The Chestrunners Thread

hey i've been skimming though this thread and decided to try a few runs since iv accumulated about 100 picks. problem is i only have r2 lucky and r1 treasure hunter leaving me a retention rate in hm of 17% making me pretty much blow through them all. would you suggest starting off with simple nm to boost up a rank or just stick to hm?

Run NM till you are treasure 4 (1200) or treasure 5, after that i suggest you hit HM, its costly starting off in HM with pretty low retention

Depends on what your main interest is. Dropwise HM is always the better option. But if you want to focus mainly on titles then yes NM gives better synergy between luck and treasure

Some time ago I mentioned keeping a statsheet of my chestrunning, so I figured I might as well start one seeing as how I have some 3,500 chests left to run. Since I spend 100% of my chestrunning time in Cantha, I thought that 14 areas broken into 250 chests sessions would max the rest of my title. I just finished the first area, Bukdek Byway (aka: "The Plagueborn Chest") because, yes, I hate myself that much lol. It took me 376 runs to actually spawn 251 chests (at 1 chest max spawn per run when a chest does show up!).

This is the bukdek byway spreadsheet I made.

Summary findings based on a relatively small sample of 251 chests:

Gold Items: Purple Items
155:72

Lockpicks Retained: Broken
106:144

Tomes Dropped Elite: Regular
11:10

Armors Gold: Purple
52:30 (yes, 82 armors from 251 chests, or 32%!!)

I gained about 25,500 lucky points (now at 1,351,440) and 14,000 unlucky (now at 360,360)

Other stuff worth mentioning - no vig runes - sup, major, minor - none! Just a couple of shaman (about 2.3k ea). No elite rit tomes, but a few reg ones, and most other tomes (except derv, para obviously). Only weapon worth keeping was a q12 tac +45/st +10/demons plagueborn shield, and a couple of 15^50 plagueborn swords. No dual-mod off-hands or staves worth keeping.

Overall, I proved at least to myself that this run sucks, lol. But, it is one of the 14 areas I plan to run to finish my title. I will be updating this post (or making a new one) as I finish each area. I will also be working on different formats for the spreadsheet to make it easier for sorting and reporting (and compiling). It's just that bukdek in particular needed special fields for no spawn, etc.

If you've got comments on how I can make the table better lmk. Comments like "what a loser" or "get a life" don't help, I know how pathetic this endeavor is, lol so no need to remind me. It's just that chestrunning is so mind-numbingly grindalicious, updating table information as I go is a welcome distraction.

anyways, see you out there!

past week i ran about 400-500 chests in pongmei, i got 12-15 echovalds, 6-7 gothic defenders, 7-8 guardian of the hunt, 3-4 ornate shields, 3-4 gothic dual axes

Only one echovald was dual modded and it had a 10 vs Dragons ( I thought it said demons and im like supa supa kawaiiiiii =^__________^= then i saw and im like >_>") one gothic defender was worth keeping, all GotH's were single modded, along with all the ornates, and one 15^50 r9 gothic dual axe, so all in all, the run for me wasnt that great

Ive ran about 120 picks in Xanquang Skyway (w/e vermin haven), with some retains. A lot of purple and useless golds. Only thing worth mentioning from the 120+ chests is a q11 20/20 fire celestial staff, which im very happy about .

@Lawliet - Yea I've encountered an a$$load of echos and not once have I gotten a good dual mod, i'd estimate i've gotten about 30-40 in the past month and a half.
Too many Holy branches there xD

best run imo is morostrav trail u can get paper fans,lanterns, echos, gothicks and guardian of the hunts there, iv only ran 80 lockpicks there so far but already made profit from only elites + crap iv sold to merchant. Ran +600 lockpiks [email protected] got few nice drop there like 20/10 bo staff which sold for 15e but i made atleast 100k loss there with 600picks. Morostrav its not so fast if u after for title and isnt so easy as pongmei but ill like morostrav more :P.

there was some map for this few pages ago and im using that route

@king, holy beajesus, half my drops were all holy branches im like Q_Q
@kermeli, not one bo staff dropped for me... Q_Q

What are the builds you guys run for chest running?

Tried running morostrav a bit but it was frustrating dying a lot.

@Lawliet - for realz, lol merch and hero food ftw
@Llint - take assassin secondary and then take heros with paragon secondary and put Incoming + FB then filler skills, its what I do.

i got a Question, i run all kinds of chest because pogmei and silent surf only, are just boring

last 80lp's I ran were at Wajjun Bazaar.. where only 1 and if lucky maybe 2 chest spawn each time among the jade brotherhood mobs.
from the 100~ Chests i opened i got like 25% Grapes and A LOT of armors, BUT i also got 2 Dragon staffs (both crap mods, but max) AND 4 very nice Winged Staffs (awesome skinn imo). Now comes my question does anyone have some experience with this zone? Do these dragon staffs realy drop as much as they did for me in this zone?

i know Lian, Dragon's Petal can drop Dragon staffs (he dropped me a 20/10 inspiration one a year ago)

anywayz Grtz Our Blood

^ damn ur lucky 2 dragon staff never got one :O!

iv been running the halycob job luxon assasins, Got so far paper fan, few spiked targes and other cool stuff, its nice & easy & fast, too bad it drops kinda alot of armors still worth a try, i heard the chests there can drop bo staffs also, not sure tho.

@ our blood - the only dragon staff i ever got was q13 dom 20/10 from the am fah in naphui explorable out of senji's corner -- on my 2nd chest ever down there! I've run it a bunch since and the best thing I ever get from there now are sup vigors, had 4 so far.

Now onto Part 2 of 14 of my chestrun tally. This time I ran 250 chests in Xaquang Skyway ("Vermin Chests") in HM. Below is a quick summary of my results, and the excel spreadsheet is included too (xaquang skyway data)

So basically, it took me 140 runs to open 250 chests. (8 non-spawn runs)

Gold Items: Purple Items
166:84

Lockpicks Retained: Broken
92:158

Tomes Dropped Elite: Regular
10:9

Armors Gold: Purple
8:1

I gained about 26,250 lucky points (now at 1,377,690) and 16,060 unlucky (now at 374,420)

as far as decent drops, I got a crapload of 20/10 celestial staves in different flavors, a q12 20/20 fire staff, a couple of interesting dual-mod koi scepters, a variety of celestial bows (+5e, 15^50, etc), and a few intersting off-hands (accursed icons, earth scrolls, etc). Overall, this run beats the hell out of the plagueborn chest (part 1 of 14 for me), but I think I already knew that! This is still one of my favorite places to chestrun.

As far as the vs demon stuff falling more regularly here, I got 2x more vs demon shields from the plagueborn chest (2 total, and 0 here).

Now onto Pongmei, I'll report in a few days.

Hmm.. i just got my first ever dragon staff from pongmei valley, at the jade brotherhood chest, looks like it drop from chests near jade brotherhoods :P.
Iv ran +1k chests at pongmei and now i got my first drago, with ball sucking mods tho :/

For what it's worth -
I finished Treasure Hunter last week and am almost done with Lucky (2,381,874). Finished Unlucky last month. I have run most of the locations mentioned in this thread and in my opinion Witman's Folly is the fastest and cheapest way to get the title. This place has the highest lockpick retention rate while still giving Treasure Hunter points ("high-end" chests) and I consistently get 40-50 chests per hour. If you start from Port Sledge, go into Witman's Folly and then back into Port Sledge, then back to Witman's Folly and start running. When you resign you'll appear right at the gate and you can start another run in less than a second.

The drops in Witman's Folly are generally garbage though I have gotten q9 Fellblades, a double vampiric bow and a fair amount of Major and Superior Vigor runes. I'm not running it for the drops though, I run it for speed and lowest lockpick burn rate while maxing all four titles.

Witman's gives the exact same retention rate as Luxon chests, and imo Silent Surf is faster. A minumum of 4chests/3min is pretty high. I could clock in 60+ chests/hour.

My first try i pongmei gave me a r10 15% stance gothic dual. its a keeper

I'm counting ID time, merch time, bio breaks, etc. in that chests per hour rate... that is the average rate over 7000+ chests.

I ran Silent Surf too, I think your estimates of the time involved are optimistic. Silent Surf is a much bigger area and thus the chests are more widely spaced, and you also have more area to search.

In this case, isn't running outside of Boreal faster? Dwarven Stability, Echo and Dash, IAU on top of it in case another chest spawns where the plants pop up.

i have done 5 chests in 3 minutes multiple times in pongmei and gyala hatchery., silent surf is not that big but it is sure cluttered with alot of creeps.

FINALLY!! FKING FINALLY!

My first ever dual mod demon shield!! after MANY MANY hours of running



i know its str & kinda sucky second mod but perf mods and not high rq im happy with it <3. Gonna buy more lockpicks

I ran for Grandmaster years ago and this is the spot I did it. You can't go wrong with a zone this small that always has 3 chests in predictable locations. Once you are familiar with the layout and can guess where remaining chests will be take a death and shrine to the ledge to make the run even faster. We're talking 3 chests in just over 2 minutes (3 at the absolute maximum) consistently, not ideally.

I ran Whitmans. Gave up after 7k chests though as it was extremely boring.

/agree

this is where i ended up after trying all of the other places. i used to run the others just for variety so I wouldn't get bored, but i eventually gave that up too... the other places were just slower for me. I ran all of these solo on a paragon/assassin with shadowform. (except for KC, where i had some heroes with incoming/fallback/charge... the heroes get killed while you open the chest and resign)

@ drkn: Ice Cliff Chasms is a pretty good run, 3-5 chests in 5-6 minutes usually. best case is 5 chests in 5 minutes, similar to witman's folly. worst case is 3 chests in 6 minutes, or half as fast. I ran the whole thing including the north side, it might be faster if you just stick with the 1-2 chests where the wurms are... but then you are spending more time zoning instead of opening chests.

Here are my thoughts on the other places.
Witman's Folly: 3 chests almost always, runtime 3 min. 1 chest per minute consistently.
Ice Cliff Chasms: 3-5 chests, runtime 5 minutes. If you only get the 1-2 chests on the south side it looks more like Kilroy.
Poisoned Outcrops: 3-5 chests, runtime 6-8 minutes. Lightbringer helps. the margonites have snare hexes and the undead have knockdowns.
Kilroy: 1 chest almost always, runtime 30-60s. This is pretty fast but when you include zoning time this doesn't look as good. It can be done with any profession though, even in hardmode.
Gyala/Silent Surf: 3-5 chests in 5-7 minutes (best case?). For me these were more difficult because my build was not 100% spellproof and this slowed me down, the creeping carp have siphon speed and expunge enchantments. Also these areas are much larger than Witman's or Kilroy or Kaineng, so there is more ground to cover. I gave up on them pretty quickly. Loot is probably better than the other places but I wasn't too concerned with loot.
Kaineng: 1 chest sometimes (70%?), runtime 45s. This is the chest outside of Kaineng Center. It doesn't always spawn but I got a bunch of elite tomes out of it. I have read that this run is affected by the Winds of Change content, it may not be viable anymore.

gyala is any easy 3-4 minutes with a warrior, id expect it be much faster with a derv or assassin, you must be taking a different route if you are running into carps.

Lol, 5-7 minutes for Silent Surf? I run it in 3 minutes, always. I even had a couple 5 chests in 2 minutes due to awesomesause spawns. And since you ran in NM (I think), it's even easier. It's so laughably easy because everything is fighting each other instead of you. Even in HM it's a joke.

Also, you're saying Witman's is so awesome because it always has 3 chests and the run takes 3 minutes. Well, Silent Surf is a 3 minute run as well (I think about 3:20-3:40 depending on spawns) and the absolute minimum of chests you'll get is 3. And the times you get 3 chests are ridiculous... It's like 10% of the times you get 3 chests, 60% of the times you get 4 and about 30% you get 5. This is based on personal exp of about 5k chests being ran there...

Pongmei is about the same speed, but less times 5 chests, more like 80% of the times you get 4 chests and then a 10-10 split for 3 and 5..

I've put a few thousand into Pongmei. 4's were more common in my experience running from Boreas westbound having 2 chests often clumped not far from each other between Tanglewood/Maatu. 5 is virtually unheard of and 3's are not unusual at all. What makes this spot appealing is the mixture of drops, it's 3 overlapping drop tables ("city" with Canthan Dragon Staves and Paper Fans/Jugs throughout, Echovald and Jade Sea), not the chest rate per unit time.

i usually get 5 chests, always get atleast 4 though, yeh the overlapping tables r good, city>echovald>jade for me

Regarding pongmei, after checking the yeti cave and plagueborn chest by the tunnel (ne of large plague mob) I always end up with 5 chests. I'm on chest 135 of my 250 chest tally for pongmei (part 3 of 14 across cantha) and I've gotten 5 chest runs 90% of the time or more as I haven't actually tallied it up yet. Anyway, lucky streak or not everybody is checking all the nooks and crannies? I ran it hundreds of times before my "experiment" and I wasn't regularly running toward those areas and was getting a lot of 3-4 chest runs. Just my .02

Ive started running that route as well and I've been getting 5 chests most of the time running just the main route.

I'm thinking it wouldn't be worth it to go check the nook and crannies for that 1 extra chest, because it'd probably add another minute or so. just imo

Do you mind sharing the route? and the build if possible. I'm new to chestrunning and as long as I get out of Boreas Seabed, I see a chest surrounded by wallows. My build is prone to toucher and couldn't survive that. Any suggestion?

contact me anytime ig: argeris the sin and I'll run it a few times with you, share my build, etc. until you get the hang of it - I'd be happy to do so. Alternatively, just go back a few pages and bright and others have represented the route, possible chest spawn locations, builds, and other information regarding pongmei (and other cantha locales). It's a great run which I enjoy doing so just fl me and we can run it. I play generally from 8pm ish until about 9ish, nightly PST (GMT-7). All I do is chestrun and spend occassional time in Kama trying to sell crap I get c/r'ing so anytime I'm on is good.

Regarding surviving the "touching", as bad as that sounds, just equip a few heros either paragon or /p with (besides, fall back and incoming) "can't touch this" and that ought to save you long enough to get in and out of the chest area. As long as you've got a healer or two in your fodder group (those sacrificial lambs that run along with you until they die), you shouldn't have a problem with the wallows. Also, if your build has "IAS" in it, the island guardians won't knock you down with SoJ to allow the rots to feast on you. IAS also gets you out of the crippling situations around the wardens or the kd's from the dragon moss and kirin near the end of the route and the am fah sins in the mud pit in the middle of the route.

Sorry for the novel, but one more key skill that I like to use in pongmei is Shadow of Haste, which you can run deep into mobs and then stance-cancel out back to safety, works like a charm for those chests deep in the yeti cave, plagueborn tunnel, am fah muck, and jade brotherhood field.

HtH and Gl.
see you out there!

First thank you. I didn't think of bringing my heroes before and always run solo, haha. Now with CTT, wallows can't stop me no more.
Shadow of haste trick is cool too!

I've been running the first level of Cathedral of Flames on my sin forever. It's a very easy run and has 1-3 chests in under 2 minutes. The only thing that can stop you is Savage Slash, used by the Crypt Ghouls. Once you figure out to use glyph then HoS away and cast SF, you're pretty much unstoppable.

OwZTgs0+ZS6Tn5ACBim8usBC3BA

done this run for some time too, never seen 3 chests though... Imho it's 1-2.
also the run shouldn't take 2 minutes, just bring a bunch of hero's with speedboosts and you'll be done in 1 min.

Okay just ran 800lockpicks@ pongmei. I didnt ran chests near those island guards&wallows coz they only give shit lol. 800 lockpick cost me 1mil of plat, got 350k back from runes + golds i sold to merchant, ~375k back from elites,
this was with 33% retention rate, got treasure rank up so 36% with last 200 lockpick.

okay some drops

3 Bo staffs ( all gold and im really amazed i got so many )
1 dragon staff
only got few gold echos, and MANY purples :s also got 1 gold paper fan and few purples.

with good retention rate i would say pongmei is good money, i would have got atleast like 200k from mods etc but i just dont have patience to sell those, i also merched lots of 15^50 kukris etc weps, those could sell for like 10k probs, but i dont have patience to sell em ^^

atleast 40e profit for me and i had REALLY bad luck with shields, usually i get 2-3 gold echos with 80lockpicks, now i got like 4-5 with 800 lockpicks...

I just tried this one a few times, did 10 runs and the chest never spawned. This is on a character that's done WoC.

I'm also having poorer luck than usual in Pongmei; before I did WoC I'd always find 4-5 chests, now I'm averaging three chests per run.

Yep Bukdek run is ruined by WoC as are certain mob spawns in pongmei including the large plagueborn one and an am fah or two iirc. I ran it with a friend who had done WoC and the usual run was noticeably different. Luckily I hadn't done WoC yet :/

Hey, I've built up a large collection of lockpicks over the years and I've decided to try my luck at chest running for some rare weapons. I've heard that r8's rarely ever drop in HM, is that true? I know that Pongmei Valley is great for pretty much everything but what about swords? Where is a good place to chest run rare swords with the possibility of r8's dropping? Thanks.

First of all let me start by saying I have been out of this game for over 2 years. As far as my knowledge goes r8 don't drop from chests, and especially not in HM. If you want rare swords Pongmei Valley is an excellent choice. I started running there myself this week and I must say the amount of rare skins is amazing. Gothic swords, Jade swords, Runic axe, Gothic (dual) axe, Echovald shield, Ornate shield, ...