Ladies and gentlemen. I am proud to present to you, my massive guide on farming Icy Dragon Sword wíth your friend! I have been working on this guide for a long time and I hope that this makes everything clear. Let's get started!
First of all, what is an Icy Dragon Sword?
The Icy Dragon Sword was added during wintersday 2005, as a holiday drop but they are still dropped by a few specific imps.
It's skin is the as a Fiery Dragon Sword, but this one has a blue flame and deals cold dmg. The original IDS was light blue, but after a year Anet changed them to gold. Is this good? YES! Why? Because gold drops aren't affected by normal mode or hard mode, making this run doable in normal mode!
The stats of an IDS are always the same: Cold dmg: 15-22 (req. 9 Swordmanship)
Damage +15% (while health is above 50%)
You can still add a sword pommel on it (like +30hp and +20% enchantment duration). For more information, follow this link.
The build and equipment.
The build I will be using is the one that worked best for me and is 99% failure proof (the other 1% is from a real bad spawn or human error).
For the attributes I made two versions. One for the new players and one for the more experienced. The first will be for the new players. I reduced the scythe mastery, to raise Mysticism, making Vow of Silence last 9 seconds instead of 8.
For the new players:
And for the experienced players:
Nothing much to say about the attribute points.. let's move on to the skills! NOTE: You will need all 200 attribute points for this build
1. This attack helps you survive against trolls and will also heal you, when there are only 3 imps left. More about that later.
2. This attack costs a lot of energy, but it's great for dealing Area Of Effect damage when you have all imps clumped up. It also helps you do damage to the mountain troll, so that you can use skill 1 for gaining health.
3. This is a very important skill that you will be keeping up during the entire battle and while running through mobs. (Yes you need to run to somewhere)
4. Another well known Dervish skill. This skill is your main life support. This will also be used during the fight aswell as the run.
5. Conviction is a vital protection, especially when fighting mountain trolls. This skill will only be used in battle, since skill 8 is also a stance and you will be having that one on you constantly during the run.
6. This is a skill than can be changed, but it worked best for me. It gives an extra +3 health regeneration during the run and gives a little back-up in case you *kitten* up.
7. This skill will also be on you the entire time. It gives +3 health regeneration while running and is your main energy supply during battle (making you use scythe attacks more often).
8. Enchanted haste lasts for 15 seconds and has a 15 second recharge time. It is the best skill for this run.
Armor and weapons:
Sorry that this picture is so high, but I think your scroll button will survive it ;)
Windwalkers insigna on every armor piece is a must-have! It provides +100 armor and you won't even make the run without it.
I used a major scythe mastery on the head, because I only had a minor vigor, and this farm is pretty fast, even without the +1 Scythe mastery.
A rune of minor wind prayers is not needed, since enchanted haste still lasts 15 seconds and that is the only wind prayer skill in the build.
Also a vigor rune isn't required, but I had 3 minors in my storage, so..
On to the weapons we go:
WHEN RUNNING:
However you can run with your scythe, taking a caster weapon and a shield provides energy ánd 45 health. For the weapon, any caster weapon will do. You can even use an IDS with a +20% enchantment mod for it. I tend to use a totem axe, since it happend to be in my storage and it is cheap (if you don't have it, buy it for around 5k).
Totem Axe - Prophecies
As for the shield, make your choice as long as it has:
+44/45 health (while in a stance)
received damage -2 (while in a stance)
OR
+44/45 health (while enchanted)
received damage -2 (while enchanted)
The enchanted one would be best, since you will always have an enchantment on you, but since enchanted haste is a stance, the stance shield will do just fine. As for getting these shields: the cheapest way to get one is from a collector. Here are a few to pick from (there are more, these were the easiest ones to get):
My shield is not from a collector, but it happend to be in my storage. The armor and requirements are also not important, since you won't be using that +armor anyway.
WHEN FIGHTING:
A max dmg scythe with "dmg +15% (while enchanted)" and "Enchantments last 20% longer" is needed. I got mine from the Weaponsmith Kehjim, in The Kodash Bazaar (in Nightfall). It costs 5 platinum and some iron ignots, but one IDS drop covers those costs. If you haven't been there you can always ask a friend or guildy to get it for you.
I am thinking about buying a scythe grip with fire dmg, since that deals more damage to the imps.
The run to the cave:
Here is a map of the route you will be running. It looks like a real far run, but with the +25% faster running skill you are at the cave in no-time. In the bottom left corner is the outpost you will be leaving from (Granite Citadel). The little green compass at 1/3 of the run is a portal. There are enemies there, so I had to make a screenshot while running.
If you are running with a friend (recommended, see final notes for more information), it is best if you are both on Ventrilo or TeamSpeak. This way you can count down and run into the mob together. Doing this, you avoid getting "rubber banded" (movement lagg). The person going in second has the most chance of getting stuck (in narrow spaces), so the most experienced runner should go 1/4-1/2 aggro circle behind the less experienced one.
Which skills to use when:
As soon as you have gone through the portal, cast Balthazars Spirit and Faithful Intervention. Walk further until you get to a mob of enemies. Use the folling skills in this order: Mystic Regeneration > Vow of Silence > Enchanted Haste. If VoS tends to end while you are still in the middle of a (following) mob, recast it right away. Mystic regen lasts exactly two times as long as VoS, so you can both keep them up.
If you see (or notice while running) that there are three mobs in a row, use the skills in this order: Mystic Regeneration > Vow of Silence > Enchanted Haste (run) > Mystic Regeneration > Vow of Silence > Enchanted Haste > Vow of Silence.
I have never had more than three mobs in a row, but if it might happen you can just recast Mystic Regeneration.
The fight with the ice imps:
When you finaly arrive at the cave, you should be seeing something like this:
In the cave you can find 3 different foes:
Mountain Troll These guys deal the most damage and the max I could ever handle was 3. They also use interupting blow, and if it hits your VoS/Mystic Regeneration you're dead.
Always hit them with Chilling Victory first, so their health is lower than yours, making it possible to heal yourself (if there are a lot op ice imps) with Victorious Sweep.
Siege Ice Gollem Siege ice golems are just annoying, they deal the same amount of damage as ice imps, and if you attack them first (before the ice imps) they run away. I ususally kill those last.
Ice Imps! These little twats drop the IDS. There are usually mobs of 4-8 Ice Imps and one Mountain Troll/Siege Ice Golem.
How to use the skills during battle
NOTE: Don't forget to swap to your scythe now Stand a little out of aggro and use the following skills: Mystic Regeneration > VoS > Conviction. Run in and start killing Troll/Ice Imps/Siege Ice Gollem. When VoS starts to blink, spam the number 3 on your keyboard so that you cast it again as fast as possible (the people with the 9 sec VoS build have less pressure here). When VoS ends for the seconds time, you have to be very quick. As as soon as it starts blinking, spam 4 on your keyboard. When it starts casting follow up right away with skill 3. If you are fast enough, the ice imps won't have the time to cast anything on you. If they activate Maelstorm, use VoS quickly and run out of the AOE.
When there are only 3 or less enemies left, you can stop recasting Mystic Regeneration and Conviction. The imps will only do 4-5 damage per attack and you can heal yourself with Victorious Sweep. When you had the first mob (usually just outside the cave) it should look like this:
[color=red]NOTE: Sometimes there are Avicara in the spawn of the ice imps. When that happends, run further into the cave and lure the ice imps inside.
Walk further into the cave and kill the second mob. You should be getting used to the build by now.
Once you killed them, this could be the result:
You can now pull the ice imps around the wall, making them clump up. This way you can hit several imps at the same time. If you (or your friend) does it right and if there is a decent spawn, than this is the ideal situation:
And if you are lucky, this might be the result. Well my friend wasn't so lucky. He died so we had to wait untill I could pick it up for him. (you don't leave since rezoning is faster)
Personal notes:
I wrote this guide, so that you can do it with a friend. Why? Because the good thing about this farm is that you get more drops when you dual farm. And there are so many things you can solo in GW already. I know the video's were shot with only me in it, but that was because my friend (where I do the runs with) wasn't online. And yes I also know that an IDS dropped when I solo farmed these imps, but that was MAJOR luck. I have done 15 runs in the past, not getting any IDS.
Hopefully, I didn't just screw up my only source of income =P And I hope Anet doesn't go and nerf this. I hope that you have a lot of fun and.. I get 10% of all the cash you make ^^ (gotta get that 75k for primeval armor from somewhere!).
Final notes:
~ Doing this with another person seems to increase the drop rate. I don't know why. When I solo this, I get only 300-500g cash (even after merchanting the other stuff that was dropped). When I do this run with a friend, we both get about 1-1.2k cash! More drops = more chance of an IDS.
~ The second time you run, you will have 15% DP. This is totaly no problem. I've even ran this with 45% DP once.
~ If you farm pure for the cash, please stay in the UW. I made this guide for the fun of it.
Lol ty ^^ Nice to see it got uploaded this fast. One thing before everyone starts asking:
I've put all songs in the deion of the video! Please search youtube for BlazingsNL and watch the video there if you want to know the songs ^^
This is a really top notch guide in every sense of the word great explanation and the youtube video was not only ingenious but very high quality and explained perfectly what you said in the text. However the downside to this in unfortunately the concept itself IDS farming is extremely slow and tedious with little success of gaining an IDS. Non the less excellent job!!
Windwalkers insigna on every armor piece is a must-have! It provides +100 armor and you won't even make the run without it.
- not true... it gives +20 armor total. not 5 x 20 armor = 100 armor
Doing this with another person seems to increase the drop rate. I don't know why. When I solo this, I get only 300-500g cash (even after merchanting the other stuff that was dropped). When I do this run with a friend, we both get about 1-1.2k cash! More drops = more chance of an IDS.
- not true... IDS = gold and is not affected by party size.
Drop rates of IDS are just low....
anyway nice guide though I find it a bit to defensive maby more attack skills to speed it up with more perfected equipment?
Also IDS's aren't worth much maybe 10-15k instead do like a UW smite run with a warrior takes 20 min and i almost always get atleast one ecto with other good drops.
Also IDS's aren't worth much maybe 10-15k instead do like a UW smite run with a warrior takes 20 min and i almost always get atleast one ecto with other good drops.
1. I sold all for 15k ea
2. If you read the whole guide you would've read this:
"f you farm pure for the cash, please stay in the UW. I made this guide for the fun of it." It's at final notes -.-
