Umbra Shard bottleneck

[mistermath]

Hey! Level 20 f2p here.
I'm currently at enchanting level 103 for BFA enchanting. I've got hundreds of dust and ample veiled crystal/expulsom due to Tailoring, but I'm completely out of umbra shards. Currently, my grind consists entirely of running through either the freehold dungeon or the freehold general area on the map, farming greens and tidespray linen. I'm DE'ing greens and crafting green bracers which I'm scrapping to make purple and blue bracers for DE'ing.

Unfortunately, none of these three sources give Umbra Shard efficiently. Dungeon greens only give gloom dust, purple bracers don't consistently drop Umbra Shards, and blue Bracers cost so much blue linen that I end up only ever making 1 per dungeon run.

The biggest source of umbra shards, though, is getting blues off of the bosses in the freehold instance. However, I'm only getting avg. 1 dungeon blue per run, instead of 4 like I did with the WoD dungeons. If this were simply 4 per run, I'd have no issues at all.

Anyone know why this is the case? If there's any way I can get 4 dungeon blues a run, that'd be much appreciated. Alternatively, if there's a more efficient method of getting blues, that'd be very useful, too.

 

[Yurashic]

You need 6 marks of honor to buy 2 patterns that make purple tailoring bracers cheaper to make (rank 2 and rank 3). Disenchanting these is guaranteed purple crystal. You can split this purple crystal into 2 umbra shards with enchanting. Splitting purple crystals from purple bracers is more efficient than making blue items.

You can also buy wand formulas for marks of honor in the same place to make wands with less materials to level up enchanting and then disenchant these wands to get crystals back.

If you need more expulcom you can scrap greens from dungeons, not just the items you craft. And get the crafting enchant for gloves to make bracers faster if you haven't already.

 

[mistermath]

You need 6 marks of honor to buy 2 patterns that make purple tailoring bracers cheaper to make (rank 2 and rank 3). Disenchanting these is guaranteed purple crystal. You can split this purple crystal into 2 umbra shards with enchanting. Splitting purple crystals from purple bracers is more efficient than making blue items.

You can also buy wand formulas for marks of honor in the same place to make wands with less materials to level up enchanting and then disenchant these wands to get crystals back.

If you need more expulcom you can scrap greens from dungeons, not just the items you craft. And get the crafting enchant for gloves to make bracers faster if you haven't already.

Riiiiight. I totally forgot that breaking veiled crystal into two umbra shard is a totally viable way of getting umbra shards. I basically put that option away in my head once it stopped consistently giving me levels by itself. I'm at 1500 honor atm, and once I get to 2k I'll definitely buy the first of the two patterns for making bracers cheaper, too.

 

[aislingyngaio]

Wands scrap for dust + shard + star wood fyi, even greens.

 

[sancta]

If you haven't done it already, go to the tailoring trainer in northrend dalaran and learn the cloth scavenging skill. Iirc it only costs 5g and basically doubles the amount of cloth you loot. I was getting around 150-200 tidespray linen and 10-20 of the green quality cloth per freehold run when I was on that grind

 

[mistermath]

If you haven't done it already, go to the tailoring trainer in northrend dalaran and learn the cloth scavenging skill. Iirc it only costs 5g and basically doubles the amount of cloth you loot. I was getting around 150-200 tidespray linen and 10-20 of the green quality cloth per freehold run when I was on that grind

I'm a bit confused - does cloth scavenging impact BFA cloth drop rates? I thought that different expansions had their own cloth drop rate increase methods, and that BfA was limited just to getting a boost for having the tailoring profession.

 

[aislingyngaio]

There are only separate cloth scavenging from SL onwards. the Northrend one is a catchall for all other previous expacs (according to wowhead comments), which is assumed to include BFA.

 

[Bakedaflol]

Aren't ppl just making Tidespray bracers -> scrap -> Create epic -> DE -> repeat?
My main problem is usually running out of expulsom late in the grind, having to dedicate time for that alone.

 

[Bakedaflol]

There are only separate cloth scavenging from SL onwards. the Northrend one is a catchall for all other previous expacs (according to wowhead comments), which is assumed to include BFA.

Great info! I had no idea

 

[mistermath]

There are only separate cloth scavenging from SL onwards. the Northrend one is a catchall for all other previous expacs (according to wowhead comments), which is assumed to include BFA.

How do I get that quest? Google only shows versions of the quest from WotLK Classic.

 

[aislingyngaio]

How do I get that quest? Google only shows versions of the quest from WotLK Classic.

You have to learn Northrend Tailoring. The quest will immediately pop up on the tailoring trainer.

If you later drop and repick up tailoring, just relearn Northrend Tailoring and you can regain the cloth scavenging passive simply by talking to him again (no need to pay the 5 gold twice).

 

[mistermath]

You have to learn Northrend Tailoring. The quest will immediately pop up on the tailoring trainer.

If you later drop and repick up tailoring, just relearn Northrend Tailoring and you can regain the cloth scavenging passive simply by talking to him again (no need to pay the 5 gold twice).

Just did this, and then did one run of the normal freehold area and the freehold dungeon. Got ~90 and ~250 cloth respectively, which is right around my average in the first place. A few possibilities:

1. Learning Northrend Tailoring does increase cloth drops for BfA, and
a) I'm dumb and did it wrong/paying the 5 gold isn't sufficient to get the increased drops, or
b) It doesn't stack with the existing bonus to BfA cloth drop rates you get from simply learning BfA tailoring in the first place, or
c) Low sample size, I need to do more runs of both before I jump to conclusions.

2. Learning Northrend Tailoring doesn't increase cloth drops for BfA, and
a) It does still increase it for other expansions, or
b) It doesn't impact any mobs outside of Northrend.

Mind if I ask which wowhead comments you read?

 

[aislingyngaio]

Just did this, and then did one run of the normal freehold area and the freehold dungeon. Got ~90 and ~250 cloth respectively, which is right around my average in the first place. A few possibilities:

1. Learning Northrend Tailoring does increase cloth drops for BfA, and
a) I'm dumb and did it wrong/paying the 5 gold isn't sufficient to get the increased drops, or
b) It doesn't stack with the existing bonus to BfA cloth drop rates you get from simply learning BfA tailoring in the first place, or
c) Low sample size, I need to do more runs of both before I jump to conclusions.

2. Learning Northrend Tailoring doesn't increase cloth drops for BfA, and
a) It does still increase it for other expansions, or
b) It doesn't impact any mobs outside of Northrend.

Mind if I ask which wowhead comments you read?

Did you run BFA dungeons through dungeon finder? Because if yes, then cloth scavenging's extra cloth only appears for you to loot after the corpse owner has already looted their own loot, and not every leveller does (due to bagspace).

Here's a sample page from wowhead. Granted it mentions mostly cata cloth but that's because it's the expac immediately after wrath so ppl r more prone to notice the diff.

 

[mistermath]

Did you run BFA dungeons through dungeon finder? Because if yes, then cloth scavenging's extra cloth only appears for you to loot after the corpse owner has already looted their own loot, and not every leveller does (due to bagspace).

Here's a sample page from wowhead. Granted it mentions mostly cata cloth but that's because it's the expac immediately after wrath so ppl r more prone to notice the diff.

I'm soloing only, not using the dungeon finder. The upvoted comments there do seem to say that it should work for all humanoids, period. I'll run some more rounds later and see if I notice any difference (possibility 1c), but if I still find no change and the comments are true, I'm thinking possibility 1b.

 

[aislingyngaio]

I'm soloing only, not using the dungeon finder. The upvoted comments there do seem to say that it should work for all humanoids, period. I'll run some more rounds later and see if I notice any difference (possibility 1c), but if I still find no change and the comments are true, I'm thinking possibility 1b.

Gotcha. Tbh I since I'm farming the 4 BFA world drop mounts (3 now) I'm not really bothered by the rate of cloth drop since I know I'll be there for a looooooooooooong time hahaha it helps to have a kill two birds with one stone situation...

 

[sancta]

Aren't ppl just making Tidespray bracers -> scrap -> Create epic -> DE -> repeat?
My main problem is usually running out of expulsom late in the grind, having to dedicate time for that alone.

The expulsom was a definite bottleneck for me, but I've only done the grind on my horde priest. Since I can't get any better wep chant than than quick/vers navigation I didn't need to level all the way up, but crafting the blue bracers and scraping will occasionally grant expulsom iirc, and crafted wands(which require even more shards ugh), and im pretty sure trinket drops for bfa dungeons are a 100% expulsom scrap.