Rhea's Crater in NM 500 Runs (For Treasure Hunter and Lucky/Unlucky)

Hi All,

I wanted to share with you my finding from 500 runs in the Rhea's Crater in NM. I will stop the first question, "Why in NM?" I dont have that many lockpicks and am still working on my Treasure Hunter and Lucky/Unlucky titles, so i need something to keep running while progressing these titles.

Overall there are probably more profitable and faster chest runs, i will be trying others in the future to compare my results.

The Build

The runs were done with my Dervish, below is the build:

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I settled on this as the area is rather simple to run and its nice to shadow step a lot, it speeds up the process.

Recording

Time was recorded by Toolbox from the moment i left the outpost to the moment i /resigned (rounding down to the full second). Not every run was recorded. Exceptions were for runs were in the middle I had to go AFK, so it would be fair as some runs would take like 30 minutes sometimes.

Drops were recorded always as a chest always drops something. So its just a statistic of what can drop, they were recorded whem inventory got full (and i think at least one inventory was not counted, must have missed it).

The Run

As most already know, the general run is that we start over at Seaferare’s Rest. From here we exit to Rhea’s Crater. We have to have more faction of the opposing faction than the one controlling the outpost (this sometimes gets in the way, i would have finished on Thursday, but some jokers from Kurziks decided to take over the are and i was too lazy to farm Luxon faction).

When we exit we run over to the Afflicted. On my build I select closest enemy, then use Zealous Renewal>Pious Haste>Death’s Charge, and just wait. If you have the correct faction then you respawn to the North. Here the fun starts.

Below is the standard route that I would take, possible chest spawns are highlighted in pink:

Main enemies here are Outcasts. Deathhands are necromancers that can strip your enchantments if you don’t have SF on. Melee outcasts (warriors and assasins) are dangerous as they can strip your enchantments and stances is they hit you. So its best to be quick around them. After a few run you get to know when you need to keep up your enchantment and when you can drop them as you will be able to restart them after passing the groups (of course with the 50% speed boost up).

Around the resurrection Shrine there are a few possible spawns for a chest. There can be 0-2 chests here. If you want to finish the run here, but you will lose out in the long term as as the death+respawn eats into our run. So its advised to go the full route. When we reach this stone and there are no chests in front of us then we can go down the ramp to the left:

I f there is a chest somewhere in front of us we go down the ramp to the right (there will be dragons and Onis, prapare for knockdowns).

Either way you end up around here:

Here we can see all the possible chest in this area. If there is a chest to the left then you ust run down the ramps. If there is a chest next to the dragons or the outcast (the ones on the right side of the screenshot) then you can run down the ramp and try to shadow step to the dragons, this saves you a few second in most cases.

In case you didn’t find ANY chests then most likely they are hidden on the other side of them map. Here its your choice, you end it or you try getting 4 chests. In case you want to try getting 4 chests then we die to the outcasts where we ended.

Here we respawn again at the same shrine but this time we run North. Below is the general loop I make when running this side. You should see all the possible chests from here.

The area in the orange circle is controlled by Creeping Carp, I avoid this area as much as possible as couldn’t find a good way to avoid them. They are fast and strip your enchants through SF, if they touch you. The rest of the area is easy.

The Averages

We basically have 1 chest per minute, and on average it takes around 1.5 minutes per run. You can get from 0-4 chests. 10% of the runs contain no chests at all (this excludes the times that then I would do the alternate route). Even doing the shorter rout its possible to get 4 chests, but I think it happened once.

The Loot

Note: It seems that I forgot to record a few items, must have been tired and just sold them without thinking.

So here is the loot table for 710 chests.

For the general statistics:

It seems that Outcast Staffs are not that rare here, although I didn’t get a decent 20/20 yet.

Outcast Shields are not common but can drop, but there are better ways to get them. Didn’t manage to get a good drop from these runs.

As someone has already mentioned (although I believe they did it in HM), Jade Swords seem to only drop as Rare.

The new skins added in 2025 do drop here, at least got a few focuses: Fox’s Greed and Lion’s Pride.

In the long run it does pay for itself through the armor drops. I got at least 2 Superior Vigors and a lot of Mesmer runes for some reason (non of the mobs are actually mesmers).

Hope this was a good read, will work on a better write up for the future endeavors. Let me know what i can improve for the next one (or in this write up).

I believe next on my list to check out is Witman's Folly, hope that will be as much fun to optimize and run.