Whats the easiest peerless to farm keys at?

[KDSonoma]

can someone rank them in order of easy to hard for me ... then how long do the various keys last for each peerless? and finally can someone tell me how to farm the easiest keys with the longest key time?

If I learn to do this I can farm these in advance of the non bedlam peerless events and I can farm them for PAS to do outside normal event times.

THANKS!

KD

[AshOfCaine]

I am no expert so take the following with a grain of salt.

I did find this link to a stratics forum post that i found interesting:
http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/uo/showflat.php?Cat=3&Number=6711020&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

I believe all the timers on the keys are the same, which I believe is 6 hours from the time they spawn.

This is except for Lady Mel, where have to do a quest that never expires so can do it days or weeks before you turn in the quest for the boss keys.

Easiest, depending on char most likely. I am building a char to solo getting Travesty keys, as for me that appears like maybe the easiest. I am tweaking my stealther to get the orange key, but the other 2 are easy for most chars, I use a pally to disarm, but stealth mage casting EV's is probably better.

Lady Mel, is next on my list of easiest, just have to kill 12 insane dryads and 1 named stone harpy (haven't done this with my pally yet but hoping with right equipment to walk through it, worried about the changlings in the area though)

I hear Dreadhorn is the next easiest, but my experience for gathering keys ends after the first two listed. I suspect Shimmering/Proxy/Bedlam are the 3 hardest because of all the heavy spawn and named monsters to deal with.

If you want to have keys for a peerless, I would suggest keeping a Lady Mel quest completed on a char as a last resort since it won't expire. Then if you can get good at getting Orange Key for Travesty, then should be able to farm multiple sets of Trav, since the blue and yellow are pretty easy to get (I have found several laying on the ground because people gave up trying to get the orange).

If I can get a char that can easily do the Lady Mel quest I will try and keep a char with quest completed on hand. Oh also, another thing nice about the Lady Mel quest is if go in a group multiple people can complete the quest. I went with a group of 3 people, we all did the quest, which is easy with 3 people, then we did 3 Lady Mels.

If there is anything left after my 2 cents clears the bank, put it towards my account.


I have never done a shimmering peerless so don't know how they are.

[Ciara]

KD, we have some members who are very good at farming keys, and also at teaching how to farm keys. Perhaps we could get one of these folks together with you--and possibly others who want to learn key gathering--as I know a few are interested. Melisandre is quite easy, especially if we have a bard, a mage, and a small group to do the Saliva part of the key gathering, and nice because we can "save" the keys for a later date.

Travesty is not very hard to learn, though the "orange key" room is pretty difficult and requires certain template or skills to even get there.

Some folks are getting good at doing Dreadhorn, and I'm pretty sure that one can be taught, though once again, it takes certain skills and templates to succeed.

Shimmering is very tuff, in my opinion. Great fun hunt once you get the keys, but gathering them can take hours and a lot of insurance gold.

I love helping get keys myself, but getting online before PAS event times is hard for me due to my time zone. I would be glad to do Melisandre keys for events, and also key gather for other hunts later in the evening if we did a later event.

[Tracy]

First off, not all keys have the same timer length. Ref: Bedlam.

1. Blighted Grove
2. Citadel
3. Twisted Wield
4. Prism of Light
5. Paroxy's Palace
6. Bedlam

Those last three can be flipped around based on what characters you're bringing (note that it's possible to solo farm keys for Shimmering, but it takes a while, not sure on the other two).

1. Meli -
Biggest problem here is Saliva, but like many others have said, it's easier and more beneficial if you take 3 or more people down there. Think about it, take 10 people, spend 30 mins killing dryads, kill Saliva 10 times and make sure everyone gets looting rights at one of them, and you can do meli 10 times. This is the one where you can easily actually spend more time doing the peerless herself than you do farming the keys, with more people making that dynamic even easier to achieve. Most any char can work here, tamers seem to have a little trouble keeping pets from wandering off every time they are targeted, but aside from that, any char is game.

2. Travesty -
Biggest problem here is the orange room/red room, whatever you want to call it. If you hear of someone refer to the red key room, or the orange key room, they're one and the same. Honor definitely helps to get back to the spawn location, but with a sturdy mix of mages and dexxers, it becomes difficult to simply 'disarm everything and whirlwind away' like I do on double/triple/quad spawned blue rooms and yellow rooms. It takes a bit more finesse in the orange room to stay alive, but it is doable, solo. chars that work best here in my opinion are stealth/mages, stealth/dexxers, and all out dexxers with resist (for the mages) and parry (for the dexxer NPCs). Again, Honor definitely helps here.

3. Dreadhorn -
A lot of people can solo this one, but it is a bit tougher. A couple of major challenges here. Getting back to the area where the keys spawn requires going past quite a few named changelings (I think Spite) and not being able to run during. Also, other people who run back there and (not knowing any better) run through the swamp pools, spawning up way more named monsters than you're used to dealing with also causes issues. From what I've seen, mages can work here, but you're better off with a bushido dex char.

4. Shimmering -
A lot more difficult to solo, but possible. Tons of insurance money lost, and if you're lucky, when you get the sixth key, you still have 500 seconds left on your first key (six hours later) so you can maybe get a party together and get over there before it expires. This one is very difficult, mainly because of the Hydras. A lot of the other rooms are also difficult, but the Hydras always gave me the most trouble.

5. M.I. Grizzle -
It sucks. Toes are stubbed and lives are lost. What can I say?
Oh, and the timers are only about 5000 seconds, so instead of 6 hours, you have an hour and a half. This one belongs above paroxy, but if red death comes down near the entrance, good luck.

6. Paroxy -
Don't know much about Paroxy keys, never done them myself. I just know that is one peerless we almost never do. And logic would dictate that if we never do it it's because nobody does the keys or does them very rarely, or else it takes a group. If anyone can fill in the gaps on this one I'd appreciate it.

This is not an end-all be-all list, it's just my list. Others may agree or disagree.

[Atta Kquast]

Nice write up. Would also add that bards added onto other chars seem to do fairly well. I have solo'd trav keys in the orange room with a provo/fencer fairly well. Peacing really helps in Shimmering. I cannot speak much from Paroxy. How we approach Grizzle seems appropriate... group key gathering.

Recommend high honor and sacrifice for self-ressies.

[Prae]

6. Paroxy -
Don't know much about Paroxy keys, never done them myself. I just know that is one peerless we almost never do. And logic would dictate that if we never do it it's because nobody does the keys or does them very rarely, or else it takes a group. If anyone can fill in the gaps on this one I'd appreciate it.

This is not an end-all be-all list, it's just my list. Others may agree or disagree.

I would have to disagree here as Proxy keys are very simple to get side of one. All but one key can be gotten from the corrosive slimes which are extremely easy to one hit kill. The problem lies in the last key which is the "liver". This key loads on the Putrifer. He is a big green nasty balron. Can be done with 2 or less people as long as you work together and field him in. Demon slayers do work on him to bring him down quicker. The liver is EXTREMELY small and easily missed in the corpse as loot.

The reason people do not run Proxy much is because he himself is not one of the more fun peerless's. He poison's constantly and self heals quickly. No pets are allowed as he will eat them and be right back at full health.

Also it is possible to solo Proxy. I however will not go into detail on how it is done because I swore I wouldn't tell anyone to the person who told me. However it is possible to do it.

He can be killed fairly quickly with 2-3 crosshealing warriors and the fastest way to do it is to keep him mortaled. When you first enter his lair kill off the 3 plague beast looking things and then have the 2-3 warriors stand toe to toe with him. Crosshealing is a MUST and 1-2 second heals is preferred. Keep him mortaled and he'll drop quick.

I would have to say Proxy keys are probably one of the easiest keys to get and if done right can be obtained and Proxy taken down in a very short amount of time. Your biggest problem is finding 2-3 people who work extremely well together.

[KDSonoma]

thanks everyone for the input ....

Jr, your post made me think ... if we had a group of PAS do chick on a stick as a Saturday event, for say 6 hrs straight, would it work? The idea is farm the keys ahead of time, and take as many as possible to do the peerless portion.

OR could one group thats skilled in getting keys work in that dungeon while the other group, skilled at killing Mel, works in the peerless?

Or does the dungeon close when the peerless is going on?

I could see a marathon event like this fetching everyone TONS of peerless regs and chances for some cool items too.

KD

[Irwin Hunter]

I normally have a Meli on the ready, KD, I only ask that you help me get the Saliva AFTER you use my blessing. That way I can get another ready, normally at my convenience. I am expert at soloing the orange keys. Just tell me how many you want, I can get down there and kill, kill, kill, until I get them. I know I am not the easiest guild member to get hold of. But I will help, all you have to do is ask.... When I am on. I cannot will not make pre-promises. I can never know for sure when I can or cannot play

[Tracy]

Well, I never claimed to know anything about paroxysmus, never been in the dungeon even. Thanks for the info Prae.

As for the peerless thing, if you wanna get peerless regs on a saturday, just take everyone to do lady M. Farm keys as a group, then go in and do the Meli. Before you start you should have a set for each person present.

Doing 7 Melis with 7 people took us about 3 hours one day, including key gathering time. More people can rip through the boss faster. So say you have 4-8 people ahead of time to farm meli keys (together). It'll take them around 45 mins to an hour and a half (depending on the group) to farm the keys, with the dryads taking the longest just because you have to kill so many more of them, and you can do a meli for each person who gathered the keys. Good thing the quest never expires.

When the event time comes, just do them back to back. If you don't have quite enough, have the key gatherers hand their keys with timers to the bigger group doing the meli and simultaneously go farm another set. Just make sure the person sitting down there farming keys gets to roll too.