Farming Subtle Essence (Again)

Yes, I know. I’ve already given you 2-3 ways to farm Subtle Essence. This is yet another strategy from DonReader and once again sits among the best and fastest ways to farm Subtle Essene (or any essence for that matter). At some point I’m going to have to compare all these methods careful to determine which one is actually the most productive. Today’s sports anywhere from 120-180 Subtle Essence an hour, over double the estimates of my first farming strategy from several weeks ago. If you have more strategies, please send them in and they will be tested and compared accordingly. Also keep in mind, it’s not about the specific strategies that we’re finding but the general mechanics that make them work (see how to farm).

So what’s the deal with this one? Simple, instead of farming a boss by starting a new quest and racing to it and instead of running backwards to a boss, we’re going to farm a random spawning cellar which has either 1) a treasure hunter, 2) an elite pack, 3) a treasure chest and 4) a possibly even a rare pack. Blizzard has reported that elite mobs will have better loot tables than bosses. Given that, it’s good news that around half the times you use this 30 second method you’ll find one of these elite mobs.

You can use just about any quest for this trick, as long as it gives you the way point to the Old Ruins. Use the way point and race over to the left to see if the cellar is available. If it isn’t (about 10-20% of the time), use the T hotkey to town portal back to town, leave the game and rejoin (resume). When you rejoin the game it will re-randomize the maps and you can check for the cellar again.

If the cellar is there, go in, kill, look and teleport back. It’s that simple. If the cellar spawns you will get between 2-3 magic items per 30 second run. Due to the fact it won’t always spawn, you’ll tend to average between 2-3 magic items per minute or 120-180 magic items per hour. DonReader ran for a 30 minute test and earned 93 magic items!

If this method persists through the release of the game, this is going to be an incredibly profitable way to farm Exquisite Essence on Inferno difficulty before everyone else discovers it.

Is there a farming method or technique that I am missing? Let me know and I’ll try it out.

Important: Many of the strategies and tips I share here were originally inspired by the people at the Diablo 3 Gold Secrets Forum. If you're serious about making the big bucks in Diablo 3, or just being the best players, you need to signup ASAP.

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5 Comments.

  1. These tips are by far the more amazing I’ve seen from any D3 blog.

    Everyone else is just yappin about nothin, this kind of stuff is what is most helpful for when retail hits.

    Thanks Meldora for all the guides and keep them coming, we don’t get tired of hearing about them!

  2. Interesting method… and thanks for sharing, :D .

    I did a trial for 10 mins as I didn’t have the time to do a proper 30 min run and ended up with:

    20 magic items
    1891 gold

    I had a fair bit of bad luck, with probably 30%+ of runs having a broken cellar and over half of the times it DID work having only the boss (1 drop) rather than the treasure seeker (usually 2 drops). 10 mins isn’t a long time so it’s hard to tell if these are at all accurate results… but yeah. Mileage may vary!

    This was with a relatively well-equipped 13 DH with 32 DPS and 62% gold find using Vault+Preparation for the fastest possible runs.

    I’d also recommend getting the Old Ruins CHECKPOINT (not Waypoint) from the earliest quests as it means you can just spawn in the ruins rather than having to WP in from town.

  3. This on Nightmare? cuz i did it in norm and while the cellar was there no magic items dropped.

    • This was Normal during the beta. I haven’t tested this farming strategy in the live version yet.I plan to do that on Hell and/or Inferno. It sounds like it doesn’t work yet.

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