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How to make astral diamonds (other than by credit card)
Quizzical
Member LegendaryPosts: 25,483
On another thread, Mendel commented that he had spent 12k astral diamonds on something that ended up being junk as though this were a ruinous problem. 12k really isn't much if you know how to make astral diamonds in this game. But I thought, if a sharp forum poster like Mendel had missed that, then lots of other, less sharp denizens around here probably did, too. So I'll explain.
The main source of astral diamonds is the leadership profession. You initially get one profession slot, but get others as you level up. You get profession slots when your main level hits 10, 30, and 60, when some profession hits level 3, 10, and 20, when three professions reach level 20, when you make something with a 100% speed bonus, and when you make something of tier 3 quality. So eventually, you get nine slots. I'll come back to how to open them efficiently later.
Let's suppose now that you have nine profession slots and have maxed leadership. How do you get your astral diamonds? Let's assume conservatively that you only log in once per day. On that one time, you have three slots launch "Battle Elemental Cultists" for 2000 astral diamonds each, three slots launch "Destroy Enemy Camp" for 1600 diamonds each, and three launch something else, let's say "Protect Magical Goods Market" for 500 diamonds each. Recall that you cannot have more than three copies of the same profession task in process simultaneously, which is why we don't just use nine copies of "Battle Elemental Cultists". That gets you 12300 astral diamonds per day.
And very importantly, this is per character, not total across an entire account. If you have five characters, they each get 12,300 astral diamonds per day. Cryptic has always been more alt-friendly than a lot of other game studios. Your costs for many things (though importantly, not mounts if you buy one with zen) will have to be paid for each character, but your income also scales with your number of characters.
Above, we were estimating conservatively that you'd only log in once per day. If you can log in repeatedly at different hours of day, you can do "Destroy Enemy Camp" three times per two days and "Protect Magical Goods Market" twice per day, sometimes replacing it by "Capture Bandit Leader" (1500 astral diamonds). That gets you about 17,000 astral diamonds per day. And again, this is per character, not account wide. This is also just from crafting, so it ignores invocation, salvage, and anything that involves actually playing the game. That adds up pretty quickly.
As I said above, this is the main thing that causes astral diamonds to be created in the game. Daily quests and invocation are much smaller sources. If you're not doing leadership, you're not getting very many astral diamonds compared to the people who are. So don't ignore the crafting system, or only think about gear or consumables that your character uses directly, unless you're willing to spend real-life money to get what you want. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)
Now, I assumed that you had opened all nine profession slots and maxed leadership. So how do you get there efficiently? You probably want to rank stuff up quickly, but you probably also want to get some good astral diamonds along the way.
Early on, just level up leadership as fast as you can. Do "Tactical Training" once you reach level 7, "War Games Training" at level 13, and "Train for the Protector's Tourney" at 21 if you know it's going to be several hours before you can do anything again, unless you've got enough good astral diamond producing things available to fill all of your profession slots.
Speaking of which, the first good astral diamond producing task is "Battle Undead" at level 10. That's 400 AD in 6 hours, and not rare. The next good one is "Collect Taxes" at level 12, good for 800 AD in 8 hours. It requires a district map, but starting at level 10, you get access to the rare task "Seek Out Maps", which gives you two district maps in six hours. So once you reach level 10, you want to grab "Seek Out Maps" when it pops for you, and "Battle Undead" to fill other slots.
At level 13, you get "Patrol the Mines", which gives you no AD, but does give you 120 profession experience in only 4 hours, as well as a mining claim. You also get the rare task, "Protect Diamond Shipment", which gives you 1600 AD in 14 hours, but uses up a mining claim. Do "Patrol the Mines" often enough to always have mining claims available to grab "Protect Diamond Shipment" when it pops for you. At level 17, you get "Deliver Metals", which uses three mining claims to give you 1200 AD in 10 hours. So don't worry about generating too many mining claims that you'll never have use for.
At level 16, you get "Fight off Spellplagued", which is good for 400 AD in 6 hours. That's the same as "Battle Undead", but this makes it possible to do both at once if you like. "Fight off Spellplagued" also gives 120 profession experience rather than 80.
It takes quite a while to get leadership to rank 25. But it doesn't take that long to get it to rank 16, by which point, you're making a lot of astral diamonds, even if not as much as you'll get at rank 25.
Now let's return to how to open all of those slots. The ones based on your level or a profession level are obvious. But you can probably get the slots for a 100% speed bonus or tier 3 crafting sooner than you think. For the speed bonus, pick an armor crafting profession (tailoring, leatherworking, mailsmithing, platesmithing), as that's where it's cheapest to buy the profession assets. Then buy four of the blue quality profession workers off the auction house; this probably costs you about 50k AD or so in total. Use all four together to create something random, and then you've unlocked the slot.
Tier 3 crafting is a little harder. For starters, you can't get a tier 3 crafting result until level 10. Additionally, the profession tools are much more expensive than the profession people. Still, shop around for which profession makes it cheapest to get some blue and purple assets. You can use the top tier tools (for producing items at profession level 14 or higher) for lower level production; you just need one of whichever tool corresponds to the what you're producing. Purple tools that are used for only one profession tend to be cheapest to buy. Also consider buying four blues and crafting them into a purple, as that's often cheaper due to the rates at which people get the profession assets from packs. Still, be ready to spend a few hundred thousand AD for the crafting tools.
But even here, there are two important points to remember, both as a result of profession assets never becoming bound to a character or account. First, you can profession assets once, pass them around among your characters, and unlock the extra slots for all of your characters at once, not just one. Second, once you're done opening slots, you can sell the assets back on the auction house and recoup about 90% of what you paid. So you might, for example, need 50k to buy the people to unlock the 100% speed boost slot, but you get 45k back when you sell them. It can take a while to save up the money to buy the tools, but you can speed this up greatly by spending $10 to get zen, selling this for 500K AD, buying the tools, opening the slots, selling the tools back, and then still having 450k AD for your money.
Finally, for any professions other than leadership and perhaps alchemy, green workers are cheap. Don't chain together 21 tasks at 18 hours each to train the tier 3 workers. That's a waste of time that could be spent leveling or producing AD. Rather, buy green workers off the auction house for about 1K each.
Comments
"you do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around and that's what it's all about"
Bravo for an excellent write up Quiz, never realized the depth the game had, and you laid it all out so well here.
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Thanks, Quiz, that helped a bit. I've been playing just over a month, and I only have 4 slots open to date, with my max skill of Leadership only at 8. Most of the quests you mentioned, I haven't seen, but it appears that I might should just go ahead and concentrate on Leadership until I get it to 20. That will give me 6 tasks, 3 for AD harvesting and 3 for working on the next profession towards that 7th slot. So far, I've been limited to blue level tasks (rare) that offer ADs, and only once have I seen any with more than 400. I usually get more from Invocations that from Leadership, but using your insight, that should change.
I did not know that bit about alts helping out. I've really been focused on the one character, and haven't really put much time into the professions on my single alt.
I had been relying on the getting ADs from the Daily Dungeon and Daily Skirmish. The original purpose of my single alt was to be able to run the lower level skirmishes (which I thought were much more fun that the higher level ones) for the ADs, and trade them up to my main. Mod 6 pretty much broke those plans. I can't complete the Skirmishes with my main without a very forgiving group (healing spec DC with inadequate gear and questionable feats/power distribution). And the alt became eligible for the Khix's Daily quests after mod 6, and it has yet to reward him for any of the dungeons (3) or skirmish runs (4) I have completed -- even though the quest at the alt's level only asks for 1 skirmish, not 3 like the higher level.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
There is no real IG economy in this game, anyway.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
If they cost 10k each, then it costs 40k to buy four of them. My numbers were 50k to buy four, so your numbers are right in that ballpark.
Here are a few tips I've come up with for starting out.
First get to level 5. The first quest about the Crown of Neverwinter should get you there.
From level 5 you can do skirmishes. When the skirmish bonus hour is up (these rotate) you gain 1,000 AD for every skirmish completed. The good news is that the first skirmish is regularly farmed and is incredibly quick and easy. You can do it in about 3 minutes and you'll never have to wait in queue. So do as many of these in the hour you can before you get bored. Five or so will take no more than 20 minutes and will earn you 5,000 AD.
Continue levelling with the starter quests and skirmishes (only do the skirmishes when the bonus is up, it's a waste of time otherwise). Make sure you do the Blacklake District story quests as the last provides a bag.
After finishing those quests you'll be at level 10, where you can start professions. Make sure you return to Protector's Enclave to pick up the relevant quests. As ever, start with Leadership and start levelling that.
You can continue to do skirmishes to gain AD throughout the game. Do the first one continually for as long as it's available, as it's so quick and easy and is almost free AD. The skirmishes gradually get harder and longer, but until level 60 they're rarely more than 10 mins or so. You will also obtain a daily quest to complete a skirmish, which will grant another bascially free 1,000 AD each day. With level increases this goes up to 4,000 AD per day.
You can also do dungeons to get 3,000 AD per day, but it's not a great use of time as the gear isn't worthwhile and it takes a long time. They're more for exp gain, which doesn't help much with getting AD.
Lastly, if you want to grind a bit, use a spare slot just to do skirmishes and professions.
Most people will, it's designed that way.
It's a great write-up and makes everything sound deceptively easy and simple. But the keyword there is "deceptively". Most people will look at the directions and say: "Of course I can do this, no problem !"
Six weeks later they'll be swiping the credit card !
Let's face it, if players can easily make AD for free, PW makes no money. The system is carefully crafted to create the illusion that "anyone" can potentially earn tons of free AD. You can, but you'll have to quit your day job...
I suppose it depends on how much is tons. It's extremely easy to make 10,000 AD per day, but some people claim to be making 200K or more, which must be a full time job.
For me, I see Zen as something I can supplement with AD from the game, while AD isn't something I think about buying with cash. When my AD is getting a bit high I just convert 10k or so to 25 Zen.
To the contrary, most people who play a "free to play" game will never pay a dime.
The payment model is gentler than some of the more flagrant pay to win models, as you never slam into a wall of "and now you must pay money to continue". Rather, it's a wall of "and now it will take you two months to save up the AD for what you want". Get impatient and you can have it today if only you pull out your credit card.
Also important is that the delays are not two months of grinding for hours per day. You could just pop in for a few minutes here and there, or even just use the gateway to do crafting through a browser.
The way I see it is I'm happy to pay a sub for a game I like, and since this game has no optional sub at all and no expansion costs, paying the equivalent for the kind of features you want is more than fair enough. If they had an optional sub that provided 500 Zen per month and a couple of bonuses I think it'd be very popular. That being said, there's not much you'd need to spend on if you don't want the vastly overpriced mounts (the basic one is only 500 Zen and is account wide).