Surface Brandstone Impact Site & Maximizing Mining Returns

[rubyhatchet.9483]

Like a lot of players right now, I've been farming brandstone meteorite sites for rose quartz dust (and more kralk) in order to make Astral weapons. I think there might be some misunderstandings about how the surface brandstone site specifically works, and please let me know if anyone's figured this out.

I do agree that spamming the Multitool's #3 skill "Extraction Beam" as much as possible is a good idea for getting lots of loot. And people say that not damaging the meteorite (and thus letting the event fail) is how you maximize mining returns. However, I don't think that's the right strategy. According to the wiki, more of the meteorite's shell breaks off as its HP hits 75%, 50%, and 25%. My theory is that you spam #3 at the beginning (max out the site markings) and then you'll hit a cap. Once the HP hits 75%, I think the cap resets and you spam #3 again. Rinse, repeat until 0%, preferably when the timer is nearly up. I think the right strategy is to DPS the meteorite slowly. That way, you cap the number of times Extraction Beam gets loot, but you keep breaking off more shell in order to reset the cap. I've had the event fail when the meteorite's HP is still at 80%, and have gotten hardly any loot (30ish kralk) even though I was the first on site and was spamming Extraction Beam the whole time. Others have said they get over 100 kralk, and I'm betting that was when the meteorite was getting slowly DPS'd by people they were screaming at to stop hitting it.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

u/Shrouded_Guisehttps://old.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/7gn9qt/how_to_mine_brandstone/

• Step 1: Goto the Astralarium Volatile Magic Collector and get the multitool.
• Step 2: Wait for a brandstone meteor to land (the Astralarium Volatile Magic Collector will mention when this happens)
• Step 3: Use your multitool to find where the impact site is (Either special action key while on mount or 1 skill on the multitool while on foot)
• Step 4: You will either encounter a glowing crater surrounded by branded elementals or a giant crystal
• Step 4.5: If the impact site is a giant crystal just smash it and collect the materials from the inner chunk of brandstone
• Step 5: If the impact site is a glowing crater use your 1 skill on the multitool to find the location of a buried brandstone chunk around the glowing crater (do not use the dig skill IN the crater)
• Step 6: Look for the beam of light caused by the 1 skill and use the 2 skill near it, wait for it to surface then collect your materials from it
• Step 7: Rinse & repeat steps 5 and 6 until it says there are no more brandstone deposits

Tips:

• The Astralarium Volatile Magic Collector sells upgrades for the brandstone multitool.
• Always use the 3 skill on the brandstone chunks if you have it (Extractor upgrade)
• Make sure to mark the glowing crater with the 5 skill before mining the brandstone chunks if you have it (Marker upgrade)

[Khisanth.2948]

o_O

The 3 skill never gives me anything on either type

[Mewcifer.5198]

The event does need looked at. Because as it is, you have a lot of people yelling at others to fail an event. This is bad design. Especially because those who may not have the tool yet are being told not to do the thing they need to in order to get loot, just so other people can get more loot. So some people "win" at the expense of others "losing". That is against the open world design philosophy of the game.

They should remove extracting during the event entirely. Make the event only involve breaking the brandstone to reveal the inner chunk. THEN people can extract it for better rewards or mine it with basic tools if they don't have the extractor tool yet.

[Khisanth.2948]

@Mewcifer.5198 said:They should remove extracting during the event entirely. Make the event only involve breaking the brandstone to reveal the inner chunk. THEN people can extract it for better rewards or mine it with basic tools if they don't have the extractor tool yet.

That reminds me. After you break the shell you have a very short time to do your mining. I think it was only 30 seconds.

[Ravij.9856]

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Mewcifer.5198 said:They should remove extracting during the event entirely. Make the event only involve breaking the brandstone to reveal the inner chunk. THEN people can extract it for better rewards or mine it with basic tools if they don't have the extractor tool yet.

That reminds me. After you break the shell you have a very short time to do your mining. I think it was only 30 seconds.

It's only like 10 seconds to mine the brandstone inside the shell.

[Khisanth.2948]

@Ravij.9856 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Mewcifer.5198 said:They should remove extracting during the event entirely. Make the event only involve breaking the brandstone to reveal the inner chunk. THEN people can extract it for better rewards or mine it with basic tools if they don't have the extractor tool yet.

That reminds me. After you break the shell you have a very short time to do your mining. I think it was only 30 seconds.

It's only like 10 seconds to mine the brandstone inside the shell.

Even worse! Especially when the game tells you to destroy it ASAP.

[phs.6089]

@Khisanth.2948 said:o_O

The 3 skill never gives me anything on either type

you need to get in the mid after it fails and loot, it's not autolooting

[Khisanth.2948]

@phs.6089 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:o_O

The 3 skill never gives me anything on either type

you need to get in the mid after it fails and loot, it's not autolooting

I am not sure what you mean. For both types of meteors I've tried walking up to the node, more or less right on top of it. Tried using the 3 skill both with and without targetting the node. The channeling does occur but I get nothing. The only time I get anything is by pressing F which just does the normal mining thing.

[phs.6089]

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@phs.6089 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:o_O

The 3 skill never gives me anything on either type

you need to get in the mid after it fails and loot, it's not autolooting

I am not sure what you mean. For both types of meteors I've tried walking up to the node, more or less right on top of it. Tried using the 3 skill both with and without targetting the node. The channeling does occur but I get nothing. The only time I get anything is by pressing F which just does the normal mining thing.

On usual impact sides, 3rd skill is bit outta order, you need to track (1), dig (2) then step bit away from node and only then (3) don't stand on top of the node.

[Khisanth.2948]

@phs.6089 said:(3) don't stand on top of the node.

Silently failing because of standing too close sounds incredibly stupid but totally believable for GW2. =_=

[Etria.3642]

Yeah even though I now get more 'stuff' from the surface stones when they fail(50-70) I HATE that people are yelling at the folks who honestly don't know not to do what seems obvious. Some of the insults are downright terrible, and there are so many genuinely confused folks out there.

Even the buried ones are not intuitive. If not for a commander's squad message giving literally, step by step what to do I would have continued to have been frustrated by this event. I had read the tooltips but it made sense to stand ON the impact site, so I wasn't able to see the almost-invisible-there blue beam.

However, I've made roughly 12 gold simply by explaining politely to new folks how the process works and guiding them through. At first I was returning it but after the umpteenth explanation I started keeping it. Makes me more willing to do it again as opposed to ignoring the poor folks like everyone else.

[Mewcifer.5198]

@"Etria.3642" said:Yeah even though I now get more 'stuff' from the surface stones when they fail(50-70) I HATE that people are yelling at the folks who honestly don't know not to do what seems obvious. Some of the insults are downright terrible, and there are so many genuinely confused folks out there.

Even the buried ones are not intuitive. If not for a commander's squad message giving literally, step by step what to do I would have continued to have been frustrated by this event. I had read the tooltips but it made sense to stand ON the impact site, so I wasn't able to see the almost-invisible-there blue beam.

However, I've made roughly 12 gold simply by explaining politely to new folks how the process works and guiding them through. At first I was returning it but after the umpteenth explanation I started keeping it. Makes me more willing to do it again as opposed to ignoring the poor folks like everyone else.

Yeah some of the people get downright rude. When I was talking in map chat about how the event was designed badly the responses I got talked down to me and were along the lines of "wow, is it so difficult for you to just listen to people who tell you not to do something? Do you really think the entire group of people want to screw you over?"

Like.... I wasn't saying I didn't want to listen to people or that I thought they were trying to screw me over. I was just saying that the event was badly designed.

[Lord of the Fire.6870]

they always get destroyed before I can reach it(about 7 times) even when I was the first looking for it. The meta on this map is also dead blocking the way for vison entirely .

[Ayrilana.1396]

@Lord of the Fire.6870 said:they always get destroyed before I can reach it(about 7 times) even when I was the first looking for it. The meta on this map is also dead blocking the way for vison entirely .

Your best bet is to do the meta right after reset and/or create a LFG in advance to grab players to do it. You don’t need a full squad so don’t worry if you don’t get a ton of players.

[Khisanth.2948]

Destroyed? O_o

There are only one or two sites where it works like the OP describes. The rest are are just scanning and mining plus some branded elemental killing if they haven't been killed yet.

[Lord of the Fire.6870]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Lord of the Fire.6870 said:they always get destroyed before I can reach it(about 7 times) even when I was the first looking for it. The meta on this map is also dead blocking the way for vison entirely .

Your best bet is to do the meta right after reset and/or create a LFG in advance to grab players to do it. You don’t need a full squad so don’t worry if you don’t get a ton of players.

Well reset is for me in the middle of the night no option and in the LFG there is no group besides a Metor farm group which I can|t make 100% make sense off. With the current speed it will take me nearly 2 years to complete just the weapon collection.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Lord of the Fire.6870 said:blocking the way for vison entirely .Vision isn't blocked.

• Do hearts for kralk ore: 25 per heart per character per day.
• To help top off, join someone's home instance with the kralk node. You can also convert jorbreakers to kralk ore, once before the raid reset, once on Monday or Tue before Dragon Bash ends.
• Buy rose quartz and its powder off the TP.