Material Grinding Personal Experience

[Xx3rikdr3wxX]

I am now in the material grinding stage for the weapons trophies. I have read multiple reddit posts and forums and no one seems to have a definitive answer on difficulty or word usage. I just wanted to relay my personal experience so far to see if it can help anyone. I have tried easy, normal, and hard mode all with and without drop rates words being used. Hard mode with words in use I got zero items grinding the basement of Emil's mansion for 40 minutes. I switched to normal mode with drop words enabled and pulled 13 dented metal bats and one clock within 15 minutes. By far normal mode with drop words enabled has done the best for me. I have not began the dreaded eggs or necklaces yet but I will see how those go when I get there. 

 

Level 42

+25% Drop Rate on Weapon and Magic 

[Astellorn]

Eggs are easy AF in the DLC, Necklaces sucked real bad and Hard mode is a waste of time slower kills = time wasted. As for drop rate words I didn't use any not sure they really do much.

[starcrunch061]

Adding to this, don’t bother with hard mode. It might (MIGHT) increase drop rates (doubtful), but I am fully convinced that it does not help to raise RARE drop rates.

 

I tested this with the robots (because they always drop items). I used no words to raise drop rates (no point). I fought 300 robots in easy mode and 300 in hard mode, noting when I received a yellow orb,

 

Easy mode: 16 yellow orbs

Hard Mode: 15 yellow orbs

 

Statistically insignificant. Hard mode also did nothing to improve drops from the boxes in B2 of Junk Heap.

 

Does hard mode change drop rates from shades? No idea, but it’s much easier for my level 34 Nier to blast easy shades into oblivion, than to fight on hard mode. If anyone has info on overall drop rates for shades, I’d love to see/hear it, but my experience with rare drop rates is identical to the PS3 version: hard mode doesn’t help at all.

 

On 6/25/2021 at 9:23 PM, Astellorn said:

Eggs are easy AF in the DLC

Where are you finding them exactly? And is the DLC to which you refer the diary, or something else? I didn’t get much of anything from the diary enemies or boxes.

Edited July 25, 2021 by starcrunch061

[Xylobe]

10 minutes ago, starcrunch061 said:

Where are you finding them exactly? And is the DLC to which you refer the diary, or something else? I didn’t get much of anything from the diary enemies or boxes.

 

Eagle Eggs drop pretty commonly from the boxes on the bridge in the third door of the diary area. You won't get one every run, but it takes just a few minutes to try again and it's drastically faster than farming the Aerie.

[Astellorn]

On 26/07/2021 at 6:11 AM, starcrunch061 said:

Adding to this, don’t bother with hard mode. It might (MIGHT) increase drop rates (doubtful), but I am fully convinced that it does not help to raise RARE drop rates.

 

I tested this with the robots (because they always drop items). I used no words to raise drop rates (no point). I fought 300 robots in easy mode and 300 in hard mode, noting when I received a yellow orb,

 

Easy mode: 16 yellow orbs

Hard Mode: 15 yellow orbs

 

Statistically insignificant. Hard mode also did nothing to improve drops from the boxes in B2 of Junk Heap.

 

Does hard mode change drop rates from shades? No idea, but it’s much easier for my level 34 Nier to blast easy shades into oblivion, than to fight on hard mode. If anyone has info on overall drop rates for shades, I’d love to see/hear it, but my experience with rare drop rates is identical to the PS3 version: hard mode doesn’t help at all.

 

Where are you finding them exactly? And is the DLC to which you refer the diary, or something else? I didn’t get much of anything from the diary enemies or boxes.

 

Yeah, clear the bridge with all the boxes and then jump off the side and redo it really easy.

[Maverick6146]

I think hard mode did increase the "quality" of the drop.

 

I did about 8-10 diary 3 runs with 1 Damascus steel, also a dozen the Junk Heap B2 runs with another. After boosting the difficulty I probably got one every two or three runs, along with a few memory alloys and large gears.

[ElrayMickaelius]

Game changer at least for me. Memory Alloy

 

YouTube comment from Paulie:

 

Paulie

vor 11 Monaten

 

"memory alloys are one of the hardest grinds in particular, i tried doing this strat for an hour but got nothing but then found another strat that got all of the memory alloys i needed in 30 minutes: "I for one had some trouble getting Memory alloys, especially since you have to leave for the outside to respawn the robots. Instead, set the difficulty to hard (not cause of the drop-rate, but because you die faster), skip the first robot on the B2 floor. Go on the rail-cart, and in the very next room a robot will spawn. Kill it, and see what drop you get. If you dont get a Memory alloy, let the remaining small drones kill you. You will respawn just outside the room. Repeat until you get an alloy. When you recieve that one, go ahead and go to the next room to the south where 2 robots spawn. Kill them and see if you get an alloy, if not, die. Repeat. With this method you'll get atleast 2 Memory alloys per run, which is pretty decent imo." this is from 2011 but it still works really well, im surprised most articles and videos dont ever show some of the better ways to get these materials cause there is a decade of documentation that is still relevant especially if you want to upgrade all of the weapons"

[psycho_clank314]

The material grind in this game is insane. It took like 15-20 hours of grinding for me. 

[Boorish]

Damn, this grind is terrible. I am 8 hours in and I still have 15 more items to grind.

[UberniXi]

Oh boy. Can't wait to start the grind on this. Everything seems time consuming in this game. The traveling in Act I (with no fast travel), money grinding, trying to grow the Lunar Tear, etc. I've just got into Act II myself, so I guess I know a bit about what I'm in for. ?