Sorry for the delay @Frillen i failed to see your response to @Eniguman.
There are no hard evidence that Siptah is easier than exile lands on the named crafters.
But…
Taskmaster on exile lands, God Rath the oath breaker.
Task master in Siptah, the stygian camp on the beach ahead the Grey pool entance. It has 99% master task master. In age of sorcery it had a khitan caravan as well. In this camp i find alchemist as well.
Another really good camp for cook, alchemist, carpenter and Tanner i was very lucky in siphos camps front and rear and i was climbing the mount to get with the gravedigger Asuras pieces, legendary weapons and the bindings of the dead. Just a little deeper in the first camp you gain the maw of hyena for free :heart_eyes: and the female boss to the second camp gives apes and yetis among other goodies.
For Lhior or how they call the top less fantastic armorer i was lucky on the south camp under the mount across the temple of the loon. The male boss of this camp gives eldarium tools and scraps as well. I believe that only the Northwest part of Siptah has huge difficulty on named crafters, but because it has access to the ā€œunnamed city of Siptahā€ the camp at the end that you get Brutus provides plenty named crafters too.
Crafters seem to be harder in Siptah for 2 basic reasons.
One, no teleport with map room and obelisks
Two Always Accursed purges with literally zero crafters :man_shrugging:. All this time maybe a taskmaster or two, but nothing else (maybe bad rng who knows)
But honestly, it ain’t harder, actually it’s easier and no, i don’t believe that surges is cheating. Surges are not easy, the npcs hit really hard and you may lost good Thralls in order to capture crafters. If you lost control of the agro it can become really nusty. Above all, you know it too, you may have a surge that maximum 4 thralls and crafters together and another that will fill 2 greater wheels :man_shrugging:. Everything is fking rng in Siptah, it can become tiresome.
Exile lands use to be easier for me, now Siptah is and i still don’t know this island like i know the lands.