Which one, Ingots or Incense?

So I’m aiming to get the Shining Blade, but have very little time nowadays to play. My first goal is to get the mastery gift needed for the weapon, either Gift of Maguuma Mastery or Gift of Desert Mastery. In particular, which is easier to get? The Crystal Ingots or Funerary Incense?

Having recently created Shining Blade, I can say that as both require amalgamated gemstones (250 total), they are about the same, difficulty-wise. If you have all your HoT masteries, but not all PoF, Gift of Maguuma Mastery might be the way to go. Likewise for map comp. Best of luck!

funerary incense is severely time gated....

I have done both ways and I think Jungle is the way to go. Funerary incense timegate gets old pretty quick. Add in the 400 elegy mosaics that are also needed for the desert mastery gift and the desert gift just got frustrating and grindy doing the same hearts and bounties over and over and over.

@Lonewolf Kai.3682 said:which is easier to get? The Crystal Ingots or Funerary Incense?

Jungle version: You need 250 crystalline ingots.

If you don't know the locations of Noxious Pods (and assuming sufficient machetes), you can easily open 50 per meta, so maximum five hours in Dragon Stand. You also need fulgurite, which probably can be obtained on its own from the mats you collect via the pods plus the map completions.

Desert version: you need 250 Funerary Essences plus 400 elegy mosaics.

Funerary essences cost 5 trade contracts and require completing hearts to access the vendor. Assuming you collect plenty of contracts from other sources (likely, in my opinion), you can obtain 8 per day from heart vendors, for a minimum grind of 33 days. You can also purchase arbitrary amounts using e-mosaics, so see below for that.

E-mosaics drop from Legendary bounties (assume about 4-5 per bounty) and meta events (probably also 5 is safe to assume). So assume a minimum of 50 Desert legendary bounties/meta events.

Assuming you start from 0 currency in either region, Dragon Stand sound a lot more palatable to me than 50 of anything (not to mention I hate doing hearts).

However, you might be doing other content for other reasons and find yourself with 70% of Desert currency and only 10% of Jungle mats. Or you might simply be burnt out from the Jungle and pumped for the Desert. In other words, no matter which is theoretically more efficient, your circumstances might affect which is better for you.

Hey thanks for the great insights everyone. Sounds like Jungle may be the way to go for me.