Definitely run in a group. 1500 Blood shards for an average chance at a Puzzle Ring (5 GR65+s).
Also, snapshot the game to 7 with a Group of 4. That way, you can kill goblins, as a few of them drop legendaries as well, meaning you’ll probably average 1-2 ethereals per Vault. With a group of 4, provided you all run blood shard farming, you’ll only need roughly 7000 blood shards each (about 21 Greater Rifts). If you can keep it under 2 minutes per Greater Rift, that’s about 45 minutes for farming the Puzzle Rings and another hour for farming all the Ethereals. This is far faster than trying to snapshot a Level 12 game and rifting to farm your Ethereals.
Gone through I’d guess 7+ puzzle rings trying to get the last ethereal I need. Starting to doubt the Jade Talon exists. I’ve salvaged numerous repeat monk ethereals
Started farming shards on a 70 monk instead of my DH incase I get it as a drop (even though I can’t farm shards as fast on my monk yet).
Edit: I finally got it. I got it at level 14 (I was attempting to do one at level 12 instead of 7 to see if 7 wasn’t high enough to get the third ethereal and accidentally leveled to 14 while in the vault). I picked 12 since some ethereal farming guides are based on that level, so I thought maybe some ethereals aren’t in the loot table yet at 7.
At level 7 you seem to have a much much higher chance to get multiple ethereals per vault, but I think it might be too low to get some of them? Sites give no specific level at which you can get specific ethereals, so I’m not sure. They just tend to say you can get them at any level. I did get the last one I needed on my first attempt at that level after having failed to get it in several rings at level 7. At 7 I frequently got double ethereal drops, but it was always the same two.
I gave this a try by combining the Kadala ring farming method with the OP’s Greed runs. Not done yet but it’s working great. Will have this done in no time.
The difficulty doesn’t matter. If you run it in normal, you’ll really only gain ethereals from Greed. If you run in T6, you can also find ethereals from a few of the goblins (e.g. Malevolent Tormenters guarantee one), as well as get some more blood shards for gambling puzzle rings. But without snapshotting, you’ll probably gain a few too many levels.
As far as the puzzle ring farming, it’s probably going to take 5-6 hours if you try to solo it, but you can get all the necessary puzzle rings in roughly an hour or so if you work in a group of 4, so it would be roughly 2-3 hours in a group to get all your ethereals collected, or 6-8 hours solo.
Can someone explain the level 12 and level 16 concept, and can the low level Greed vault runs be used in a party (assuming coordinated to only kill gobs and Greed? Also, should the low level vaults be done on T6, normal, or other difficulty?
Kinda sucks that solo players have to go the LV 1 route as they cannot snapshot a game. It’s still backasswards that we even have to do things this way for a season theme.
The level 12 rate is snapshotting. You keep the game at level 12 difficulty, so that few items can drop. The characters running the rift though need to be at least X+4 levels higher, X being the game level, or else the game will now change difficulty to that.
The vault runs, you want the game snapshotted between Level 5-10. This way, only a Leoric’s Crown or an Ethereal can drop (with the exception of a Barbarian, who can also get a Saffron Wrap). And Greed guarantees 2 drops.
Now, if you’re going solo, you can’t snapshot, so you’ll want to run normal, so that you don’t over level. Once the game is Level 11+, you go from a 50% chance of each item being an Ethereal, to a 4-7% chance.
If you can guarantee you won’t be above Level 10 after killing Greed, play as high a difficulty as you can. Some of the goblins also can guarantee a Legendary/Ethereal at T6 difficulty, and blood goblins will also give significantly more blood shards for gambling more puzzle rings. But if solo, or on the console, just play normal difficulty, and only focus on Greed drops.
Pros of GR90s:
XP
Solo Friendly
Console Friendly.
Useable gear/Ethereals
Cons:
Slow (talking to a few other people, it’s about 3-4 hours per class for all Ethereals)
Pros of Puzzle Rings:
The fastest known way to accomplish the Ethereal collection (should be between 2 hours and 8 hours to get all Ethereals, depending on if you’re in a group or solo. this includes puzzle ring farming. If you’ve been saving puzzle rings, this can take below an hour to complete the Feat of Strength.)
Console Friendly
Solo Friendly
Cons:
Requires an upfront investment of making sure you can clear high level GRs quickly for blood shard farming.
No useable Ethereals
Pros of Level 12 Snapshotted Rifts:
Fastest way to begin farming Ethereals. Once you’re above Level 40 or so, this method becomes available.
Cons:
No useable Ethereals
Not solo or console friendly
Time to collect is between the puzzle ring approach and GR approach. (3 hours as a low count, but if you’re the sole person who’s running a snapshotted rift, this is barely faster than running GR90s).
