There would end up being a lot of late-night grinding ahead of me. I needed to unlock my next set of gear. Along with getting my final weapon, which required a lot of shard farming. If you feel this game was grindy before, it’s only getting started.
Now was a time I'd hit up any wagons I could find. I was hoping to luck out on recipe drops, materials, and gems. More times than not, I got some of what I was looking for. However, I never had the gear recipes I needed. I’d end up needing to do things the hard way.
Wagons, at this point, even the higher-level ones I was after ended up being somewhat of a joke. I’d just walk right up to them and unleash death. There was usually not a lot standing after the first sixty seconds of my assault. The biggest time sink was just finding one in the first place.
Wagon raids were more of an opportunity of chance than anything else. I’d usually be on my way to one of a couple of spots I'd be grinding at. If I noticed wagon wheel marks on the ground, I'd follow them the long way to get to where I was going if needed. They just added in some extra fun along the way, if anything else.
I’d end up spending an insane amount of time in Brighthaven Square and connecting areas in the Silverlight Hills region. I needed a lot of Goldsun coins to buy what I needed for gear recipe books and other stuff from the vendors in Silverlight Hills.
What seemed to be my best chance at getting Goldsun coins where from clerics, priests, paladins, and a few other types. While I could find them in other areas of Silverlight Hills. This massive town was my best bet.
This massive town was an endless struggle to stay alive. You might start a fight dealing with one or two individuals. With all the wandering NPCs in there. Before you knew it, you had multiple high-level NPCs attacking you.
At first, when I did not have the best gear. I’d be lucky to get a kill or two in here before getting killed. This ended up being a place I was farming quite a while ago. Before I had under my belt as many bosses as I know. Along with much better gear.
I just knew before I even started this one was going to be quite the grind. Needing to farm hundreds of coins at any of the tiers in this game, from bronze to silver, already showed me that.
Sometimes I'd luck out, and a single kill would net me forty Goldsun coins. Other times, I'd get almost nothing at all. Then there would be the times I'd luck out finding some Goldsun coins in a random chest in a house. Those were perhaps the best, but such a rare thing that they became more of a treat than anything else.
This town was also quite a nightmare to try and farm during the day. While sure, there were lots of indoor areas I could try and drag things into to fight. The last thing I wanted was to be around when the NPCs would respawn for the day. I’d very quickly find myself outmatched and fleeing into the sunlight to just get killed by daylight.
The original plan was to have enough Goldsun coins that I could start buying some of the stuff I needed off the vendors in the town. As for the kind of gear I wanted, it could take a while to get everything. The vendors here also would repeat the same ones as well as I'd find out later. So I'm somewhat glad I got started early.
Many times, in needing a break from Brighthaven, I'd roam around the roads looking for the wandering packs of higher-level NPCs that could give the Goldsun coins.
Another huge thing I needed to work on was farming Rift Incursions tier 2. They dropped the Greater Stygian Shards I'd need to buy my final ancestral legendary weapons. This was such a long grind.
It was also a lot more challenging than the Tier 1 or even the Brighthaven area. When I first started, I was not even able to fully clear a tier 2 Rift Incursion. The final boss, depending on what it was, could kill me before I'd be able to do any meaningful damage.
There, however, ended up being a breaking point where not only could I farm an entire Rift Incursion. I had enough time to attempt another one or two as well. Some of them, depending on the final boss that would spawn, I'd just skip, knowing it would take so much time, it was not worth it when I could just go clear another Rift Incursion quicker.
After a while, I'd get bored with farming either of these three things. So I'd just go grind out normal mats I'd need for some random thing here or there. I’d even come up with an excuse to not send out my servants to go farm something easy, like copper, as I wanted to do it myself as a way to break up the grind. Along with some mats I'd need for any armor recipes I was slowly unlocking.
Then finally came that moment where I could buy my first weapon off the vendor using Greater Stygiant Shards. Naturally, I wanted more the one weapon. I also discovered that other things needed the shards as well. That, however, was not going to be an issue.
After far too much farming, I also worked out that I could convert my lower-tier shards into greater shards. Suddenly, I went from barely having enough to get a single weapon to having enough to get both and then some.
A new issue would also arise. To craft the weapon, I'd need Onyx tears. Three of them. While some higher-end bosses drop them. There is also a vendor that sells a very limited quantity of them every hour for Goldsun coins. As if I needed yet another thing needing those. The only good thing is that I'd unlock the ability to craft my own Goldsun coins, but getting those crafting ingredients was also not cheap.
In between all this farming, there are lots more boss killing and other stuff as well. There are just some things you've got to work out on a couple of hours a day to feel like you are making any progress at all.
While the weapon itself would be my endgame weapon. The Shadowmoon armor set that I was working on unlocking was not the final tier of armor in the game. It was, however, a requirement to craft that. Along with many other boss kills. Thankfully, it was not so grind to get those materials. The real grind was, in fact, getting the Shadowmoon set unlock in the first place.
Screenshots were taken, and content was written by @Enjar about V Rising.
Disclosure: A review copy of the game was received for free.
