Red chest farming.

[No.]

I farmed different areas and checked time versus ammount of loot to see which ones work the best. I'm just gonna throw the results here as well as a video foor anyone who's interested in farming chests for random loot.

I used the locations which I consider to be the best in terms of time invested. The times imply going straight after the chests, only killing what is necessary to reach them.
The average time reflects how long it takes to get to the chests with dedicated characters. Loading time, and time checking loot is not taken into account.

I'm gonna start with the Hero's Pass chest which everybody knows:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=520503802

Hero's Pass

Chests: 1
Time: 1s // The single limitation is your loading speed.
Difficulty: 0
Pros: You just open it, quit, and repeat.
Cons: You just open it, quit, and repeat. Gets boring really fast.

Now the ones in the videos.

Volleyball Net

Chests: 1
Time: 30s - 50 // Depending on how close you land.
Difficulty: 1
Pros: Makes it less boring by having you drive a car and calculate a jump. Accesible during an early stage during the story.
Cons: If you miss the jump, you'll have to do the rest while under heavy fire by bandits and buzzards.

Tundra Express

Chests: 1
Time: 30s // Don't slip.
Difficulty: 0
Pros: The only enemies in the way are varkids which you can run past without problems.
Cons: It's cold.

Vault of the Warrior

Chests: 1
Time: 25s // Just don't trip over.
Difficulty: 0
Pros: Free loot. No enemies around.
Cons: You need to run through all of Hero's Pass to get here, and have reached the end of the story missions. Just as with the one at Hero's Pass, the loading time can dramatically decrease the time-effectivness of this chest. Gets boring quickly.

Christmas Train

Chests: 8? I don't even...
Time: 140s - 240s // Depending on how fast you kill the Snowman.
Difficulty: 1
Pros: You just click once and get all the chests at once. The angle of the chest makes it easy to see all the loot without having to move around. Also, it has dedicated spots for different gear types, so you're guaranteed to get almost every kind of gear every run.
Cons: The chest gives no ammo.

Treasure Room

Chests: 13
Time: 180s - 240s // Depending on how fast you climb both the invisible stairs and the pyramid.
Difficulty: 3
Pros: No enemies. 13 chests, what's not to like about that?
Cons: It's an exploit. It can be pretty tricky to get it right, and any misstep can result in having to repeat the whole thing from the start. Finally, if your character leaves the area, you'll have too reset the save file and do the whole pirate campaign again.


The videos:
- https://vid.me/e86V // Warrior, Pete, Gobbler, Train, Treasure.
- https://vid.me/APXm // Dust, Tundra.

One thing to be considered is the impact that the loading time has on farming. For example, my toaster takes a while on the loading screen, so while 1 chest in 25 seconds sounds better than 2 in 55, when I factor the loading time into the equation, the 2 chests win by a good margin. Another example; loading Hero's Pass on my computer and getting the free chest takes about as much as loading the Vault and running to the chest.

And of course, the most important thing to consider are our own limitations; I'm horrible at getting the invisible wall trick right, so I'd rather do the Train or the Gobbler, since it's pretty likely that I'll ♥♥♥♥ up at the Treasure room and end up using way more time to get to the chests. Also, that thing bores me to death.

My personal recommendations:
- If you are strong enough to deal with enemies quickly, go for the Train.
- If you can't fight because your gear sucks, do Pete's.

Bonus round:

Dragons

Chests: 37? I lost count.
Time: 300s - 600s // Depending on how fast kill them.
Difficulty: 5
Pros: Way too many chests.
Cons: For starters, you have to kill the sodding dragons, which requires a ridiculously strong character. Second, you need to spend eridium for a chance at getting legendaries. Also, the chests don't seem to have an increased chance at rarer loot as the other red chests -Normal, Dahl, pirate, Bandit...-. Finally, the chests are spread all over the place, and the dice animation takes a while, greately increasing the farming time.

Video: https://vid.me/r03G

[Rowan]

Very helpful! Thanks. :)

[Bugman Blort]

What about the Ancient Dragons of Destruction, there are a hell of a lot of red chests in there, like 30 of them or something.

[No.]

Originally posted by Drop The Bass:

What about the Ancient Dragons of Destruction, there are a hell of a lot of red chests in there, like 30 of them or something.

Those require eridium, more eridium than what the dragons drop, so you eventually deplete your reserves. They're also too spread apart, which increases the time it takes to open and check them all. I haven't really kept track of the time, but I feel it'd be way too long for farming purposes.

I might give it a try later when I play again, but if anyone wants to run their own tests, please go ahead. I love numbers.

[Bugman Blort]

You don't have to put Eridium in to open them its optional, personally I have got just as good loot without paying any, but I may have just got lucky of course lol

[Bugman Blort]

yeah it is a long run, but there is a lot of loot in there and its more interesting than rinsing one chest, but not having done any tests the ones you have listed are probably more time efficient

[No.]

That's true, but you always want to use eridium. As I understand it, the game takes into account the highest roll, so spending eridium on each chest is literally like opening 2 chests, and getting the best loot of the two. Or getting two lottery tickes instead of one.

I guess we could consider both values for the tests; adding 2 for each chest when the player uses eridium, and counting them normally with no eridium usage.

[Abu Dahm]

This is brilliant, thank you for your effort and sharing. :)

[No.]

Ok. I went to fight the dragons. I'll edit and upload the video shortly.
Edited the op with the new information. Also, just found out that in order to get a legendary there, you need to roll double 20, so spending eridium is a most. They also seem to give ♥♥♥♥♥♥ loot -tons of whites and greens-. It took me longer than it should, mostly since I rarely visit the dragons, and as you will see in the video, I didn't even know where to shoot the first dragon at the start. >_>

All in all, while there are a lot of chests, the eridium requirement and mostly the terrible quality makes it a not-so-good farming location in my opinion.

Anyway. Gonna go grab a drink and start working on the video. Should be there in some 15 minutes.

--------------------------------
You're welcome, Sakura and Haman. (:

[Abu Dahm]

Great stuff, looking forward to the video. Let me know if I can help you with anything. I hear Opportunity is a great place to farm red chests.

[blinkmoth]

Originally posted by No:

Ok. I went to fight the dragons. I'll edit and upload the video shortly.
Edited the op with the new information. Also, just found out that in order to get a legendary there, you need to roll double 20, so spending eridium is a most. They also seem to give ♥♥♥♥♥♥ loot -tons of whites and greens-.

I'd really not integrate the Dragon's Chest in your otherwise conveniently compact list. As you say, they are terrible, even if you spend Eridium. The chances to get leggies are far too low with 1:400. I think it's ~40 chests, that gives you 90.4% chance to not get any legendary from any of the chest. That's not worth the effort of killing the dragons. The only advantage that this has over your other locations is the fact that the dragons drop seraphs & leggies too. But that has nothing to do with chest farming.

Also, if I remember correctly, the dragon chests only contain guns, no other gear (i could be wrong, been a while that I actually opened them). Now personally, I'd consider that a huge disadvantage, because when I farm for random rare loot, I am mainly interested in Class Mods and Relics. But might also be that someone considers this gun-only thing an advantage.

Anyway. The original thing you say about the Train chest is good advice. Definitely the place to go.

On an entirely different note, not that it's any of my business, but don't you wanna create a Steam Guide and copy-paste your info in there? Like this the effort you made will not be lost like in this thread, which will be forgotten in 48h max. There is actually no useful Guide for chest farming yet, but considering the positive responses you get here, I assume people would appreciate it.

[No.]

Originally posted by Haman1990:

Great stuff, looking forward to the video. Let me know if I can help you with anything. I hear Opportunity is a great place to farm red chests.

Sure, that'd be grand. If you know of any area with good farming potential, feel free to run your tests, or just let me know of the locations and i can do it later.

I don't know all of the locations, since I don't really watch many videos, and most of what I know is from personal experience or what my friends show me while we play. Hell, I just learned of the chest by Boom-Bewm's elevator a couple months ago. I was like "wat? Has this been here this whole time? ._."

Aaaand, it seems I totally forgot to edit the op with the video. Gonna add it right away.

Originally posted by blinkmoth:

snip

Yeah, the loot is pretty bad when compared to the other options. You can easily get more purple+ from a couple red chests than what I got from the whole ~40 of the dragons.

As for the chests being gun-only, they also give shields and COMs, although the chance of getting guns seems to be way higher.

A guide is a good idea. I'll keep the thread going to see if people know of other places which could make it into the list, and then turn it into a guide. Thanks for the suggestion.

[blinkmoth]

Originally posted by No:

If you know of any area with good farming potential, feel free to run your tests, or just let me know of the locations and i can do it later.

The only other two chests that come to mind wich are useful for farming are the one in the Dust and in Tundra Express. They both have the advantage that you can farm them relatively early during any playthrough in contrary to the chests in your list, if someone does not have the Marcus DLC.

the Dust:

- Take a car at Ellie's
- Jump over that peak-ish thingy into the buzzard plateau. Jump quite a bit to the left, not straight.
- Chest is right there
- if you get the jump right, you will land with your car a few steps away from the chest. Otherwise it can get annoying because the mobs there are not the easiest if someone is underleveled.
- Takes like 20-30 sec with a good jump.

Tundra Express:

- from the normal spawn point, run along the ice wall to your left (basically headed to Madame Von Bartlesbys location).
- you'll pass through a more narrow space with walls left and right, and then you would normally enter the very narrow path along the wall on the right side to get to MVB
- instead of entering this narrow path, jump down the cliff right in front of you, down onto a rock which is on a lower level.
- chest is right there. Takes like 40-50sec or so.
- advantage over the Dust chest: no dangerous enemies whatsoever.

If you don't find any of the chests let me know, I'll see if I can make a screenshot of the location on the map later.

[No.]

Will look for them and let you know if I run into any trouble. Thanks.

EDIT: Nice locations, indeed. The Dust gave me an Infinity.
Both can be done in some 30 seconds with a runner. The Dust took me slightly longer because I loaded the wrong Siren and was too lazy to change it.

Gonna add it to the op.

[azxcvbnm321]

Overlook has always been my favorite place to grind for weapons while I level. There are 2 normal and 1 red chest located very close to where you spawn and there's minimal fighting too. Most you have to do is kill 5 stalkers, the red chest is suspended over an area with threshers, but all you have to do is open the chest and then quit/save and reload.

[No.]

Originally posted by azxcvbnm321:

Overlook has always been my favorite place to grind for weapons while I level. There are 2 normal and 1 red chest located very close to where you spawn and there's minimal fighting too. Most you have to do is kill 5 stalkers, the red chest is suspended over an area with threshers, but all you have to do is open the chest and then quit/save and reload.

You mean the one under the bridge?