Game Tips: How to ACTUALLY Farm Weapons
Two days ago, I posted the following poll:
Hi, I need to gather some data for an upcoming Game Tips post. Please answer:
The results of the poll and the anon asks/replies I got after it show me that there is a huge knowledge gap regarding how to farm weapons.
A lot of ink is spilled on what to farm, but not much on how to - combine this with the game itself providing absolutely no guidance, and it's no wonder most casual players take forever to get anything.
This isn't a burden on the player, honestly. GBF only got a real raid finder last year, and it gives you barely any indication that you're supposed to join other players raids to progress. It's just really bad at explaining itself, but that's why I'm here.
This post will either be a "duh, of course everyone knows that" or a "how in the world did I not know this", depending on whether you're a wiki/tutorial reader or not.
Anyway, I'll break down how to read a boss drop table, and how to use it to your advantage to get the weapons you want as fast as possible.
Host Chests, as the name implies, drop when you host a raid. They tend to have a pretty good drop rate for weapons, and, according to my poll above, are what most players like to farm with.
There are, however, a few issues that stop Host Chests from being a reasonable way to farm actively:
There's a hard limit to how many you can host.
Common raid etiquette states you should be able to solo, or at least damage a boss significantly when you're the host - this makes each raid take a while to clear.
The drop rate, as we'll see later, isn't even better than farming actively.
Note: MVP chests also show up with the red icon, but have a different drop table.
Blue Chests are where it's at for weapon farming.
The following image is the Host, MVP, and Blue chest table for Avatar.
If you're farming Avatar, or any other "Magna 2" boss, chances are you want to hit the Regalia Weapons table - so that's what we'll focus on.
Looking at this image, all 3 of these chests have different rates for Regalia Weapons:
It stands to reason, then, that if we want Regalia Weapons, we want Blue Chests.
The Host chests are also good, of course, but there's a hard limit to how many of them we can get per day. Not only that, but when we host the raid, we're expected to be able to kill it, so it'll take longer.
Assuming a raid has space for everyone (i.e. it's not a 6-man raid), there's no burden on anyone joining to contribute all the way to the kill - so we can focus on just attacking enough.
To get a blue chest, you need to reach the value displayed, in honors. In the case of Avatar, as seen above - around 440,000 honors will guarantee you one.
Aside from also getting MVP, to have the highest possible chance of pulling a Regalia Weapon, all you need is 440,000 honors - or about 44,000,000 Damage.
Assuming the raid doesn't stall, that's all the damage you need to deal. You can then hit the Home button and go back to the raid finder for another - as you can be in up to three raids at a time.
There are many ways to reach this damage threshold for Blue Chests, but the one I like recommending to fledgling players is Relic Buster.
By pressing Engage Augments and Limit Burst, your entire team will gain full charge bar. You can then add in summons, or any other buffs and skills that help you deal more damage to reach the threshold in one or two turns.
Bring in characters with really high charge attack damage, or with additional effects on charge attack. If you have Beelzebub, make sure to call him immediately too for a huge influx of damage.
You'll have to play around to figure out how to do this for every element, as it'll depend on your roster and weapon choices. Check each raid's page on the wiki for what the amount you need to deal is and try and get it as fast as possible!
Some raids don't have Blue Chests, and instead put their weapons in the standard Gold Chest pool.
For example, Anima-Animus Core doesn't have a Blue Chest. If you're farming it to get Agonize, your target is the Gold "Chest 1".
Now, we don't have full data on drop rates for this, so just pretend there's a tiny number on the left of "Malice Weapons". If you've done it you know they're super rare.
For Gold Chests, your objective is to increase Drop Rate. Here's where you bring in things like Treasure Hunter, Tien in your team, Journey Drops, Kaguya/Nobiyo summons, etc.
Drop Rate Up affects only the chance for gold chests to appear. Drop Rate Up never affects the chance of a specific item appearing from the chest, nor does it have any effect at all on Host, MVP, or Blue chests.
If the chest you want is already at 100%, you don't need drop rate up.
Purple Chests will drop from bosses currently on an extra drop campaign, as such:
Purple chests mechanics aren't fully documented, so this section will be kinda barebones.
When joining an extra drops raid, you have a chance to roll a Purple Chest. This chance is higher the more honors you deal, and I believe also caps at the same value as Blue, but I'm not quite sure.
Purple Chests have a different drop table from Host and Blue, but can still roll Regalia, Ennead, or Ancestral weapons, depending on the boss - albeit at a lower rate. This makes them a nice bonus to your Blue farming.
For hosting raids, you'll receive twice as many chests of all types - Host, Blue, and Purple included. Despite my previous advice, you may want to host quests on-campaign, as you do get significantly more rolls there.
When you host a raid, you'll receive the Host Chest, and most likely also a Blue Chest, unless everyone else beats you to the punch.
As we've seen, Blue and Host have roughly similar drop rates for the weapons you want. This means that hosting a raid and going through all the trouble of killing the whole thing only grants you two rolls at the weapon.
In the time it takes you to do one host, you could've gotten much more than two rolls by joining other raids and taking 1-2 turns.
I myself prefer minimizing my burnout of the game by not doing every daily all the time, and instead focusing only on any I really want to expedite.
There are other things you may want to chase host chests for, though, such as Omega Anima or Six Dragon Materials. Which ones are worth doing will depend on your current goals.
Personally, I do Proto/Ultimate Bahamut (Impossible), as they can drop Gold Bricks, as well as the Six Dragons, since the drop rate for their materials is notably much higher from host chests.
If I ever need an Ennead or Magna 2 weapon I lack for something, I just hit blue chests.
My suggestion is to host only on the ones you really want to expedite. Everything else, you can farm by joining. It's much faster, and it frees you from feeling like you have to spend hours every day doing your hosts for a weapon roll.
If you want a weapon, the best way is to go for the Blue or Gold chest, depending on the raid.
Blue Chests have an honor requirement, so you can't "one-punch" raids hoping to get them.
Drop Rate up affects only the chance for Gold Chests to appear, not the items inside, and has no effect on Blue/Host/Purple chests.
You really don't have to host everything all the time. It's much faster to just target things you want, and saves you from the endless daily quest grind.
For my own personal validation, let me end this one with a poll - to verify that I'm not just blowing hot air here.
Did you learn anything from this?
Yes, I didn't know most of this!
I already did blue chest, but didn't know other parts
I already knew all of this.
Voting ended onJan 16, 2024
kianamaiart
gummygunk
vaporwave
stormborns
