Starting Locations

    Hello all,

    I’ve been experimenting quite a bit with starting locations for the Pongmei runs, Tascas, etc. I’ve been playing for a long time and am guilty of getting stuck doing things “one way”. It wasn’t till this last year that I realized the starting locations effected the chest locations.. which got me noticing having real players ALSO effect chest locations. I ran Hells Precipice with some of the fellas from PhD not too long ago and saw chests spawn in locations I've never gotten while solo running. I’ve been looking all over the forums for possible research on this, but I’m coming up short.

    My questions are:

    Do starting locations for a specific zone matter for the level of the chest / effect the outcome of the drop?

    Are there preferred and or more efficient starting locations than others? Ie: Maatu vs Boreas vs tangle wood.

    Is it better to multi box accounts and run the chests in the same instance?

    Thank you! Happy Hunting!!

    "which got me noticing having real players ALSO effect chest locations"

    that would be very new to me. can you post one of the locations that you didn't see whilst alone? so we could test if it'd pop in solo as well....

    for your questions:

    yes they kind of matter. the chests aren't placed anywhere near your entry point, which is the closest I can say. no clue on the range or the details but I guess they tried to avoid chestruns being too short - like run out of town and get a chest within 10sec. then the loot is somewhat thematic to the group that it spawns with - for pongmei the echo etc only drop near the dragon moss/warden things, whilst jade drops are seen near wallows and plagueborn near - you guessed it - plagueborn. this means the entry location will affect the skins you drop in an area as multicultural as pongmei, whilst the stats don't depend on that. so it depends what you are after: if jade drops start from maatu/tanglewood, if after echo start from boreas/sunjang (you can take an alt for rezoning).

    ofc the overall distribution of mobs can make certain starting points more or less efficient, but that is really to be viewed on a map-by-map basis... more mobs per area usually means more chests per area - and some maps are heavily unequal concerning that. but the main point of efficiency comes by the route options: in pongmei starting from sunjiang is not really feasible, since you would have to cover areas twice, whilst starting from boreas/tanglewood allows for the most linear route.

    multibox is always faster ofc, but depends. I can't actually run 2 chars on my machine (too slow) but you could think of running 8 on parallel - whereas for that I'd guess it'd be faster to run them on different instances, so you can use full support heroes each. but might be more confusing due to different chest spawns. for rezoning and hence running from a more effective entry point (or an entry point at all on maps that don't connect to a city) an alt is often helpful!

    these are just some aspects that I consider as input.

    I WTB all kinds of Tower Shields and Defenders. I do drop research - if you find anything remarkable or want to see the results - check the thread or send a pm!

    IGN1 Red Fireball Rusher

    IGN2 Silberner Magier

    I never had a chest who doesn't spawn when I am solo compare to when there's other players.

    As for multi accounts run, running on the same instance is easier than 2-3-8 instances to manage.

    Take Pongmei, solo could take you 3minutes to run and 5minutes with x accounts, but x times more drop,

    Imagine 40 drops in 5minutes :p

    I’ll do a quick comparison running hell’s solo, then add another account to the party and see what I get. My brothers account has historically better RNG than mine, and also seems to effect the spawns when we get out and about. We’ve always joked about how I “suck at RNG” which obvi makes no sense :p

    Thank you all for the detailed input.