I simply replay F1 over and over. Another good way is to replay levels where there are scripted apparitions, specters, or shadows. Not sure about spires since I have not encountered them yet.
@markkrosky Your approach is the way i did it until i beat the game. For high level runs the cores at the end pay for your costs in the begining. Has anyone else noticed that playing the first level gets more shadow cores when you are higher level? I played F1 until i got my amulet filled up and remember getting 2-3 cores but now (level 400) i get over 10 cores each run.
if you look at the v1.0.2 change log, there is a line which says something about shadow core bonus from wizard level capped to level 500, which implies you will gradually get more core as you level up
Farming F1 no longer really works, because Chasing Shadows has been hard nerfed.
Chasing Shadows used to guarantee 7 shadows (when maxed) would appear in a level. F1 has 10 waves with maxed Chasing Shadows...used to just call all 10 waves, 7 shadows appear, kill them, get ~650-700 cores in under a minute. No longer works that way...now it guarantees 7 additional shadows over the full 999 waves...
I don't suppose anyone would have a list of which levels have scripted apparition / specter / shadow encounters, along with which ones are the best to replay?
the best place i found for grinding cores is x5. just by sending all the waves and freezing the monsters around the node, each fight lasts for around 1-2 minutes and i get around 140 cores.(at 1x speed for some reason i get less cores on higher speeds) i wonder how much cores i would have gotten before the 1.0.12 patch
the fastest SC farming ive found is doing f1 repeatedly on haunting difficulty if you have it. All you need is a level 7 gem and you should be able to kill everything without it even reaching your orb. F1 also seems to drop alot of talisman fragments and with haunting difficulty its a minimum of level 15
Choose looming difficult with Chasing Shadow Trait and Orblets (only premium, tho).
Farm Mana in early waves - i think when you are at the point that you have to farm SC you know what that means. With lvl ~2100 i get grade ~42 in early waves. I do a RWY Gem and put 8 Amplifiers around it. My mana-farming gem (its RBOW) is surrounded by 3 amplifiers (only orange). Go into Endurance and send all waves. Around wave 300 you have to start freezing the mobs at the entrance. When flying ones become to difficult to kill, end endurance. Thats about wave 500.
This takes me around 15 minutes, and i get 2000-3000 SC.
T7 is pretty good -- several apparitions scripted. And it's a pretty defensible setup, which makes it play quickly. About 400 SC from apparitions... about 1k if you do Chasing Shadows maxed as well.
Glaring difficulty + CS gets me 700-1000 cores per run with each run lasting 2 mins. I forget the specific level I use but it has around 110 waves with those settings. I'm level 2300 some, so it may be different for lower levels.
