Edit: I finally found Lacocious! https://imgur.com/FUc5JrB. I’ll save Ebenezer for future seasons.
…for the Irreplaceable You and A Unique Collection achievements.
Since neither has an associated bounty, I’m looking for an efficient way to farm them. Does anyone have advice on:
Lacocious:
Strategies/map patterns for finding the plague tunnels quickly?
Is Lacocious only found on the 1st level, or can it also spawn on the 2nd level?
Can a cursed chest spawn it?
Lacocious or Ebenezer:
Will a unique show up in my chat box as “Engaged” if I pass by it without attacking it? I worry about missing it if I move too quickly (eg Dashing Strike); but if it was guaranteed to show up in my chatbox, then I could just look there to make sure I don’t miss it.
What is the radius for detecting a unique? For example, sometimes I see a small unexplored edge of the map far away from my current location and I’m not sure if it’s worth going back there in case a unique is hiding in that corner. But if I knew that uniques could be detected within x yards of my character, then I could estimate whether I need to explore that small corner or not. I know that dungeon entrances often have a very small detection radius so I’m wondering if uniques are similar.
Are there any game modes that affect spawn rate such as campaign vs adventure, seasonal vs non-seasonal, etc?
Any other tips?
Thank you and congrats to anyone who has already found these elusive rascals!
Plague Tunnels will spawn as an occasional bounty, but after a decade of bounty runs, I guarantee it is as far away from the starting point as possible. Also, whichever way you think it is, it will be the opposite.
Should be only on the first level.
If it shows elites in your chat window, it will show unique monsters also.
Check the whole map
Be aware, some Uniques only spawn in Campaign. I am too lazy to look up if Lacocious or Ebenezer do. Otherwise, their spawn rate should be the same in Campaign or Adventure mode.
Big one is don’t burn yourself out. Run one, run the other. Mix in some other activities after 10-15 runs.
Biggest tip ever is:
(tin foil hat on)
Use reverse psychology. Blizz knows you are looking for these 2 and will significantly reduce the spawn in order to spite you. Try your hardest to not get them, and you will get them faster.
Thanks Alexismad and I can definitely relate to the reverse psychology lol. I have found so many rare things by accident when I wasn’t even looking for them (eg: Spectrum sword, Phyneus the Growler, etc).
To clarify, I know that all elites (rares, champions, uniques) show up in my chat window, but I’m wondering what is the trigger for them to show up as “Engaged”. Do I actually have to attack them? Or does simply passing nearby them (and if so, what is the radius for detection) trigger the message in chat?
Lacocious only spawns on Level 1 of Plague Tunnels, both it and Ebenezer spawn in both Campaign and Adventure Mode.
Use reverse psychology. Blizz knows you are looking for these 2 and will significantly reduce the spawn in order to spite you. Try your hardest to not get them, and you will get them faster.
I agree with this, in fact, I’ll go one step further and encourage you to complain about Blizzard or RNGesus not giving you the spawn, it’ll make your day when you finally get them
Most of these rare guys will generally take a few hundred runs. A bit faster if you’re lucky, a bit slower if you are unlucky. Just so you have an idea what you are looking at.
My first time with Ebenezer I think it took me 400 runs. Season 2 I found him a lot faster, ~100 runs.
The worst one for me was Yakara. She’s a lot easier now that she spawns as a bounty, but when I farmed her pre-bounty it took me over 600 runs.
You can run them on Normal (or whatever difficulty you one-shot everything) on the fastest build you can put together. Raiment 4p infinite dash Monk etc. Just to speed things up a bit.
That’s an impressive amount of dedication and persistence. Do you spread those hundreds of runs out into bite-sized sessions interleaved with other activities like Alexismad suggested or do you just grind continuously until you get it? I’m trying to get a sense of how much time it takes to do that many runs - like is it something that takes an entire season or something jammed into a few days.
GoD DH would also be very likely to hit them as you go past.
Dash Monk will be faster, but you likely won’t end up hitting them as you go by on a dash monk unless you dash right over them.
Depends.
If I’ve got a bunch of achievements left I’ll usually just kind of chip away at them (e.g. every time I make a game, check the 10 spots for the 10 uniques I was missing), but once I’m down to a 2-3 uniques left I generally would really start blasting for them.
I wouldn’t do 600 in one sitting, but I might do 100 runs over an hour or two (time depending on what you’re running, 100 plague tunnels for Lacocious will probably take you 2+ hours but 100 Eastern Channel runs for Yakara will take you well under 2 hours).
If I’m counting runs I’ll usually try and hit some kind of milestone (e.g. 100 runs, 200 runs etc.). That’s always worked pretty well for me to motivate myself to do those last few runs when things start to drag out. “Just 20 more runs!” “Just 10 more runs” etc.
So when I get down to a few things left, I’m probably going to be pretty motivated and knock it out in a couple days. But for me it would usually be doing runs in batches of like 100 or so with some other stuff in between so I don’t burn out too much. I wouldn’t normally do 600 runs in one big session, that’s a bit much for me.
Although when I was at 9500/10000 bounties, I did the last 500 bounties in one big 8 hour solo bounty session (that was back when only self-completed bounties counted and group bounties did not).
Dang you guys have some bad luck. I got all the mobs on hardcore in two days of farming, maybe 8 hrs all told. I even did it with a Crusader which at the time was the slowest class because of no permahorse.
Anyway, keep farming and you’ll get them. Probably took somewhere between 50 and 75 runs for Lacocious.
I was encountering above average luck up until I hit the final 2 of Lacocious and Ebenezer and then I ran into a brick wall.
The game almost seems designed to troll us by making the uniques in a given area look so similar (at least to my untrained eye). Whenever I see a zombie looking character on Old Tristram Road, I get excited thinking it’s Ebenezer but it turns out to be Lord Stuart or Lord Mathieu. Or when I see a cute teddy bear in Whimsyshire I think it might be Sir William but instead it’s Evil Oliver. Or when I see a not so cute rat in the Plague Tunnels I think it might be Lacocious but it’s Templeton.
Even the rares look like uniques to me and I don’t realize they are rare until I hover over them or see them in my chat box.
