Fastest ways to farm ecto

[Eekasqueak.7850]

Keep running low on this and want to know if there's a meta way to get a lot of this quick outside of just buying it on the trading post.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Basically, anything that has a high loot output is going to give you a bunch of rares to salvage, or it is going to give you a bunch of stuff you can sell to buy Ectos.  I haven't had to farm gold for awhile, but what I would do is run through all of the big map metas for HoT, PoF, and EoD.  High end fractals are also great for loot, but the barrier to entry is pretty high.  Many of the metas from Living World season 3 and 4 are also pretty good, but those maps tend to be abandoned on days where they are not part of the daily rotation.  

EDIT: Can't believe I forgot it.  For the more unending grinds, two places to just camp and do stuff are the Silverwastes, and Drizzlewood coast.  Dragon's Fall is also a good place to get loot, but it isn't always populated.  

Edited December 23, 2023 by Blood Red Arachnid.2493

[phaserBanks.7386]

One way is to salvage items from enemy drops. I don't recall needing to buy ecto because I've gotten it from salvaging alone.

[starlinvf.1358]

You have to get over the fact that you'll never be able to farm at a volume for a specific item, where selling mats/etc on the TP and buying ectos off the TP isn't the smoother option.   Now you can maximize your opportunity for rares to salvage ectos by opening bags and UID gear yourself, but its not gonna be faster and generally more cost effective than the TP; even in spite of the 15% TP tax.

The game's whole drop system is largely designed around the TP being the central commodity exchange.  This was intentionally done to dissuade farming specific areas for too long, and lets you convert wealth from multiple sources into any resource you'd need.  They haven't always 100% stuck to that, but law of averages works out in most people's favor.  Outside of the Mid-tier armor mat problem, most materials have a targetable source.  So if you habitually gather everything as you move around, you effectively trade what you don't need for stuff that you do, using gold an intermediary.  

The problem really boils down to spikes in demand.   Because the supply side is more prone to being trickle in nature, sudden upticks in demand will cause prices to skyrocket as supplies are used up enmass.  It usually takes 2-3 months to peter off, and another 3-5 months for supplies to slowly recover.  If you plan ahead properly, you can buy up supplies in the off seasons, when they're the cheapest, and convert them into refined materials (for example Curios for Legendary weapons) for use later.  Then when a demand boom happens, you can sell your gathered mats for double the value, and put it towards other materials you need.    Tail end of festivals when all the bags are happening, is the best time to get basic and intermediate materials.   New map or story drops are the worst, since those usually introduce collections made to sink something, spiking demand for something that used to be cheap.  

 

[Ashantara.8731]

On 12/23/2023 at 5:16 AM, Eekasqueak.7850 said:

Keep running low on this and want to know if there's a meta way to get a lot of this quick outside of just buying it on the trading post.

You get a lot of unidentified rare gear from doing the Tarir meta, for instance. Other endgame content such as Strikes and Fractals are also a good source of unidentified rare gear.

Identify, then salvage with the Mystic Salvage Kit.

[Dayra.7405]

An acient way of getting Ecto's was the World Boss tour. Each WB gives you at least 1 guranteed rare per day and account, and a  rare give you 0.9 (0-3, 0.9 in average) ectos on scrap. But that's acient, never had a need to get ecto's since years. And yes, Ashantara.8731 is right Tarir and several other meta's give 10+ rare to be salvages by Mystic Salvage Kit or Silver-O-Mat for 0.9 Ectos each.

Depending a bit on the rare, but generally it is currently much cheaper to buy rare's in the TP and savage them than to buy ecto's (all rare's cheaper than 0.9*Ecto_price-salvage_cost).

On 12/31/2023 at 12:24 AM, starlinvf.1358 said:

The problem really boils down to spikes in demand.   Because the supply side is more prone to being trickle in nature

To me it looks more like the ecto increase and rare decrease is based on the laziness of the current player base, selling rare's instead of scrapping them.

On 12/23/2023 at 5:16 AM, Eekasqueak.7850 said:

if there's a meta way to get a lot of this quick outside of just buying it on the trading post.

Buy the cheapest (lvl 68+) rare's on TP and salvage them with Mystic_Salvage_Kit

Edited January 5 by Dayra.7405

[Nash.2681]

I'm just doing what I always do ingame, watch unidentified yellows piling up. Whenever I reach 100+ of them (which happens way too often for my taste)  I open them and salvage all armor pieces and accessoiries with the mystic salvage kit. Never ran below 2.5k ectos piled up that way. If I'd need more, I'd just also salvage the weapons.