The 4 main Cartels of Undermine
The 4 different Cartel reputations (I know there’s 5, I’ll get there) are way too painful of a grind.
You can only pick one each week to do Weeklies/World Quests for, and you basically get NO reputation with the other ones you didn’t pick.
The only other source of reputation are CHETT lists, of which you only get 1 free list per week, per level 80 character. Sure you can farm 40 cards to get more, but with the drop chanceof those cards being abysmal, you might as well not consider it an option.
The disconnected Cartels of Undermine Renown
The main Cartels of Undermine reputation does not help you either. Unlike the Severed Threads, this reputation seems even more severed from eachother, as they do not interact at all. It’s fast to get to Renown 20, but after that it’s the same stuff as something like Council of Dornogal. You will barely notice you even get reputation, you get a paragon box and the most notable piece of loot is pet charms (yikes). It doesn’t even drop Miscellanious Mechanica unlike the non-renown cartel paragons.
Darkfuse Solutions and the definition of “respecting players time”
Darkfuse is the secret 5th cartel you can farm reputation with through different means. You basically have two options.
- Farm mobs for 10+ hours at the beach behind the Blackwater Cartel building in a 2x4 farming group.
- Farm Scrap digs until you lose track of time, because that method is 3x slower and you’re looking at over 30 hours there.
I just finished getting to Exalted, doing scrap till Friendly and 2x4 farms for 9 hours total. It was a miserable experience, shared by everyone I came across in farm groups. Multiple times did people whisper me to check if we were bots, I got reported atleast twice, and kicked from plenty of groups just because I wasn’t a boomkin, but a feral.
If this is respecting our time, then I don’t know what disrespecting it would look like. Because this is the worst farm I’ve done since probably Classic Steamwheedle rep, or farming Protoform Synthesis motes for every single craftable protoform.
And the best part - You’re not even done at Exalted. Enjoy farming another 2000 Market Research for your paragon box, so you have a chance at looting the waveshredder mount and Miscellanious Mechanica!
Oh yeah, about Mechanica…
Miscellanious Mechanica is another terrible item added with 11.1. It has a chance to drop from Rares and the 5 cartel Paragon boxes, and it is used to purchase pets and mounts. I’m a mount farmer, so let’s talk just for the 3 mounts: You need 75 mechanica, 25 for each.
Me and many others farm as many rares as possible, even across multiple characters.
I have 4 mechanica’s since Week 1.
Friend of mine that farms less, has 7.
Friend of mine that uses 5 accounts to farm them just bought his first mount, 25.
We need 75 total. For just the mounts.
I’m sorry, are these drop chances right? Because they sure don’t seem right. This is way too low.
Is it really this bad?
Calculate it for yourself. How much reputation are you getting with your chosen cartel per week? With that gain, how long would it take you -just- to get all cartels to exalted? (It’s over half a year btw).
How much time have you spent farming Darkfuse Smugglers? How much mechanica have you looted? Can you estimate the end of the farm, or is it so far in the future, you might still be farming all this in 11.2?
I’ll tell you - yes. If you’re a mount farmer, you will be farming these reputations well into 11.2. (Which should be releasing mid-summer). Just the cartel reputation alone, if you don’t have alts to farm CHETT lists with, you’ll be doing those weeklies, world quests and side gigs well into October before you can be exalted with all 4, and you might be farming the paragon mounts still at the start of 2026 depending on your luck.
What would make these farms better?
The 4 Main Cartels
- Have some of the Renown you get also give reputation towards the 4 cartels. 1k renown? Let it give 500 rep towards all 4 cartels, why not, it’s a weekly!
- Increase the drop chance of CHETT cards so you can actually realistically farm them without a level 80 alt army.
- Have a CHETT list that’s turned into the CHETT device give 100 reputation towards all 5 factions, on top of the Valorstones.
Darkfuse Solutions
- Increase the drop chance of Market Research without buffs & with buffs from all sources.
- Increase the advertisement pylon radius, perhaps double it.
- Have advertisement pylons stack. Let the ones put down by others also increase your gains further to encourage grouping even more.
- Have advertisement pylons last 5 minutes with a 5 minute cooldown, instead of 3 minutes with a 5 minute cooldown.
Miscellanious Mechanica
- Massively increase the drop chance. Like a 30% chance to drop from an elite rare, 10% for a regular rare.
- Make the mounts (and pets?) from the mechanica vendor BoP so it doesn’t turn into a gold farm for people with multiple accounts that will spam kill all rares.
- Have mechanica also drop from the Renown paragon & the weekly quest boxes.
Oh, and just for those unaware… some more bad news!
I bet you’re all very excited for the 100% reputation buff coming next month~ with 11.1.5!
Well I sure hope you love pet charm paragons, because for The War Within, it only affects the 11.0 reputations. None of the Undermine reputations.
Suffer well, and please pray with me that these farms receive improvements sooner rather than later.
Blizzard no…