Currency farming.

Learn how to farm Astral Diamonds and ZEN.

Update 2023 onward

The Cycle between AD and ZEN is impossibly slow. It is now far better to become a jewel smith, learn to craft copper rings and make as many as you can on as many characters as you can everyday selling them for gold. Then you can sell Gold Bars for AD. Generating a decent amount of AD for the light amount of work. Most, if not all professions have a recipe like this that costs less to produce than to sell the object crafted.

If you're like me and have a lot of character slots, you can make a ton of gold per day. Or just passively check your auto crafts on each character now and then throughout the day to passively make a decent amount. But yeah, Gold to AD is now the best method.

Certainly never spend money on this game. It's not been worth real money for a long, long time now. Don't worry about end game, just have your own fun for as long as that makes sense.

The rest of this guide is the dead method. You can stop here.

Dread Ring Spire Enchanting stones

Get to the Dread Ring map and complete the campaign, along the way you'll gain the currencies we'll discuss.

Chat with the regally dressed dwarf near the Captain in the Dread ring for a quest.
This quest is repeatable. The quest will give you a Thayan Cypher. Which you can use with a Campaign Step ”Trade Thayan Intelligence” to gain 20 Vanguard Scrips every 20 hours.

Next, you can farm the Dread legion Skirmish. This Skirmish grants 3 Vanguard Scrips for each completion. You’ll also get Onyx Fragments found in your currency tab or your inventory window from any enemies slain in any area of Dread Ring, even in the Dread Legion Skirmish.

These Onyx Fragments can be traded for Vanguard Scrips at the Bounty Hunter in the starting area of Dread Ring.

Now Open the campaign window and View Campaign Dread Ring.
Inside the Dread Ring Store you’ll find Thayan Layer Key which you can buy with all the Vanguard Scrips you’ve been collecting.

With these keys we’ll go to the Dread Spire in the North West of the map. Leave the camp and follow the cliff to the right cross the bridge go through the camp and cross a second bridge. After crossing a path soon after the bridge keep right along the wall and there is the entrance to the Dread Spire.

When completed you’ll gain access to a chest by using a Thayan Lair Key. In this chest on Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays you’ll receive Enchanting Stones rank 3-5. Rank 5 stones are typically worth 30-50,000 Astral Diamonds in the AH, soon after times 2 events they drop as low as 20,000 AD. This is a great way to farm AD. In addition, the times 2 drop events are best for farming them. It’s a good idea to look ahead in the calender and know when to save up keys for these events. The spire is immediately repeatable, so you spend a whole night farming Enchanting Stones.

I typically slow down using keys 2 weeks ahead of times 2 events and hold onto the stones until their value goes up to at least 30,000 AD.

Astral Diamonds, ZEN, and Wards.

After Farming plenty of Astral Diamonds, you can list them in the AD Exchange. Always list for the maximum purchase value, currently 750 AD for 1 ZEN. List as much as possible and be patient while continuing your farming in Dread Spire and any other methods you may use.

(Example)You can sell 750,000 Astral Diamonds for 1,000 ZEN, a stack of Preservation Wards for 990 ZEN, then sell them in Auction House for 817,000 Astral Diamonds after 10% AH cut, a profit of 99 ZEN a 10% profit. This reveals the weaknesses of this method. It takes time, and the more currency you possess, the more profit you'll gain with each rotation of currency. So, spending currency before you hit a comfortable ceiling can slow you down considerably. You can easily get bigger profit margins by selling smaller stacks for more AD per Preservation ward.

On the note of time, VIP is one of the best purchases you can make. I tracked daily values with opening chests with enchanted keys over a 6 month VIP. I made 313% profit from that 6 month period. Of course, this is again time consuming but it's a comfortable steady increase. So it's a fantastic method if you're active daily. Remember, the bigger VIP you buy, the cheaper it is per day.

You can speed up profits by taking advantage of sales, spending money to get ZEN, praying on all your characters and opening Celestial bags only when you have ZEN to get coupons for wards or other items. Preservation wards are my most commonly purchased item with this method, but sometimes campaign completion tokens and some pets are well worth the purchase and can move more currency quicker for bigger profits. Be careful with these items as prices for these are often more volatile in the AH and you can end up losing money in a price war. Just do the math before you purchase.

I've had great success with this method and wanted to share it.