Wintersday farming

First of all, what are the best locations? So far, my favorites are:

1. Outside Nolani Academy, for gargoyles (and a few Storm Riders, possibly).
2. Near Althea's Ghost, east from the Nolani Academy, for Charr.

Other obvious places are:

Great Northern Wall mission, for Charr (EDIT: I meant Fort Ranik. See below.)
The Breach, for Charr, leaving from Pikens.
Outside Sardelac Sanitarium, for a mix of grawl and gargoyles (uh, which direction is best?)

For an MM solo build, the best I've come up with is

Animate Vampiric Horror (the main self heal)
Animate Bone Fiend
Deadly Swarm (faster than Rotting Flesh)
Signet of Lost Souls (good follow to Deadly Swarm, while I'm doing my first minion recruiting)
Blood of the Master
Taste of Death (for emergencies)
Glyph of Lesser Energy (for speed)

and, uh, which elite?

I don't have Reapers Mark, Icy Veins, Jagged Bones, or Aura of the Lich (which would be pointless anyway, as the main problem is degen). Virulence doesn't fit well. That leaves mainly Tainted Flesh, Animate Flesh Golem, and Glyph of Energy (but that's overkill now that GoLE has been buffed).

Anyhow, this works against gargoyles, charr, and the occasional hydras I ran into after a wrong turn.

For nuking gargoyles, I tried a standard SF build with Mantra of Lightning added in, and it rocked. However, to keep going and kill the Charr too, I think an earth armor spell or two would be needed. Unarmored, you take much more damage from them than Aura of Restoration can handle. (On the other hand, Aura is enough to cover the Conjure Phantasm degen that is the only significant hurt the gargoyles put on you.)

And here's one playing tip, for those new to farming the area -- kill the Resurrect Gargoyles first. Because if you don't, they live up to their names, and you just have to keep repeating yourself.

Oh yeah -- if farming meleers (grawl for sure, maybe charr), it's fun to make room for Flame Burst.

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In Kryta, the obvious targets are Nebo Terrace, where you can get three of the four collectables plus traditional Wintersday drops, and the Gates of Kryta mission, where there are LOTS of undead.

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For ice imps, the obvious places are outside Ice Caves of Sorrow or outside Marhan's Grotto.

For Stone Summit I guess the earlier in the Shiverpeaks the better.

For Azure Shadows (Frozen Remains) I guess Talus Chute outside Camp Rancor, but as you know there will also be one out of three or four possible bosses spawning there.

Sweet, i can't wait to put my solo Dervish to farm these places. I'll post comments and stuff once i have rolled up a bit.

Having a summary of collectors and items would be nice too.

Im doing the Gates of Kryta mission with my W/Mo Griffon build to get the items. Found a place with around 30 mobs xD They drop Orr Emblems to exchange for Candy Canes.

there are a few posts about this on the forum i belive

It turns out that in the Fort Ranik mission, every enemy is a charr.

I soloed it with my MM a couple of times.

Close to 20 charr carvings per run. 5ish cane shards.

A lot of hides, too. They have a little value still, although just a small fraction of what it was when people actually needed fur regularly.

My place! Noob Island in Elona... Termites, skales, etc. From Champion's Dawn to The Astralarium...rezone and repeat!

Many CC Shards (4-5 each run) and MANY Juvenile Termites Legs... 3 legs for one prize.... in Kamadan!

With my Barrage Ranger ... very easy!

Good Hunting!

just solo gargoyls with R/Mo Barage and live vic. Group all the gargoils, then genocide them all

I do Undead in GoK mission. Avatar of Balthazar + Eremite's Attack/Mystic Sweep = dead undead

I walk outside Ascalon City with a warrior/x and use my hammer to 2 hit KO gargoyles. Easy enough. 14 Canes in 10 minutes.

I'm farming Storm Riders for Stormy Eyes outside Serenity Temple to get my Spiked Eggnogs for the title!

Fort ranik.

but during my usual rihlon refuge spider runs I've gotten at least 2 shards a run. Now I have 74

i farm GoK mission too w/mo triple chop+cyclone axe... live vicarously+mending... balth spirit for energy management (remember to kill the patroll that attacks the 2 guys... the spawn wud be almost doubled at the farming area behind the house )

Hehe Today I did a farm of 2 hours and got just 300 Crawl Necklaces. I did around 5 min a run and got between 8/12 Necklaces in one round as wel 2/5 Shards. I took a AOE skill and 2 channeling skills with my Ritualist which instandly killed the Crawl's. Also I took Mist of Haste (mesmer) to run a little.

What I do is run in a group of Crawls, check if another group is close, if, lure them, if not just kill these onces. When ran in, wait until the Crawl with hammer start to agro you, do AOE boem all dead, Tab a healer, spike, tab another one and spike, this will instandly kill with attribute 16 on channeling. Then run in another one an well the rest it logic stuff. It's damn boring afther a few hours, but believe me, put on some music and go crazy rush farming.

I thought Orr Emblems farming was better, but I tried Gargoyles, Crawl, Fire Imps, Charr and Undead, but I should say, Undead is 2nd option.

There are wintersday collectors for orr emblems and charr carvings. Where are they?

Emblems-LA Carving-Ascalon

i'm a fan of running through the Great Northern Wall mission, and instead of running back at the end, just stand and take on the ENTIRE charr invasion force- massive amounts of carvings, plus lots of grawl necklaces if you kill the grawl the way there... not to mention cc shards and dye drops

Grawl neckalces -> Exit Ruins of Surmia with an ele. Star Bust, Flame Djinn's Haste, Flame Burst, etc. Or a D/x (Eremite's and Mystic Sweep'll kill the Grawls before they have a chance to do Counter Blow).

Orr Emblems -> 55 SoJ in Cursed Lands. GoK takes too long even if you go behind the house for the monster undead mob. =/

Go to nolani -> enter misson -> open gate -> aoe the char -> pick up multiple char carvings -> exit mission -> etc.

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I like the gargoyles the best , since there skulls are used for both spiked eggnog and candycanes

And I outside nolani is pretty great for that. I wont be stopping until the 1st

Yeah, Gargoyle Skulls for sure.
Theres like 1000 gargoyles in that area I swear :S

My 2 farming cents!

I just head out of any Ascalon Area with my Necro using a blood/death build. I kill a few things (charr/garoyles/grawl) and then animate them. Then let my army kill while I collect skulls/carvings/necklaces. Got me lots of shards and other drops as well as trading in for about 50 candy canes so far. Can NEVER have too many of them.

As far as Kamadan goes, my Dervish just scythes through all the level 1 and 2 stuff and I've ended up with about 20 more candy canes after trades.

Loved the Save Wintersday thread too. It was fun to quest with Rudi the Red Nosed Reindeer!

Thank you Areanet for providing a great game and continuing to make it fun and interesting.

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Probably best place for grawl is just outside frontier gate to the left , there's quite a few and its quite a short run.

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So um, for that nice mob of easily accessible imps outside of marhans grotto....

My problem is that farming with my warrior was painfully slow, does the old mo/me 55 work any better for farming imps? I was pretty sure I tried I can't remember if it works with the new update though, I'm sort of a pve noob Maybe a ranger would be faster? Just seems like the low level creatures are your best bet.

Kamadan Rift Warden mission with a ranger > all. Frozen Ectos + CC Shards ftw.

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Heres a map for an easy place to farm.
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3.../WGfarmmap.jpg

and heres the build.
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...Gfarmbuild.jpg

you might have to be careful against the rangers. 2 or 3 is ok, but around the middle there are around 5. Just kill them quick, and dont stop casting.

You can see i got more than just WGCC materials. I got a siler dye and a bunch of shards. One run takes about 30 mins. Each can give around 20-25 Candy canes and 10 shards.
Use burning speed to run really fast. Against rangers and storm riders use rodgorts with fireball. Against char use the close up skills. Its very hard to die so dont be worried about it. Pump everything into Energy store and fire. Im not sure its the best route but I think its pretty fast.