Solo Farming Rares

Someone on the forums had said farming solo instances like Refuge of the Apostate, Isle of the Iron Statues, Forgotten City (Unchained), and Dead Man's Hand (Unchained) for rares was full retard.  I respectfully disagree.  Doing Nightmare Bubbles would be full retard.  Solo farming for rares is just partial retard and everybody knows you never go full retard.  And having done it to get the Children of Yag shield, the Hyrkanian Chest and necklace (on different toons), it is also very tedious.

When I wrote the guide to Dead Man's Hand's main quest line, I ran the instance 18 times to get an idea of how much gold, Esteem Tokens, etc. would be gained.  Dead Man's Hand, while fun, is the most time consuming of these solo instances but each one, if completing the quests in them, takes around 25-40 minutes (although I know people can do them faster if just going for the rares).



Here's the breakdown of average rewards for the solo farming instances based on at least 16 runs:

Instance	Money (S.CCTT)	Esteem Tokens	Rares	Mastery	Imperial Insignias	Hard Mode Tokens
Dead Man's Hand	59.1099	25.06	3	110K	0	N/A
Forgotten City	46.3855	17.67	1	90K	60	N/A
Refuge of Apostate	55.6311	21.5	2.65	70K	30	N/A
Isle of Iron Statues	40.50955	0	2	70K	0	3

Dead Man's Hand, Isle of Iron Statues, and Refuge of Apostate all grant 2-3 Rare Tokens.  Iron Statue's Hard mode also grants an additional 2-3 Rare Tokens.   Forgotten City only grants 1-2 Rare Tokens.

From a pure rares-per-hour, nothing beats Isle of the Iron Statues.  This, however, is the most difficult of the four instances.  Slith has a good walkthrough while this video by Kay Bee below shows some short cuts to make hard mode a little less hard.

Typically, once I get up on the second ledge to get away from the panthers and giant birds, I follow the path until the boss spider.  Then I pick up the short cuts again.  The main reason, other than I'm bad at platforming (being a keyboard turner and all), is that you get credit for animal kills for the minion spiders (and they don't pose a serious threat).

Once I've killed enough animals, I generally make a run for it to the rez pad before the final Ape boss where a pack of savage animals cut me down.

Refuge of the Apostate is probably your next best choice from a pure Rares/minute effort.  Anvil of Crom's walkthrough is pretty good while AOC Wikia has a nice map of the maze area (which will help make sense of the levers there).  Refuge offers a blue weapon at the end of the instance, although chances are, it won't be as good as the weapon you already had just to get through it.  But, to some extent, we all like vendor trash.   And we really like paths that take you back to the quest giver.  The optional ring quest you pick up just outside the instance was something that I often took and then returned when I did my next run, essentially only running it every other time.  I valued my time more than 11 silver and then having to run through Kara Korum being chased by half the mobs between Ghost Hill and Fendgu.

Forgotten City, while used to give between 1 and 2 rares, seems pretty stuck on 1 rare based on the 16 runs I did.  While this is a fun instance, I'd use it mostly as a barometer for whether you're ready to make the jump from Dead Man's Hand to Refuge of the Apostate.  Unless you really, really want some Imperial Insignias.  If you follow the group tactic shown on Conan College, you can get more Imperial Insignias.  I'm not sure if it's a glitch that removes the 18 hour cool down or if it is working as intended.  It's not something I've tested, nor want to, in case it's considered an exploit.

All of the instances, outside of Isle of the Iron Statues, the mobs tend to drop bags that contain money, alchemy components, esteem tokens, and Mastery manuals.  The undead pirates on the Island do drop Solider Kits, but the drop rate is pretty low (0-2 per run) compared to 6-14 bags in the other instances.

Happy (Solo) Hunting!