Farming Merveil when you're stuck: A How-To.

[Mivo]

If you're new to the game or play self-found, you may find yourself a little weak in the cruel or merciless difficulties. A good way to improve one's gear a bit or at least get currency if you're into trading, is to farm Merveil in act 1. It's straight forward:

Preparation:

- Go to the Cavern of Wrath.
- Run to the entrance to Cavern of Anger.
- Open a portal before you go in.

Loop:

- Run through and find the entrance to Merveil's Lair (ignore most monsters).
- Kill Merveil (should be easy, but bring cold resists).
- Pick up loot, leave through the exit.
- Take the waypoint (in the jungle) back to act 1, identify, sell/stash loot.
- Take your portal (you arrive at the entrance to CoA).
- Make a new portal, then go in the Cavern of Anger (control-click to make a new instance).
- Rinse and repeat.

Depending on how quickly you find the lair's entrance (I usually check upper left corner first, then go to the right), this will take about 2-4 minutes per run. So even if you do kill various mobs on your way, or your damage is a little "meh", you should have plenty of time

Tip: Hold shift, right-click the wisdom scrolls, and then left-click through your items while still holding shift. This makes identifying items faster. Also, control+click moves an item to the sales window or the stash, depending on which is open. That saves time and you can sort through loot later.

With only about 100% IIR, Merveil should drop 5-8 yellows every time, with the occasional unique. The stuff here won't be of super top quality but it will help you build up a gear pool for your character. In merciless, the items are item level 58, typically with level requirements around 55 and will make act 3 of cruel/merciless much easier (and there you can farm docks and catacombs).

Bring enough scrolls, too!

[FreeMan]

thanks for the tip. I'll try this with my 58 lvl ranger. I'm at Piety in act 4 on cruel and I NOPED out of there real quick with my HC character.

[Complex]

good :)

[Lagwin1980]

The loot drops from merveil are not particualry special...i'd recomend tidal island or the ledge, and havin some IIR helps but at some point you WIll just get blues...that just how RNG works(see 1900% IIR strongboxes)