Are We Back to Alt Astral Diamond Farming?

In today’s article I’d like to touch on a topic that I’ve been thinking about for quite a while now. As you might know I’m very much interested in alternate characters, both in terms of playing and theory. Ideally the goal should be to encourage playing alts without making them too strong as farms. While Neverwinter had a problem in the early years with alt armies that were by far the best way to accumulate Astral Diamonds, it has taken the right steps over the last couple of mods in my opinion. The devs introduced a variety of account bound gear to supply alts, and at the same time limited undergeared or idle characters to generate wealth. Which means you actually had to play them, but they were easier to equip.

Back to the Alts?

Random Queues in my opinion however stalled the progress in that particular area. Before they got introduced in Mod 12, the best way to earn Astral Diamonds was to farm dungeons with mains. In most cases, the Salvage you would get was worth more than running your daily dungeons on lesser geared toons. That being said, doing eTOS all day wasn’t really that much fun. But that way you could at least profit from the mains you had established. Of course we had those 2x ETOS / 2x ESOT farms on multiple chars as well, but you had to be decently equipped to get into the profitable 30-minute spurts. So undergeared toons weren’t much of a factor.

Now I’m slowly feeling like it’s changing again. That’s because the two easiest queues in the system net the most profit, and can be run by fresh 70s pretty much without any gear. To make matters worse, being most efficient means switching between multiple toons and skipping certain long content. What would you do? Grind through an Underdark skirmish or do two or three Master of the Hunts at the same time? The randomness of the feature really is what makes bringing a lot of alts attractive again. 2x ETOS / 2x ESOT worked because we could choose the fastest content for our daily completions on our strongest characters. Now gear is an insignificant factor again, it matters much more to not get stuck in the wrong type of content.

Much More of an Issue in the Middle Class

That being said, I think this is mostly an issue of the middle class. If you’re having your 16-17k toon set and can run the latest content, it’s best to do just that and not mess around with pulling other people’s farm alts through the Cloak Tower all day. But if you own an up-and-coming 12k, then your best shot at making AD is alt play again. Get them Rank 7s, basic Chult gear, and rock the queues! It’s probably more profitable than doing stuff on your main.

That’s annoying, because I really felt we were on the right track in that regard. I’m not entirely sure how this can be solved though. Random queue overall are still a plus in my book, and this not enough of an issue to warrant a full rework. I’d still like to see wealth generation across all tiers of players to be something that you do with mains. It just doesn’t feel right that you bring up characters just to be able to farm Astral Diamonds for the account.


What’s your take on this issue? Do you run many alts through the random queues or mostly stick to your mains? Share your thoughts on our social channels, in the comments below, or the corresponding thread on our message board!

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j0Shi

j0Shi plays the Neverwinter MMORPG since the open BETA in 2013 and is a regular contributor to the blog and the whole UN:Project. Originally a Guardian Fighter, he has built up ALTs of all classes and plays on BIS/near-BIS level.

11 thoughts on “Are We Back to Alt Astral Diamond Farming?

  • March 29, 2018 at 1:25 pm
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    I make 500k+ ad per day alt farming so yes it is back

    • April 27, 2018 at 2:54 pm
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      how with the 36k a day cap? Id like to know so I can grind

  • March 30, 2018 at 1:09 am
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    Same here. Every play session, i do a guild RED run with main character, and after it’s alt AD farming for the rest of the time. Thanks to Cryptic, i never was so full of AD since they limit the gain in random queue.

  • March 30, 2018 at 4:55 pm
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    Same. I farm on my alt(s). All, of which are pretty well equipped. Most around 10k IL with no campaign boons. I hope the Dev’s read this. What I want them to know is I speed run to the end and vote to kick any low level lacky not keeping up. Change toon, repeat! Haha, nice system you implemented shit for brains!

  • March 30, 2018 at 9:26 pm
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    I am not sure why anyone would run random q, except to farm AD. It certainly is not for the company of bots, afkers, and worse that you can get matched up with the random q. Some of the random q runs through ToDG, POM, and IG are getting as toxic as pvp. My particular favorite are the people that dont want to farm POM or ToDG, so they just switch alts without leaving the party so they do not get hit with the leaver’s penalty. They leave before entering the starting circle so the rest of the party is stuck waiting for them to time out before they can do anything in POM or ToDG.

  • March 31, 2018 at 3:07 am
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    Well, honestly, POM just sucks, and has for awhile. Unless you have a group that knows how to run it, you’re basically stuck with a bronze run, everytime. If get dropped in, and there are multiple sub 8ks, I immediately ditch. But, I actually leave the dungeon, take my penalty, and move to another alt. By the time I work my way back around, the penalty is done.

  • March 31, 2018 at 7:22 pm
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    Sounds like they need to make the leaver penalty account wide

  • March 31, 2018 at 9:19 pm
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    It would be better is they got rid of the leaver penalty. Making it account wide would just increase the incentive to switch alts in stead of leaving the instance in order to avoid getting hit by the penalty.

  • April 5, 2018 at 4:16 am
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    “It just doesn’t feel right that you bring up character just to be able to farm Astral Diamonds for the account.”

    Yeah and if you are 16k you bring up an alternate DC character just to be taken along in that end game content -_-

    • April 5, 2018 at 6:30 am
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      Ain’t that apples and oranges? My whole point is that you should legitimately play your characters to earn AD. Which you absolutely do while running end game content. And the difference in required item levels and “TONG ready” is quite big as well to be honest. You can instantly equip any character to farm RQs and I have 7k-10k toons running them daily without any trouble. For solid TONG Viability you’re probably looking more towards 14k.

  • April 12, 2018 at 1:02 am
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    Sorry for the late reply.

    Yes it might be a completely different set of reasons but with a similar outcome. It just leaves this sour taste behind that after logging in you don’t klick on your main to do stuff but instead scroll down the character menu* to play on different chars to supply your main – wether that’s AD as you stated or Ampoules or Seals of the Brave as I tried to link to it.

    It is Apples and Oranges but it both tastes bonkers You don’t legitimately earn anything with the character you started / want to play the game, that’s what I tried to express. 🙂

    *We can bring those Alts up the line soon™, so it’ll be more like playing a main 😀

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