Steel Essence farming vs Vitus Essence

[Matheoryon]

Vitus essence is a hit or miss for getting it, and I have not had much luck with vitus. Is there some steel essence farm that is good that I am not aware of? I have heard antedotal reports of people getting high amounts well over what you see in vitus essence drops, so I would be grateful for help.

[McCIoud]

I did Gabii on Ceres for farming steel essence, hour and a half yielded around 40

[Nailclipper]

Those who got 200+ Steel Essences from a 2 hours farm, did it with boosters and a smeeta.

[--K--Sharkfin]

Resource drop chance and double drop booster are highly recomended for farming steel essence, not to mention smeeta charm even though it's unreliable. There is a huge difference between having resource drop chance or not, data shows almost a double in amount ever since DE fixed the malfunction.

FYR, the kill : base drop rate is around 500 kills per 1 essence without any booster or smeeta in a 2hours run. The kill count includes normal mobs that don't drop steel essence.  If you are doing 200 kills per minute, then you should get around 1 per 2 minutes after eximus start spawning steadily. Just a side note, the drop amount are significantly increased post 1hour mark, making 1hour runs less effective.

Some reports suggest loot frames affect drop rate of steel essence, even though my personal tests show otherwise, very much like vitus essence. Having said that loot frames are still useful to provide more air and resource drops.

The location to farm steel essence is quite flexible, as there are more enemies spawn together with eximus. Any spot could be a good one if you could find a camp that is:
1) not opened to enemies fire (so no need to worry about survivability, but toxin resistance is recommend on infested nods )
2) has short room section connection to the camp (enemies would spawn 2 sections away from your camp, vertical room is considered 1 section)

Personally I prefer farming steel path instead of vitus because of the stability of areal hard CC. Just like normal survival farms, cheers and good luck

 

[Berzerkules]

8 minutes ago, SHArK-FiN said:

Some reports suggest loot frames affect drop rate of steel essence, even though my personal tests show otherwise, very much like vitus essence. Having said that loot frames are still useful to provide more air and resource drops.

I'm almost positive that loot frames do nothing for steel essence drop. I consistently get similar results running solo vs 4 man squad with 2x Nekros and a speedva in 2h runs.  There is a lot of luck with smeeta buffs but I've never had abnormally high essence drops with an organized squad. My total kills per mission are always about the same either way. I might as well just solo it so I can pause and take breaks if i want.

[--K--Sharkfin]

24 minutes ago, Berzerkules said:

I'm almost positive that loot frames do nothing for steel essence drop. I consistently get similar results running solo vs 4 man squad with 2x Nekros and a speedva in 2h runs.  There is a lot of luck with smeeta buffs but I've never had abnormally high essence drops with an organized squad. My total kills per mission are always about the same either way. I might as well just solo it so I can pause and take breaks if i want.

my testes are based pretty much the same as yours. The difference in each test was caused by RNG but no where near an overall increase of amounts.

And I really agree that solo has the option to pause for a break or emergency in real life, like releasing useless substance from your body lol.