The Efficacious Way to get Orichalcum Ore in Frostborn
Orichalcum is the rarest and most valuable resource in the game allowing you to build some of the best items in the game, but the only zone in which you can mine it is a pvp bloodbath. So in this video I’m going to show you the most efficient way to get this resource.
Currently, the only place to get Orichalcum is in Helheim Rifts which spawns every hour on the hour throughout the day and last 15 minutes. This zone is full of extremely difficult enemies each with their own skills, but these enemies are not the biggest danger in this zone. Rather, the biggest danger is that this is a PVP zone in which the requirements to get in is to be over level 70 and have a gear score of at least 350. These steep requirements make it to where you will only run into serious players with a significant amount of gear on. Furthermore, they will know that you have good gear on you which will make them want to kill you for your gear.
There are no bots in this zone and by setting it up to where the zone is only active 15 minutes out of the hour, it will likely be crowded with good PVP players every single time you go there.
So now that I’ve explained the ridiculous challenge before us, let’s talk about the two most efficient ways to farm this resource.
The first and most straightforward way of farming the zone is to go with the intention of winning any PVP encounter that you will be fighting. This requires a good team that can communicate on voice chat. If you are not on voice chat, then you will die more often which is obviously not the most efficient way to farm this resource. Also, when using this approach, you want to bring your best gear because again, the more you die, the less efficient you will be in the long run. Not to mention, that if you bring good gear and you kill other teams, then you will be able to bring their gear home with you. In addition to using one of the team compositions that I recommend in my tips and tricks video for this game, I recommend making sure your tank has a dispel potion, you bring a few bird scouts, and at least two of the other team members have Bolas.
As soon as you enter the zone, send a bird scout either way to look for enemies. Because this is a Time event, it is likely that your enemies will be entering the zone at the same time as you So knowing where they are is incredibly valuable. If you do not see any enemies or after you have killed them, run around the edge of the zone looking for the two Orichalcum mountain tiles signified by this symbol on the mini map. If there is not an orichalcum ore directly beneath this mountain tile, then it means that someone else has already mined it. But if you got here quickly, this should not be the case and you should see the ore guarded by a ranged enemy and a giant.
Start off by having your tank lead the giant away. A good tank will keep the Giants skill active so that he can use it against enemies that try to close in on them; however, A team that is familiar with this tactic, will try to use a bolas on the tank so the giant hits him instead which is why it is important that the tank has a dispel potion on him.
Meanwhile, if the range unit is an Archer, then the other three players should kill it as quickly as possible, but if it is a shaman enemy, then another team member can take him away to use his skill in the same way that the tank was using the Giant.
After you finished mining the orichalcum ore, then you can start to look for the other one, but unless your team is an unstoppable pvp force, it might be best to bring the Orichalcum ore home before returning for more PVP. Definitely, if you get both orichalcum deposits, you should have at least that player bring them home before continuing on because even the best PVP teams will often get bested by other good teams.
After that, you can continue mining the maple and copper and PVPing, but none of those actions are in line with the most efficient way to get Orichalcum.
The second most efficient way to get orichalcum is what I call the Pacifist’s approach. In this approach, all four of your teammates wear a full set of blue mage gear and equip their highest level of healer. For any team that wants to use this approach often, I strongly recommend getting all of your team members to healer level 2. In addition to wearing a full set of blue mage gear, equip staffs of support, 20 bandages and a couple armor potions.
In this approach, your goal is to be Swift and nimble, moving together as one unit and timing your heals so that there is no wasted overlap. If you see an enemy, then you go the other way and if an enemy engages you in combat, then you cut through the middle of the zone. When you find the orichalcum ore, all four members have a pickaxe, you can mine orichalcum ore in just two seconds which means that you don’t really have to kill the enemies guarding the ore.
The danger to this tactic of course is that one of you can be bolad by and enemy at a bad time, but you have to keep in mind that 4 healers with blue gear and carefully used defense potions is far tankier than any normal team composition with all purple gear so while the purples are trying to kill the enemies they killed you with, a teammate can grab your stuff.
Now some of you will want to equip Bolas and keep your armor potion in your inventory which is a very smart tactic, but you have to keep in mind that once you use a Bola, then it will take 15 seconds for you to leave the zone rather than 5 Seconds and the beauty of the pacifist approach is that your team is unbelievably tanky to where they can run through the zone and leave within 5 seconds.
For more information about the pacifist approach if you want to see it in action, my team will making a gameplay video using this approach so you can see how it works.
While you are mining the orichalcum ore, you will notice that every time you hit the orichalcum ore it uses 9.25 durability from your strong pickaxe leaving you with only 1 durability left over. Because of this, I would recommend first farming copper deposits with your pickaxes. After farming 9 deposits, you should only have 3 durability left over. As long as there is one durability left on your strong pickaxe, it can still do a full hit so bringing 8 of these with you to farm the Orichalcum is not only a lot cheaper, but it deprives your enemy from getting anything off you if they managed to kill you.
After you have gathered some Orichalcum, you need to shift your focus to the most efficient way to use it. In my opinion, the best and most efficient way to use this resource is to make a level 3 bag. Not only do level three bags give you 15 extra slots which is a huge game changer in PVE tasks, level three bags are personal so once you build one, no one will ever be able to take it away from you. That being said, they can lose durability and they will disappear if you don’t return to your dead body within 10 minutes so I don’t recommend bringing them with you to pvp locations.
The second best way to use orichalcum is to build instigator boots. Instigator boots gives Mages and support classes the same amount of armor as their maxed class armor, only two less armor for Ranger and scoundrel classes and only 4 less armor for warriors, but they give 4% more movement speed and a bonus 10% damage to monsters making them the best PVE boots for all classes and the best PVP boots for most of the classes in the game.
After that, I could see an argument for building an instigator Helmet or sledgehammers, but I think you could probably trade the ore for better resources on some of the Frostborn trade servers. If you do not know how to do that, make sure to check out my video on the richest man in Frostborn and check out the links accordingly.
And then after that, I definitely do not recommend crafting instigator chest or leg pieces because those can be found in abundance in the chests of paying frostborn players.
Well. That’s it guys. Hope that helps. A little bit of trivia about orichalcum is that it was first mentioned by Plato as the legendary metal used to build the city of Atlantis. The most believe that it is a mythical metal that does not exist while others argue that it is referring to a copper and zinc alloy used at that time. It has no connection to Norse mythology and I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be kind of a goldish color oh, but it’s still cool that the devs added it in the game because it kind of fits with some of the mythical themes of the game.
Alright guys, I’ll see you next time.
