[3.12] Brittleknee's Darkness Farmer - 200+ Depth, Fossils, Resonators, Currency - Video Included!
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[3.12]Brittleknee’s Delve Darkness Farmer - 200+ Depth - Fossils, Resonators, Currency and Maximum Chill
 Greetings Exiles, I’m Brittleknee! The one thing I missed the most from Delve League was darkness farming. It was super chill- you’d throw on a show or movie, and just mindlessly farm. It was approachable by a wide variety of players and skill levels, and it did not take trading for chisels, sextants, fragments, etc. It was also an alternative to lab farming for those with family, jobs, and other real life demands, in that it creates a way of generating a decent amount of currency, even at modest time investments. It was nerfed into the ground, due to changes in how Darkness works as well as changes to both Temp Chains and Phase Run. I honestly thought I’d never get to play a darkness farmer ever again. Someone linked me Akane’s Indigon + Agnostic Miner build, and then it clicked. I knew it would be possible to re-create the original darkness farmer, and retain a lot of what made the original great. The new interaction would also make it so that the changes to Temp Chains and Phase Run didn’t matter: this build can take the hits. Catch me Streaming on Twitch or in game as @Brittleknee! I made a short video for this build, which gives you a tl;dr of the gear and interactions that make it work: Video Guide. Please, please, please read the FAQ. Open up the Spoiler for it and Ctrl + F what you may be curious about. It will save us both some time.
Heist Update
Alright, I've gotten around to pushing out at update for this lady! Folks have been asking about the changes to stealth and if this nerfs the build. We never used phase run for its reduced visibility, we used it for extra run speed and phasing through monsters. This build does not care about being hit by mobs, so it's just business as usual for us. Regarding Wind Dancer: You may want to incorporate this keystone into the build as well, but something to remember is that it does have a few potential downsides. Remember you do still get hit, so the mitigation of darkness will not be even. I don't think hits will cause a spike in damage taken in a large way, but it will be noticeable at high stacks. The 40% Less Evasion you have while the 20% Less Damage is up will likely knock you off your Queen of the Forest movement speed cap (45k Evasion to "Cap") so you may need to source additional evasion. I'll let you all decide if this is right for you, but I thought it should be explained. You're trading mitigation for speed when there's potentially other ways to make the build tougher for higher stack count through flask recover and otherwise. Have a great league! <3BK Path of Building Links: Darkness Farmer - Consolidated You can still equip 7-Leagues and other MS% Items if you prefer, but this is a very tough lady. 
1.0. Introduction
1.1. Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
1.2. Playstyle/How to Run in Darkness
Atypical of most builds, you will deal zero damage once you transition your gear and passive tree to be a darkness runner. While able to take more than a few hits, you will dish nothing out in return. To prepare, you’ll want to use your main character to scout out a few pathways while you are going about your normal delving business. See ‘Choosing a Route’ in the FAQ for more information on how to pick out a pathway. Once you’ve settled on where you want to farm, you’ll want to find an adjacent, nearby pathway that is too short to run and break a wall. This is the only time you will ever break a wall on this build. Breaking a wall here will help center the “camera” near the node where you are planning to farm for continuity. Once the camera is situated, it’s time to run. Scout your pathway, collecting everything you personally want to collect. Remember, do not break any of the walls or you will not be able to continue running your path as it cannot respawn loot if walls are broken. Once you reach the end of a long pathway, you will log out and re-enter the game. You can do this manually or assisted by the HC Logout Macro. Remember that it is against ToS for a Macro to do more than one thing. Re-enter town, talk to Niko, and click on your path to return. This saves you the loading screen in the encampment. If you need flares, you’ll zone in the usual way via waypoint. Occasionally, you’ll be able to find a loop route, in which case you’ll use the crawler to get back to your starting point and refresh the instance. Be sure to check out the FAQ for more. While running, you will spam your enduring flask until it can no longer sustain the incoming damage. Remember, with enduring flasks, you can “queue” the effect of by rapidly spamming the flasks, and the duration will last for as many charges you feed into it. You then will stagger the Enduring Flask and Lavi’s periodically with increasing frequency until you are no longer able to sustain the incoming stacks. Due to recent changes, they can no longer occur simultaneously. Once things are uncomfortable, simply throw a flare at your feet while you run to reset your stacks. If you are spamming Lavi's you need to flare a bit sooner.
1.3. Origins
I loved Darkness Farming in Delve League. I loved the ability to create currency independent of trading. No sextants, no chisels, no maps, no atlas strategies, just something I can put my time in and get profit out. When I came across the way to revive the original build in the current state of the game, I couldn’t possibly resist. I don’t know how long we’ll have with the build, but I hope it will be a while. We shall see. 
2.0. Skill Trees, Ascendancy, and Leveling
Leveling this build can be done a few different ways. There’s no “right way” to go about it. You can honestly use whatever skill you like since this is not a league start character, and how you level will be dependent on factors like regret cost, leveling gear, etc, after you’ve put the main gear together. However, I’ve field tested what I think is a very approachable leveling, which is to use mines, as there’s considerable damage multipliers to be had, and flat to scale. I’ve included the “shopping list” as well, detailed in the section below, and includes relevant leveling trees.
2.1. Leveling with Mines
With this proposed leveling, you will not be killing Kitava, as it's not a prerequisite for running in the dark. There are Pro/Con reasoning for the decision, and I think it weighs in favor for not killing Kitava if you are only planning on farming between 200-400 Depth, as you can get +2 from Eramir, save the resists, and Alira’s Mana Regen is a drop in the ocean when compared to the flask recovery anyways. In order to skip Kitava, you’ll want to make sure you have all Uber lab trials unlocked, as you can still complete Uber Lab without unlocking Mapping. You *can* kill Kitava if you want to use maps or public groups to level instead. This is for folks interested in deeper darkness farming, such as 400-1000 where the Pantheons are necessary for survival. First things first, here’s the PoB with the leveling trees: https://pastebin.com/VDv9A9Y8 Before you get started, make sure you have the following things:
Act I You’ll start out with Stormblast mine. You’ll link it with Added Lightning/Crit until you get Swift Assembly. You can also use a Cold Snap with Onslaught for Speed. Make sure you equip Combustion in your offhand so it gains levels in the meantime. Rush EO and then Dark Arts. Act II Pick up Trap & Mine Damage, Skitter Bots, Wave of Conviction, Second Quicksilver from Cavern quest. If you are using crafted wands make sure you equip them at 18. Kill all Bandits. Act III Conductivity as a reward until 28. Then buy Flammability with Pyro Mine at lv. 28. Switch to 5L of Pyro, Swift, Mine Damage, Combustion, Inspiration in Tabby when you can and use 2x +1 Wands. Take the Str Reward from Dialia so you can eventually equip Tremor Rod. Transition the Added Lightning to a 3L with Cold Snap for continued Onslaught. Respec Lightning Walker to Fire Walker. Act IV Continue onwards until Lv. 41 when you can equip your 5L Tremor. Regret Dark Arts wheel and re-distribute nodes into Scion Life Wheel. Put on the Temple Rare to replace Tabby to give you live/resistances for the rest of the Acts. You may need to anoint Beef for more Str as necessary. Act V Pick up stibnite to blind heart adds during Kitava fight if feeling squish and aren’t sure about smoke mine placement. Act VI - Act X Business as usual. Everything through the rest of the story after set up with Tremor should be EZ mode. Stay in BA until 68-70. Make sure you get all skill and regret books skipped. Make the decision if you will kill Kitava or not. If not, prepare to finish the leveling process in Delve. Finishing in Delve: At 68 you can partially hybridize your character to gain some of the toughness from the gear you will wear while also retaining enough damage to finish out the leveling process. You’ll take MoM, Put on your Rare Boots, Gloves, Watcher’s Eye, Enduring Mana Flask, Essence Worm (put skitters in there for now) and make sure you take Essence Extraction as soon as possible. Once you scale more Mana/Life as you approach 76-80 you can then add in Agnostic.
2.2. Ascendancy Choices
Ascendancy: Pathfinder/Heirophant While you can go in any order you prefer, but it is best to start with Pathfinder since you’ll eventually be allocating some nodes in her starting region.
2.3. Pantheons
Major:
Minor:
2.4. Bandits
Help Eramir for the +2 if you won’t be killing Kitava, and you’ll be saving that -30% resistance. Kraityn until 68+ if you want that MS while leveling, but a book isn’t worth it to me. Check me out on Twitch! http://www.twitch.tv/brittleknee All of my builds are here: https://tinyurl.com/y5vwayk2 Last edited by brittleknee on Oct 5, 2020, 8:26:08 AM Last bumped on Nov 20, 2021, 1:18:38 PM
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3.0. Delving Gear
This build has recently been consolidated from a total of 3 variants. The initial build was a rough draft and after some feedback as well as experimentation, I believe this is the best version of the build and simplifies things. You can still go for things like 7-L steps if you wish, but remember that a majority of your $ comes from resonator sales, and the deeper you can go, the more Azurite you will get. We trimmed back the Aura nodes, redistributed more nodes to fall within the Militant Faith area of effect, and grabbed Acro, Phase Acro, and the Ranger Movement Wheel. This will make gearing much easier if you have +All Resists on the Militant Faith. You can trim points from the witch area that heads to Heart and Soul and distribute those into Cluster Jewels and their passives. We've also added Vigilant Strike which will grant an 18-second Fortify. Note: Fortify does not decrease darkness damage taken. It simply helps in 500+ if you've got some damage mods on your pathway.
3.1. End-Game Gem Setup
Chest: Phase Run (Quality is important), Enhance (3), Increased Duration (Quality is important), Efficacy, Arcane Surge. Helmet (if +2 Curse Helmet), Otherwise where-ever: Temporal Chains, Enhance (3), Blasphemy, Empower (3) Essence Worm: Grace Weapon: Vigilant Strike, Efficacy, Enhance (3) Empty Sockets: Fill with portal gems. Tell people Delve is great XP and you’re trying to flip them for profit. If you are farming in the Lava Biome, a CWDT-Steelskin may help with some of the Tiki Damage.
3.2. Flasks
Between your gear and flasks, you need to hit 45k evasion to max out your Queen’s movement speed.
3.3. Jewels
Watcher’s Eye % Damage taken from Mana is the MOST important mod. You want that MoM mitigation. The jewel MUST have this stat, no substitutions. Grace can provide some useful stats such as movement speed and a blind. Double Clarity is nice, but hard to come by. The second clarity stat you'd want if you can afford it is Mana Recovery Rate. Misc Jewels Abyss are a good source of Flat Life, Flat Mana and Res Jewels, which are nice to round out holes in your gear. Evasion or movement speed can be useful, too. Check me out on Twitch! http://www.twitch.tv/brittleknee All of my builds are here: https://tinyurl.com/y5vwayk2 Last edited by brittleknee on Jul 9, 2020, 2:02:33 AM
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6.0. Frequently Asked Questions
6.1. How to Choose a Route
This is one of the most frequent questions, and also one that is misunderstood the most. I finally found a pathway I like this league, so now I have pictures to share! You’ll want the longest pathway you can find within the single biome you’re targeting. Make sure map mods are friendly (no hexproof, dodge chance is unlucky, etc.) The delve instances are 5x5 grids, so sometimes a pathway will stretch beyond the instance and you’ll get cutoff from the full route. So while a long route can be nice, sometimes they're not optimal.  Above is my current route. It doesn't look like much, right? Why would anyone want to farm this? All of these routes look short, and surely this can't be useful?  However if we apply the 5 x 5 instance boundaries overtop of our "start" node, you'll see the loop and offshoot all exist within the same instance. I can even take the end point back to the beginning node with this route and it will re-load the instance. No need to leave!  Here it is after I did a run. Needless to say, there's tons of places to check, and oh lawd the azurite. Hope this helps you pick out a route you like!
6.2. More Frequently Asked Questions
Why do you not break walls? When you break a wall, you prevent that node’s ability to repopulate loot. This build is about chaos per hour, a slow and steady targeted farm of non-walled fossils. Do you get fossils every time? No, sometimes there will be runs where you will get neither fossils or resonators. It’s just RNG. I suggest loading up Exilence or a similar tracker and watch your Chaos/Hour to help keep things in perspective. What do you do at the end of your route? Log to character select, then relog, talk to Niko in town, and click your node to resume your route. If you need to restock on flares, you’ll have to deal with an extra loading screen to go to the encampment to buy them. What depth is best? It depends on your personal investment. If your main can get down deeper and you want to farm lower, you can. Fossils are statistically more likely the deeper you go, in addition to the azurite clusters yielding more as well. Why would I bother with the Azurite? You can turn excess azurite into additional chaos/hour by purchasing resonators from Niko. Additionally if you’re still working on upgrades to capacity, resistance or radius for a main, you can upgrade the machine to help your main delver. Delve states are shared across your entire account within a league. How do I move the camera? https://clips.twitch.tv/PlainCheerfulFennelImGlitchi When you finally get your character leveled, you’ll want to go to a zone that is near where you are gonna run, but a nearby, short node. You’ll break a wall in that Node and it will recenter your camera. This is the only instance where you should ever break walls. What level do I need to be to get started? 81 or 83 Depending on if you kill Kitava or not. Should I be res capped? Ideally, yes! Shouty boys are brutal in deeper delves, as are some of the glacial hammer crashes from the ice elementals, etc. All of it will hurt more and more the deeper you go until you fix your res. Don’t forget about zone mods, too. I trudged through the story and everything sucks. How do I level to 82? Join public or guild rotas for things like Coward’s Trial, Poorjoys, Breachstones. Ask a friend for help and say that you will go scout fossils from them while they do normal delving and give them all the fossils you find as thanks. Does it HAVE to be a Scion? For the most part, yes. The best build for deeper depths is the build with the most MoM %. You can hit up to 48% MoM mitigation without sacrificing speed as a Scion. How much money do you make? Last league, with the fossils in the frost biome being sought after, I was making 270-350 C/Hr based on RNG. However your results will vary by node, biome, depth, market and efficiency. What fossils are found where? Here’s an old cheat sheet. Remember you will not find any labeled with (FW) in the wild. They are only behind walls and we do not break walls.  Is a +2 Curse Indigon Worth it? If your goal is to stay on the 200ish side of things, no. However if you plan on going deeper you should very much consider it.
6.3. Troubleshooting Common Issues
My life drains before my mana. You are likely not Darkness Res capped for your respective depth, have the wrong name on your jewel, or you have more mana than life. I’m getting oneshot by Tiki Totems. You won’t have spell avoidance, as we do not have Phase Acrobatics in this build unless you are Lv100. If you are specifically farming Pristines in the Lava Biome, consider Atziri’s Step boots and a nice Rare Belt for resists. My phase run doesn’t last longer than its cooldown. Make sure you’re using the various recommended skill effect duration nodes, in addition to allocating Fleetfoot via Anoint. You also may be hitting Phase run, then flaring, which will make you wait on a cooldown. Create a good habit of flaring before you refresh Phase Run. 
7.0. Media
7.1. Videos, Gifs, Clips
7.2. Social Media
Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/brittleknee Twitter - https://twitter.com/brittlekneetv Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/brittlekneetv Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/brittlekneetv/ Discord - https://discord.gg/36mXkFq 
8.0. Credits, Updates, Changelog
Credits
Thank you to Akane, who’s video about their Miner that used Agnostic + MoM + Agnostic inspired me to revive this iconic build from Delve League.
Updates
Archived updates posted at the top of the guide at the beginning of a new league will be moved here at the league’s conclusion.
Harvest Update
Alright, I've gotten around to pushing out at update for this lady! The build remains in tact heading into this league. I'll be playing at some point during the league and will experiment a bit with flask clusters and see what we come up with. With Agnostic on the tree now, you'll no longer need a Militant Faith Jewel. I'll be updating the guide to remove references to this. There are some problems with losing the Legion Jewel, but only if you abused the +2% to Elemental Resistances per 10 Devotion stat. TL;DR is that it will be a bit harder to res cap. Crafting is pretty bonkers, so I don't think it will be much of a problem. Regarding Wind Dancer: You may want to incorporate this keystone into the build as well, but something to remember is that it does have a few potential downsides. Remember you do still get hit, so the mitigation of darkness will not be even. I don't think hits will cause a spike in damage taken in a large way, but it will be noticeable at high stacks. The 40% Less Evasion you have while the 20% Less Damage is up will likely knock you off your Queen of the Forest movement speed cap (45k Evasion to "Cap") so you may need to source additional evasion. I'll let you all decide if this is right for you, but I thought it should be explained. You're trading mitigation for speed when there's potentially other ways to make the build tougher for higher stack count through flask recover and otherwise. Have a great league! <3BK
Delirium Update
The build survived patch notes! The enduring flask changes do not hurt the build as much as you’d think. Lavi’s duration is very short relatively speaking as far as “interrupting,” and the amount of mana flask recovery/mana flask recovery rate/flask effect/mana recovery rate that the build has, it not much more than a small hiccup for us, but it hurts the casual users of enduring far more. I’ve updated the build to feature a singular, comprehensive guide that now can survive from 200-1000 depth (with reasonable mods, 3x Damage as Extra, Crit/Crit Multi and Accurate will still obviously shred the character), and is still modular to allow for customization based on preference (such as still picking up 7-League Steps, and other MS% items). She’s considerably tougher with a base 48% MoM mitigation now, following the dropping of Might of the Meek and a relocation of Militant Faith. There’s been a radical change in the skill tree, but for the better. I’ve trimmed it out to grab more in the Ranger area, including Acro & Phase Acro and if wanting to experiment with the Cluster Jewels you’d use the outer socket just to the north. You can also trim the witch nodes or level higher to make use of the new Cluster jewels. I’ve included a number of useful cluster outcomes to keep an eye out for while you’re working with the jewels. I’ve also included a comprehensive leveling guide rather than the “Eh, do whatever” section that used to be there. It includes a pre-leveling shopping list, leveling trees, and more. It also outlines how to transition into part of your gear in order to finish leveling to the required 82 to begin farming. A full cart (40,000+) of Sulphite and some patience will have you leveled in no time. Oh, and the change to Tempered Mind is really nice, too. Can go up in the witch area as Mana Recovery Rate is the global stat that affects all Mana interactions, including flasks and flask recovery. Hope you all have a wondrous… delirium! <3BK
Useful Cluster Notable List
Darkness Farmer ======================= Distilled Perfection 25% increased Life Recovery from Flasks 25% increased Mana Recovery from Flasks 20% increased Flask Effect Duration Spiked Concoction Flasks applied to you have 10% increased Effect 5% increased Attack and Cast Speed during any Flask Effect Numbing Elixir 25% increased Life Recovery from Flasks 25% increased Mana Recovery from Flasks 3% additional Physical Damage Reduction during Effect of any Life or Mana Flask Disciple of Kitava (Add a CWDT Lv 1 + Desecrate to your setup to use this one) Every second, Consume a nearby Corpse to Recover 5% of Life and Mana 10% more Damage taken if you haven't Consumed a Corpse Recently Brewed for Potency 24% increased Damage over Time 10% increased Flask Charges gained 20% increased Life and Mana Recovery from Flasks Forbidden Words 25% increased Area of Effect of Curse Skills 5% increased Effect of your Curses Curse Skills have 5% reduced Mana Reservation Dark Discourse 10% increased Effect of your Curses Enemies you Curse are Hindered, with 15% reduced Movement Speed Regenerate 1% of Energy Shield per second if you’ve Killed an Enemy Recently Fettle +20 to maximum Life 10% increased maximum Life Liquid Inspiration 15% increased maximum Mana 30% increased Mana Recovery from Flasks 5% increased Mana Recovery Rate during Effect of any Mana Flask Holistic Health 8% increased maximum Life 10% increased maximum Mana
Metamorph Update
This build is officially published! I originally published this build via Youtube/Reddit two months ago, but was hesitant to release it on the forums due to the concern that the interactions that power this build would be changed and/or nerfed. With the relative rarity of Indigon, Solstice Vigil and Watcher’s Eyes, it seems as though they are effectively rare enough to keep the item’s effects in tact. So, the good news is that the build is not changing. The bad news is that this is now fairly expensive for the average player to put together at the beginning of a league, but the prices fall dramatically as more and more players have access to the bosses responsible for the key drops. Be sure to watch the video. It explains a lot of the core mechanics in a digestible format and won’t waste your time. Also be sure to read the FAQ. A lot of the questions you may have when looking at this may be answered there. Hope you all have a wonderful rest of your league! <3BK
Changelog
31 December 2019 - Build Published Check me out on Twitch! http://www.twitch.tv/brittleknee All of my builds are here: https://tinyurl.com/y5vwayk2 Last edited by brittleknee on Oct 5, 2020, 8:26:53 AM
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Decent Freaking Farmer. Thanks for the guide :D works well in 80+ zones
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been farming darkness with this build for a while now love it thanks for the guide so i can invest more into the build now
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Been looking forward to this one :))
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Loved how chill darkness farming was back in Delve league, definitely going to re-make one now using your guide!
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Thank you very cool
I do this for money
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I am really struggling leveling this character it sucks :(
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Just got the build up and running, loving it. So relaxing.
" I had bought and thought the 10% damage on mana before life mod was more important? Also a question i think i answered but just wanted to make sure. Did you use the invisible Buff Effect on temp chains to remove the white circles around the monsters? |
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