Been making gold and silver runs on a pretty regular basis and thought it was time to remove that from my daily list of grindy tasks. So I saved up my gold, bought a bunch of rocknose eggs and created my new precious metals farm. It is still in process, but this is what I have so far. Will provide an update when complete and results on materials gained over time.
Each egg (merchant in Jahebbal camp) is 10 gold, so save up 1000 gold or more, because they may not all live. (more on eggs in a bit)
Getting maximum results on either gold or silver rocknose requires shadebloom, so get to farming it. Crafting signs is really expensive, so the grove is your best bet. From 20 signs, I only received about 8 shadeblooms. Jhebbal signs are crafted from the altar and are used like traps to turn animals (aggressive and non aggresive) into were-beasts. If you get a warewolf (stands on 2 legs), you can harvest it’s corpse for a bloom. Just 1. More than half the time I only got disappointing words. The mini bosses in the midnight grove harvest for much more.
Build 2 dedicated rocknose pens - one for gold outcome and one for silver outcome.
Hatch those eggs. Either carry them in inventory for a long time (varies based on server settings for decay and such) or place in your compost bin. BE VERY CAREFUL when in the bin. The timer speeds up greatly and goes incredibly fast when you leave the base where the bi is located. If you leave base to speed it up, come back and check the bin every couple minutes. Most should make it but some may die on hatching. Get the live ones out IMMEDIATELY or they will die. Don’t leave them in until they all hatch or they will likely die.
Make 50 shadespiced gold dust and 50 shadespiced silver dust.
Place the babies in the pens: 5 stacks of 10 for each pen.
Add 50 silver shadespice dust to one pen and 50 gold shadespice dust to the other.
Pretty much just wait for them to grow up, then keep them in there for production. Most will be normal, but many will be silver and gold producers. I just completed my silver batch and about 40% success on the turnout, so I was lucky. Below is my farm. Bottom is my normal pen and 2 levels above are my rocknose pens. Hope this helps someone
Edit: My friend did one and then after all her golds were grown and producing, she removed the plain rocknose. DON"T DO THIS. The regular produce lots of iron ore and crystal. Once you take them out, you can’t get them back in. Her gold pen still produces gold fine and some iron + crystal, but not nearly as much of those.
Edit2: I need to mention that the being able to stack rocknose babies and put up to 50 in a pen at once is due to a mod that increases my stack size. I also run my server with no pet hunger and decay set low. The no pet hunger was because the pet & thrall hunger system was bugged for me. Mine would not eat and were starving.
Gold complete and 26% success, so exactly like wiki says on success chance.
Already producing both metals and in pretty decent quantity. Easily more than when I make a gold or silver run. Not only that, but I get a bunch of iron and crystal as well. Huge grind reduction for me.
Only gold it seems. It is fairly easy, just takes time. Mine the gold from obsidian throughout the volcano, make a coin mold at blacksmith, smelt gold ore into bars in furnace, convert to coins (only one at a time - not sure if that is a bug or intended). Really helps to have a map and volcano oblisk, for the quick trips. Bring hot and cold protection armors. If you are on PvP server, then it is probably the opposite of easy to farm gold from the volcano, but I never PvP.
yeah, I never let my thralls outside of my base walls there. Even in my base they can be stupid and die, like if they are on follow while I elevator up to the upper level of my base. As they teleport around to get close to me, they randomly hit the lava.
yes. Best to solo the lava. If you have the points available, relearn your attributes to max encumbrance (probably with the help of some good armor and potions. That bearer pack is no joke - 5 encumbrance bonus on it alone. Or, if like me, when mining the obsidian, just throw all the obsidian away and keep just gold. Then you don’t need encumbrance or a mule to carry anything
I’ve found the wiki to be reasonably accurate with the % chance of getting a greater pet with various foods … it indicates that shadespiced food is only 5% better than the next best non shadespiced food … so I found the time investment in clearing the dungeon just wasn’t worth the return.
You can pick up gold bars and coins from the chests in the water around the big pirate ship in buccaneers bay. If you can’t yet survive the cold to get to the obsidian nodes in lava near the Black Keep ( east and a little north of the black keep) then the bay where you can safely swim around the ship without any npcs attacking you is a good option.
Re: egg hatching … if you have a preservation box or improved preservation box you can place the eggs or hatched pebblebabies in the box (ensure box has one piece of ice) and it will freeze the hatching/death timer. This is very useful to prevent unnecessary deaths of the hatched babies.
The preservation box is also useful to store greater rocknoses safely whilst you grow more pets until you have the maximum number of greater pets you want.
Yes in the jungle biome … on the far east side slightly north …where Flotsam is if that helps … pretty easy to get to if you follow the river along … mostly salamanders and crocs along the way … a few imps …but you can swim along the river if they are too tough for you and find safe places to land to regain stamina…
There is a green wall way out in the bay …a little dangerous if you are blindly swimming about picking up brimstone but not close to the pirate ship where the chests are.
As each baby consumes one piece of food to prompt it to grow to adulthood but the adults consume the preferred food on a regular basis, so I personally only put the minimum amount of food in the pen to get the growth started.
Especially if using a limited resource like shadespice food. I’d make the exact number I need to start the growth and no more.
Once grown, the greater rocknoses will produce ironstone and gold or silver depending upon their name if you feed them stone.
If you have normal rocknoses grow which you don’t want at all then you can place them in the compost heap to speed their death so you get a corpse to press in fluid press faster. If you have the time and space then you can just dump them in the fluid press and it will press their corpse when the timer eventually runs out.
Ah I forgot that there might be some tigers or jaguars near the edges of the river in particular locations … but again easy to swim in the river to bypass them.
The salamanders are a little harder than crocs I find as they have also have a charge kB bite that can catch you off guard and have more hit points than crocs. Once you know their attack pattern they are very manageable and harvesting them has a chance of volatile glands (like imps).
Take a bedroll with you so if you forget to come up for air you aren’t too far to retrieve your corpse.
The jaguars aren’t so bad, bears are tougher but I cleared out the Bucaneer Bay and Jamilla’s Liberty and I only got 8 gold coins. I checked the water and found 3 chests down there. Did I miss some?
The salamanders are pretty tanky compared to crocodiles. lol They got me with the poison spit when I ran into one.
Edit: I should mention that I have a mod that lets me place things closer together, so you may not be able to build an animal pen tower without it. I’m also experiencing a bug where the inventory or the upper pens and the inventory of any chests placed in the area of the upper pens will appear empty. I will probably have to rebuild with all pens on the ground, to see if that fixes it. I don’t know if it is related to the mod or just too much building and pets in one place.
