Pinches of Stardust

[notebene.3190]

Do people just do the meta once a day for them? I don't see very many folks doing or calling out events anymore. I'm working on Honorary Astral Ward and all I have left are 3 of the essences for 3 of the sub achievements. It's a little slow going and was wondering how other people are approaching needing dust.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

10 minutes ago, notebene.3190 said:

Do people just do the meta once a day for them? I don't see very many folks doing or calling out events anymore. I'm working on Honorary Astral Ward and all I have left are 3 of the essences for 3 of the sub achievements. It's a little slow going and was wondering how other people are approaching needing dust.

You can use the skyscale fireball to pop the krptis turrets. They drop a magic orb that gives pinches of stardust when you collect it. There seems to be a limit though, and I'm not sure if it's per day or per map instance, but you can get 100 per day that way at least.

[genjonah.1253]

I’m also guessing it’s somewhat related to what time of day you’re playing. After work I tend to find both meta and rift trains going 

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

2 minutes ago, genjonah.1253 said:

I’m also guessing it’s somewhat related to what time of day you’re playing. After work I tend to find both meta and rift trains going 

Rifts don't give pinches of stardust.

[genjonah.1253]

8 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Rifts don't give pinches of stardust.

I’m aware, just saying both tend to be going around the end of the standard work day. Though you can get some tangentially, picking up the dots on your skyscale 

[notebene.3190]

Thanks for the input. I just realized I still get quite a bit doing the meta again, even though I don't get the daily box. I got like 23-26(?) for completing the meta, and then the usually small handouts for each event leading up to it, but there are a lot of those boxes.

I'm going to go looking for some turrets! Two essences to go.

[genjonah.1253]

12 minutes ago, notebene.3190 said:

Thanks for the input. I just realized I still get quite a bit doing the meta again, even though I don't get the daily box. I got like 23-26(?) for completing the meta, and then the usually small handouts for each event leading up to it, but there are a lot of those boxes.

I'm going to go looking for some turrets! Two essences to go.

Also, it’s obviously not the fastest route at all, but if you’re a WvW player, the reward track gives both map currencies as well as you-choose boxes of the new weapon skins

[notebene.3190]

I got so caught up in the PvE areas I forgot about WvW tracks. Also ,the way the dailies shifted, I don't do as much WvW anymore, as I can't pick and choose my WvW dailies (so I went all in on PvE dailies). Hopefully they change that down the road. In the mean time, I guess I can just dream up my own daily goals for WvW to give me something to shoot for while I work on the WvW track. Great idea, thanks!

[kharmin.7683]

8 minutes ago, notebene.3190 said:

I got so caught up in the PvE areas I forgot about WvW tracks. Also ,the way the dailies shifted, I don't do as much WvW anymore, as I can't pick and choose my WvW dailies (so I went all in on PvE dailies).

I'd wager that this holds true for many players, which could be a net loss for WvW.

[Pifil.5193]

4 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

You can use the skyscale fireball to pop the krptis turrets. They drop a magic orb that gives pinches of stardust when you collect it. There seems to be a limit though, and I'm not sure if it's per day or per map instance, but you can get 100 per day that way at least.

There is a daily limit, 40 I think, I may have lost count (might be a certain amount of Stardust though).

A good place to get these is during Lyvia's floating platform event in the Bastion of the Obscure or the event to destroy the turrets in (I think) the Bastion of Strength. Killing the turrets in events is well worth it. Doing events give about 4-8 stardust but every turret gives 2-4.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

8 minutes ago, Pifil.5193 said:

There is a daily limit, 40 I think, I may have lost count (might be a certain amount of Stardust though).

A good place to get these is during Lyvia's floating platform event in the Bastion of the Obscure or the event to destroy the turrets in (I think) the Bastion of Strength. Killing the turrets in events is well worth it. Doing events give about 4-8 stardust but every turret gives 2-4.

I've definitely have gotten more than 40 from the turrets in one day. 

Another good place is the Bastion of the Celestial. Each of the 4 POIs there has 2-4 turrets.

The Bastion of Strength has a lot at the front line POI and events there as well.

Edited September 5, 2023 by Lan Deathrider.5910

[Trejgon.9367]

I will go on a record here that I don't think it makes much sense to do amnytas meta for pinches when same hero choice chest also provides punches, and the pinches it provides is nowhere near the pricepoint of a pouch...

[Kiki.9450]

6 hours ago, notebene.3190 said:

Thanks for the input. I just realized I still get quite a bit doing the meta again, even though I don't get the daily box. I got like 23-26(?) for completing the meta, and then the usually small handouts for each event leading up to it, but there are a lot of those boxes.

I'm going to go looking for some turrets! Two essences to go.

There's an event to kill a bunch of them over Bastion of Strength.

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

I will go on a record here that I don't think it makes much sense to do amnytas meta for pinches when same hero choice chest also provides punches, and the pinches it provides is nowhere near the pricepoint of a pouch...

Pretty sure you can't downgrade pouch, so if you want to get things for pinches and NOT for pouches, then the pouch has not value. So incorrect 😅

Edited September 5, 2023 by Sobx.1758

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

I have more info for you all.

The pinches gathered from the floating magic is not gated in the way that volatile magic was.

They are however heavily affected by DR, but that DR resets quickly, which is why we were thrown off. What is going on is that the floating magic respawns quickly, that is so that skyscales can traverse the map if the player did not have any masteries yet or any of the gliding masteries. Think of them as skyscale lanes between bastions. This is by necessity and good design. If you hang out in an area and collect them for the pinches of stardust, then DR kicks in to stop that, same goes for the turrets. However, if you traverse the map the DR resets and when you come back to your starting point you will gain pinches of stardust still.

I just flew around the map doing this. I had 250 when I mined a rich mithril vein, I had gathered some prior to that but did not check until then. When I got back to the vein, with the floating magic having reset I continued to gain pinches of stardust from orbs I had previously collected from. I am sitting at 535 as of this post. I may spend the evening just flying around the map collecting pinches of stardust while listening to music. If there is a hard cap, it is in excess of 235 pinches of stardust. 

I have not confirmed this for Skywatch yet, and it is possible that this DR affects each region of the maps separately. It turns out that these currencies will not be difficult at all to get. 

[Trejgon.9367]

14 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Pretty sure you can't downgrade pouch, so if you want to get things for pinches and NOT for pouches, then the pouch has not value. So incorrect 😅

I mean if you don't ever intend to do for anything that uses pouches, then yeah I guess, but then for all the other uses of pinches, I get more than enough of them from everything else 😉

 

[notebene.3190]

4 hours ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

I mean if you don't ever intend to do for anything that uses pouches, then yeah I guess, but then for all the other uses of pinches, I get more than enough of them from everything else 😉

I think I probably will get enough pinches now, but in my case, I was really trying to get the Amnytas meta achievement done for the emote, and when all was said and done, I was down to needing like 1,250 pinches all at once to finish! 😲 I was not getting them very fast just trying to do regular events, but the structure of the meta every 2 hours and the number of people doing it, provided a lot of pinches more consistently for the time I was putting in - both in raw pinches and selecting pinches from the hero bag once or twice. I had already completed the Astral Ward set, so my more immediate need was pinches and not pouches.

I finished today, so I'm going to go back to just saving the Hero's Choice Chests until I need one or the other.

[Sobx.1758]

7 hours ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

I mean if you don't ever intend to do for anything that uses pouches, then yeah I guess, but then for all the other uses of pinches, I get more than enough of them from everything else 😉

Yup, so the value of these 2 options depends only on what you have and what you aim for. Personally I don't plan opening those chests until I need something from them.

Edited September 6, 2023 by Sobx.1758

[Manasa Devi.7958]

48 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Yup, so the value of these 2 options depends only on what you have and what you aim for. Personally I don't plan opening those chests until I need something from them.

I'm stacking them too, started because when I got my first I had no clue what would be the best choice, so I just stashed it. When I learned the uses for the pouches and pinches, I kept on stacking them and opening them when I needed something. Same for the cages and charges from the other map.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

More info:

I got into Amnytas tonight, and the floating magic did not grant pinches of stardust. The floating magic left behind by the Kryptis Turrets did drop them however. They did so for a little while then stopped. I then collected a floating magic and it gave pinches of stardust. I then did 5 laps around Amnytas gathering them, I ended with over 1000 pinches of stardust. Killing the turrets and the 5 laps took about 1 hour of time.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Once you've collected stardust from turrets until they stop giving it, the floating magic gives stardust even if you swap maps. This persists throughout the day until reset. From all these interactions I've come to the following conclusions:

1. Pinches of Stardust are bugged
   1. They are not dropped as they should be from the free floating magic upon map entry.
   2. To gather adequately from the free floating magic they must be capped from the ones dropped by turrets.
   3. What is happening is that the daily cap, which is too small, is hit by the turret farm but instead of denying further pinches of stardust for the day it instead denies if for the turret drops only and allows unfettered gathering from the free floating magic until daily reset. Basically the daily cap is inverted.