Tier 6 Material location, Acquistion, general "How do I get this" guide.
Hello again! About seven months ago, I posted this T6 Mat farming guide. I guess that opened up some doors and they were progressively nerfed. Admittedly, some were built on spawning bugs. When that was fixed, a lot of these were nerfed. All things considered, I did try and salvage what farms were around, but it was slow and kind of... well... poopy. Fortunately, this was a boon in that it opened ways into get T6 mats beyond direct farming! This is the T6 Mat Guide Redux, an updated post-nerf guide on what there are for "T6" mats and where to acquire them. I hope to keep this guide updated, so you might want to hit the "save" button down at the bottom of this post!
What is a Tier-6 Material?
A Tier 6 material (Or a T6 as I shall hence forth call it) is a Common or Fine Crafting material used in Exotic and various Mystic Forge recipes. The FINE crafting materials include, Ancient Bone, Vicious Claws, Piles of Crystalline Dust, Vicious Fang, Armored Scales, Elaborate Totem, Powerful Venom Sac and (the ever so expensive) Vial of Powerful Blood. For COMMON crafting materials, these include Gossamer Scraps, Gossamer Bolts, Gossamer Thread, Orichalcum Ore, Orichalcum Ingot, Hardened Leather Section , Cured Hardended Leather sections, Ancient Wood Log and Ancient Wood Planks. I will also be considered Karka Shells as a T6 Material, even though it is considered "untiered"
Why should I care about these things?
Plenty of neato little reasons. They are used in crafting Exotic Weapons, Armor and Jewlery! You need 250 of each FINE crafting Material for the legendary parts Gift of Might and Gift of Magic (Some legendaries require other stacks too, see this wiki page for more info on that). T6 mats are needed in getting Grandmaster Level in crafting professions, since you can only level using exotics after a certain point. If you don't need them for anything, they are GREAT for making money. Needless to say, they are a pivotal part of the high-level parts of the game.
Ways to Acquire T6 Mats in PvE
I'm going to list a few ways to do this. My original guide was just PvE farming locations. A lot of those have been nerfed into the ground. Some are still good, and I will outline them here. I'm going to start back with the remaining farm spots that still work, and then will continue with other methods from there. If you saw the old guide, these will look very familiar, but I have updated/adjusted some of them. It should also be noted that these farms drop Tier 5 materials also, I will explain what to do with these later on.
PvE farms for Specific T6's
Vicious Fang/Vials of Powerful Blood Farm
Here you will be killing Reef Skelk. Basically run from the Cove, north up the beach and back down, very simple. After the Secret of Southsun Update, the spawns on these guys were 'fixed' so that they don't double-spawn or instantly respawn. They are still 'okay' for farming, since usually no one is there, but generally not the best. It's just an option now.
Vicious Claw and Ancient Bone Farms Link to map
Here you are killing the Ice Brood Colossus and Corrupted Quaggan. There is some speculation that the drop rate of these guys was nerfed. It is definitely lower than it was before. In my initial tests (which are with a smaller sample size than I would like) the rate was lower that usual, but not horrible. They also drop Corrupted Lodestones, which can sell for 'okay cash.'
Elaborate Totem/Ancient Bone Farm
Here you are killing the Grawl. As far as I know, nothing has changed here, it's still an okay farm for these things.
Karka Skells/Vials of Powerful Blood.
Get friends, go to southsun, Kill Karka. Pretty simple.
Non-farms for materials
This is probably best way to get materials now, non-specific material acquisition
Temple Runs, Orrian Events and Heavy Moldy Bags.
This was something a lot of people argued with me back when the first post came out. At the time, I didn't feel it was the best way to get the materials as that it wasn't horribly reliable (Please note, this was 7 months ago). Since then, this has drastically changed. Heavy Moldy Bags are a great way to get T5 and T6 materials. Opening Temples and doing Events in Orr (specifically Cursed Shore) that cause a lot of mobs to spawn is the best way to get these bags. Need something specific? Sell everything except the one you need and buy the rest.
Dungeons
Why Include this? Because some of the higher level dungeons have large groups of mods that drop stuff. Some of this stuff is T6 mats or Bags that drop T6 mats. You can also run dungeons to make money to buy T6 mats (see below).
Champion Boxes
Frostgorge sound is the current home to the high-level "Champ Train" farm. It's a loop that goes around Frostgorge Sound and kills various Champions rather quickly. Not only do these Champ boxes drop T6 materials, but they drop T5 materials (see below), all tiers of weapons and armors, and sometimes unique skins worth a bit of gold.
WvWvW This is something that I hear a lot about from my WvWvW friends.Bags of Loot can provide a LOT of materials. When you're in large Zerg vs Zerg battles, if you can tag (and not die), you'll get a LOT of these Loot Bags. These act much like the Heavy Moldy Bags. Find out who the big PvE guilds on your server are, and see if they have set times for when they group-up and play. If you do this though, please remember to LISTEN AND RESPECT TO YOUR COMMANDER. If they have a public Voice Server for communicating, you can use that too. But please, be respectful to the WvW'rs!
Laurels Did you know you can get 3 Free T6 Mats Per day? No? Now you do! If you talk to ANY Laurel Merchant, you can purchase a Heavy Crafting Bag (top tab on the left, bottom of the selection). This includes 3 random T6 mats, every time. After a week, you could have 21 materials. That is a few gold for barely any work!
Mystic Clovers Using these recipes to make mystic clovers, you not only have a chance for clovers, but a chance at a LOT of T6 materials or lodestones! If you're working on your legendary, I highly suggest doing this and holding onto your "failed" clover recipes. Conversely, it's not a bad way to make money, if you have the resources.
Promotion You can promote T5 materials to T6 materials using this recipe in the Mystic Forge. It's something that's highly arguementative around here is whether or not promotion for getting T6 mats is even worth it. It's very risky (mystic forge and all that) and doesn't always work. Promoting T5's to T6 is very dependent on the market and what is happening with ingame events. That being said, I'll include these two links here that show when promoting materials is profitable. Specifically,look at the T5 to T6 materials promotion, but these also include Lower materials, weapons and Lodestones! You can find these two spreadsheets here and here.
Buying them! Seriously. If you have the money and need T6's ASAP, just buy them. Champ training, dungeon running, etc. Whatever you can do to make money, do it and buy what you need.
Current Prices If you'd like to check the current prices of all the T6 Materials, here is a link to them all!
Vial of Powerful Blood | Elaborate Totem| Armored Scale| Vicious Claw| Vicious Fang| Pile of Crystilline Dust| Ancient Bone| Powerful Venom Sac| Orichalcum Ore| Orichalcum Ingot| Gossamer Scrap| Gossamer Bolt| Hardened Leather Section| Cured Hardened Leather Square| Karka Shell
Conclusion
So there you go, a comprehensive list of places and methods to get T6 materials. You'll find that there are a LOT of ways to get them. If you find one method boring, try something else. If you just play the game, you'll find that T6's pop up a lot more often than you expect. Find something that is relaxing, try it. Try something the next day. Do these however you want.
Guide by: nightsfrost
