The Art of ALTing: Rough Astral Diamonds (Updated for Mod 15)

This article is part of our “Alternate Characters Guide” that explains the current functions of alts and the best ways to utilize them. If it feels a bit disjointed, click through to our guide hub, get an introduction, and links to even more related topics.


In this article we discuss ways to farm Astral Diamonds with alternate characters. Different tasks grant rough Astral Diamonds which can be refined into “real” ones. There’s a daily account limit of [sc name=”astralicon”]100,000 and alt toons can help you getting there. Don’t forget however that ADs stay on the character that refined them, although the limit is account wide. You still have to manually transfer them to your main using your shared bank.

Do the Weeklies

The most important thing in generating ADs with alts are the weekly campaign quests that grant [sc name=”astralicon”]4,500 each. You should run them regularly as soon as they become available. In most cases this is more efficient than doing other stuff and rotating characters on each day should make sure that it doesn’t feel too grindy throughout a week.

[sc name=”discord” ]

Arcane Reservoir (Sharandar), The Red Wizards (Dread Ring) and Protecting the Portal (Tyranny of Dragons) are quick and easy. Biggrin’s Tomb (Icewind Dale), Ballad of Baphomet (Underdark), and Storming the Castle (Stronghold) are a little longer and/or more challenging, and I personally wouldn’t recommend Reclaiming the Hoard unless you’re doing the dailies in the Well of Dragons anyway. This means alts can contribute as much as [sc name=”astralicon”]27,000 per day (six weeklies + VIP bonus) on big accounts. Add the random queues on your main and this should already bring you close to the refining limit.

Random Queues

Random Queues are no longer a premier way of obtaining Astral Diamonds on alts since they are on an account limit since Ravenloft. You can still utilize alts to benefit from the role bonuses though. Having a healer, dps, and tank ready to grab whatever role bonus is currently up can come in handy. Obviously your toons have to be sufficiently geared to master the queues. The high-end “Advanced” and “Expert” queues are also mostly completed within premades that usually use the current meta setup. So being able to fill certain needs gives you a distinct advantage in completing your randoms each day.

Campaign Keys

Campaign keys get another honorable mention in this article. They are character bound and more toons means you can craft more keys. Since you won’t be running too many dungeons on alts for farming purposes, campaign keys are of limited use. What still makes sense though is doing a daily Demogorgon. It generates enough Faerzress on a gold completion (which is no biggie nowadays) to craft another Lesser Demonic Key, making it a nice quick daily task for some RADs and RPs!

Other than that I can’t really recommend farming the campaign keys unless you somehow need to do a specific dungeon for progression anyway. Fangbreaker Island is pretty much the only other dungeon that is able to generate its own key, and it’s not a good farming destination for ADs alone.

VIP Re-Roll Tokens

Since the Module 15 changes of Salvage and Dungeons Keys, alts have sort of been upgraded thanks to the new re-roll tokens. To make the most out of you “VIP” keys before Mod 15, you needed to run three dungeons on each alternate character. That wasn’t great, especially since the added benefit compared to mains in terms of speed and rewards wasn’t likely there. Now however you get three re-roll tokens per day that are bound to character and have an added benefit: Do one run, get four shots at decent loot. Even if you miss out, you still likely get two chests worth of ADs, Seals and RP for the account. So it makes a lot of sense to spread daily runs across your account.

Obviously this only applies when your main(s) have used all of their re-rolls. Otherwise it’s still better to use them instead. But once your leftover is used up, it’s better to bring a toon with fresh re-rolls to a dungeon than running multiple ones on the same character.

Monitor Your Seals

When running content, it easily happens that you hit one of the caps with your seals and that’s throwing away precious AD. Especially make sure to frequently trade in your Seals of the Brave.


Do you use your alts to generate rough Astral Diamonds? What’s your approach and best practice? Share your experience in the comments below and visit 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.

6 thoughts on “The Art of ALTing: Rough Astral Diamonds (Updated for Mod 15)

  • December 26, 2017 at 2:26 pm
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    Interesting read Joshi, running the weeklies is one thing I do all I time.
    What you forgot to mention though is the bonus AD you gain on salvage and refining the rough AD when you invoke on all toons.
    Get it right and that 4k for an Underdark ring becomes 6.5k

    • July 6, 2018 at 12:56 pm
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      seems like you should now rotate on your alts in a strict schedule for who actually refines each day to capture the bonus..?
      letting it build up then use?

  • November 13, 2018 at 10:41 am
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    That is for console onjy, in PC the salvage no longer exists

    • November 13, 2018 at 11:57 am
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      Thanks for the call-out. This article was updated for Module 15, but we forgot to adjust the title…

  • November 13, 2018 at 11:06 am
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    Yeah, I’m a little confused. PC doesn’t have salvage any more, so the ‘campaign keys’ paragraph is confusing (I’m guessing you mean items you can resell rather than ‘salvage’). Then it refers to re-roll tokens, which consoles don’t have.

    Yeah, missing invokes – that’s huge for RP’s, AD bonus, and coupons.

    Also, can’t you cash-in campaign currency for AD now too? I think there was supposed to be a daily limit for that.

    You could also mention Guild Marks. I don’t run influence on all my toons, but having a few characters lets you run those quests multiple times each day.

    • November 13, 2018 at 11:59 am
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      Thanks. The word “salvage” in that paragraph was an oversight. Article is for Module 15.

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