting GMs popping up too

[Greycat]

3 hours ago, Ironblade said:

A durable, high damage character can earn 20 merits in 5 minutes by doing the Signature Story Arc 1, chapter 1.  This amount can be earned once per week on each character.  Run a bunch of different characters through that and it's serious merits.

 

You don't even need to be a "durable, high damage" character. Just run at base settings, bring a couple purples (and maybe a breakfree,) and you can do it at level with any character in around 10 minutes. (Remember you *don't* have to fight everything - the purples, I usually bring for the second mission to dodge the rock guys and their attacks while I click glowies.)

[Greycat]

3 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

Do the weekly strike event if all you have is a few hours a week and you're trying to make merits. 

 

... or watch for Hami raids. Heck, make a character (or transfer one) to Everlasting  - there are multiple dual-Hami runs during the afternoon/evening.  Futzing around for a few merits from Adamastor, vs 120 for one double-run (80 for the first merit reward during the day, 40 for the following one?) Seems like an easy choice... typically an MSR right after all but the last one too.

[Clave Dark 5]

(You don't even need to farm for merits in the first place, tbh.)

Edited February 21 by Clave Dark 5

[tidge]

12 hours ago, Ironblade said:

A durable, high damage character can earn 20 merits in 5 minutes by doing the Signature Story Arc 1, chapter 1.  This amount can be earned once per week on each character.  Run a bunch of different characters through that and it's serious merits.

 

You also don't need to be durable or high-level to run SSA1, and it can be infinitely re-run for 5 merits. Once you know what to do, it should take under 7 minutes for a vast majority of characters.

[Marshal_General]

I may have looked at it wrong, but I believe I got 10 + 6 merits. My coffee deprived memory thinks we only got 10 for the first time a day.

[WuTang]

I am new....but 6 merits an hour? At that rate you could rando build a new hero and just run the first story arcs in Atlas then mail, delete, and repeat and prob do better than 6 an hour.

Everyone else's advise seems way better though... but if ya wanna stick to the 6 an hour thing...

Edited February 21 by WuTang

[Jack Power]

For me Merits are somthing that more or less radomly trickles in. To be honest I still haven't figured out what to do with them all... 

 

//Jack

[Grouchybeast]

For a bit of variety, the Twilight's Son Task Force was designed to be run solo, is pretty easy once you get the hang of the maps, and gives 7 merits.

[Player2]

If you have only a short time but want some easy merits, just explore a few zones to get all the badges.  It's usually 8 badges per zone and you get 5 merits.  No combat, one less merit... but fast and easy so you can do several zones at a time.  If you get all the badges, just make a new stalker and repeat the process.  Even at level 1, you can get around most zones with only a couple to worry about snipers who can still spot and kill you.  When you get all the badges you can... email them to yourself, claim with your main character, then delete the temporary stalker and go around again.

[tidge]

52 minutes ago, Marshal_General said:

I may have looked at it wrong, but I believe I got 10 + 6 merits. My coffee deprived memory thinks we only got 10 for the first time a day.

First time in the 24 hour period was 10 merits (and still is). Subsequent defeats in the same 24 hour (more like 18 IIRC) were 6 merits. As others have written: waiting for the timer to reset for 6 merits is not an efficient way to earn merits.

[Ironblade]

10 hours ago, Greycat said:

You don't even need to be a "durable, high damage" character. Just run at base settings, bring a couple purples

 

1 hour ago, tidge said:

You also don't need to be durable or high-level to run SSA1, and it can be infinitely re-run for 5 merits.

 

I know, I know!  I actually have a spreadsheet to track the timer and enough characters that I used to run it multiple times per day, every day, and get the full 20 merits every time.  I've run it on every character I have.

 

Also worth noting, for anyone that hasn't run the Signature Story Arcs for the merits:

The FIRST time you run each chapter on a character does NOT count against the timer.  So, when they first came out, I ran my badger through EVERY chapter of both arcs in one day.  Arc 1 is 7 chapters and arc 2 is 5.  So that was 12 chapters for a total of 240 merits in a few hours.  And then, he went back and ran chapter 1 for 20 merits, which started the timer.

 

FYI, for anyone who wants to do something similar, the "one week timer" is actually 162 hours.  There are 168 hours in a week.

[Number Six]

17 hours ago, Shadow Metal said:

I was setting a timer and popping over to fight him earning six merits an hour for a few hours a day, the few days a week, I have available to do this.

 

I'm surprised you were able to consistently. Might depend on which shard. GMs were often getting tickets about being unable to fight Adamastor because of people AFK camping the summoning spot with masterminds and the summon power on auto.

[Ironblade]

37 minutes ago, Number Six said:

I'm surprised you were able to consistently. Might depend on which shard. GMs were often getting tickets about being unable to fight Adamastor because of people AFK camping the summoning spot with masterminds and the summon power on auto.

 

um...  You're either thinking of someone else's post or misread mine.  I was talking about running the Signature Story Arcs for 20 merits.

[ZacKing]

I agree with those suggesting Hami Raids if they fit your schedule.  Fastest way to earn a chunk of merits every day. 

 

5 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

(You don't even need to farm for merits in the first place, tbh.)

 

Everyone knows this already.  No need to keep repeating it.  If people are looking for advice and suggestions for various ways to farm merits to improve their characters, let them.  They're going to do it anyway regardless if you tell them they don't need to.

[Marshal_General]

2 hours ago, tidge said:

First time in the 24 hour period was 10 merits (and still is). Subsequent defeats in the same 24 hour (more like 18 IIRC) were 6 merits. As others have written: waiting for the timer to reset for 6 merits is not an efficient way to earn merits.

Yes, but I think I got 16 for my first defeat of the day. I will do it again tonight and see if I imagined it 

[Oklahoman]

18 hours ago, Shadow Metal said:

I guess now I'll just go make a fire farmer and make 30 million per run instead. The acceptable exploit. 

 

I understand your time is limited. If you can make it to a Hami raid you can make 160 reward merits in about 15-20 minutes for 3 runs. You can use those to buy 480 enhancement converters which right now can easily sell for 60,000 inf each on /ah. That's going to be very similar to the return you are seeing from fire farming, likely with much less time and effort.

 

On Excelsior, the 5pm Central daily raid in The Abyss tends to squeeze in 5-6 runs because @Laucianna does however many she can within a 30 minute window. Couple that with the nightly 9pm Central raids in The Hive (which I believe normally does 3 runs) you could be earning 400 reward merits daily. On the weekends, as much as I can, I do an early 3pm Central raid in the Abyss and we always do 3-4 runs. If I run the Sunday 5pm Central run, I tend to start when the zone fills (which can be 15-30 minutes early) and we go until 15 or 30 minutes after the hour (which can be 6 or more runs). Potentially, Sunday Hamis could net you 560 reward merits, or more if you bring in new characters each run or hop between servers.

 

The downside to Hamis (at least on Excelsior) is you need to be in zone well before the advertised start time as the zone will fill up. That's a lot of downtime unless you have a second account you can log into and play elsewhere until the raid starts. If not, it's also an excellent time to share dad jokes in broadcast. 🙂 

[Laucianna]

8 minutes ago, Oklahoman said:

 

I understand your time is limited. If you can make it to a Hami raid you can make 160 reward merits in about 15-20 minutes for 3 runs. You can use those to buy 480 enhancement converters which right now can easily sell for 60,000 inf each on /ah. That's going to be very similar to the return you are seeing from fire farming, likely with much less time and effort.

 

On Excelsior, the 5pm Central daily raid in The Abyss tends to squeeze in 5-6 runs because @Laucianna does however many she can within a 30 minute window. Couple that with the nightly 9pm Central raids in The Hive (which I believe normally does 3 runs) you could be earning 400 reward merits daily. On the weekends, as much as I can, I do an early 3pm Central raid in the Abyss and we always do 3-4 runs. If I run the Sunday 5pm Central run, I tend to start when the zone fills (which can be 15-30 minutes early) and we go until 15 or 30 minutes after the hour (which can be 6 or more runs). Potentially, Sunday Hamis could net you 560 reward merits, or more if you bring in new characters each run or hop between servers.

 

The downside to Hamis (at least on Excelsior) is you need to be in zone well before the advertised start time as the zone will fill up. That's a lot of downtime unless you have a second account you can log into and play elsewhere until the raid starts. If not, it's also an excellent time to share dad jokes in broadcast. 🙂 

On average active fire farming will earn you around 100m an hour, Doing hami will only net you around 66m ❤️ Currently 4 star Aeon if you can get a good team nets you the highest profit thanks to the chance of the good enhancement and the extra Aether rewards at around 137m an hour.

[Greldek]

Isn't Lusca the merit pinata now? I thought i read she was worth like 20 merits now. Go farm that.

 

[tidge]

2 hours ago, Marshal_General said:

Yes, but I think I got 16 for my first defeat of the day. I will do it again tonight and see if I imagined it 

50s would get 10 merits + 5 threads IIRC, maybe that is what you saw?

[tidge]

30 minutes ago, Greldek said:

Isn't Lusca the merit pinata now? I thought i read she was worth like 20 merits now. Go farm that.

 

I decided to try nuLusca with my monster hunter. I did get 22 merits (plus 1 pet recipe, + 2 monster Aether's) but it took me 30+ minutes. I didn't think this was a good use of my (solo) time.

 

Those aren't terrible rewards for time spent, but I could have spent the same time in a less stressful set of SSA1 runs ... Likely 5 of them... In the same amount of time.