Hotspot for Fusion Cores?

[(XBOX)C0gnitive 0n3]

For the first time since U18.5 hit consoles, I went back into Heiracon to farm fusion cores. I understand that the mechanic has changed where you now do more running around from one Extractor to the next. What I wasn't prepared for was that the drop chance of R5's seems to have been, considerably, nerf'd. I did 2 separate runs to 1000 cryotic and between the 2 runs, I netted 10 fusion cores. In the past, I could've gotten that in under 900 Cryotic in 1 run. I understand that RNG plays a factor in what Excavators award which is why I ran it twice - maybe that was the issue and I need to run it again tonight to make sure, but in the meantime, I was wondering if anyone has found another spot/node where R5's drop has a better chance of dropping?

I consider myself more of an endurance runner and enjoy staying in missions for as long as I can. I don't like the idea of staying 5 minutes for an award, extracting and repeating. But if that's what it's come to - I'll suck it up.

[Giantconch]

9 minutes ago, Cyborg-Rox said:

I really don't understand how Fusion Core farming is still a thing. All you need is to do the Sorties every day and eventually you'll get guaranteed 25-50 R5 cores for far less time and work than Hieracon farming.

 

You can only get the sortie reward once per day, and there are other things in its drop table other than cores so you arent even guaranteed to get them. The high level excavations are repeatable and will not stop dropping cores (depending on wether the RNGsus smiles upon you that is)

 

20 minutes ago, (XB1)C0gnitive 0n3 said:

For the first time since U18.5 hit consoles, I went back into Heiracon to farm fusion cores. I understand that the mechanic has changed where you now do more running around from one Extractor to the next. What I wasn't prepared for was that the drop chance of R5's seems to have been, considerably, nerf'd. I did 2 separate runs to 1000 cryotic and between the 2 runs, I netted 10 fusion cores. In the past, I could've gotten that in under 900 Cryotic in 1 run. I understand that RNG plays a factor in what Excavators award which is why I ran it twice - maybe that was the issue and I need to run it again tonight to make sure, but in the meantime, I was wondering if anyone has found another spot/node where R5's drop has a better chance of dropping?

I consider myself more of an endurance runner and enjoy staying in missions for as long as I can. I don't like the idea of staying 5 minutes for an award, extracting and repeating. But if that's what it's come to - I'll suck it up.

 

All the excavs I used to run for cores got the same drop rate reduction. Phobos dark sector excav, and Europa dark sector excav all yield about the same as Hieracon now.

Edited April 12, 2016 by giantconch

[Burgingham]

There are always new players and those need to max out a lot of mods at once. So they might be farming Fusion Cores. Not sure why that is so weird.

 

@OP: Your sample size does not seem very big. A 1000 cryotic run is pretty short per se and 2 of them arent really a lot put together either. I have had sessions like yours or worse, but I also had some where I went out with Cores from basically every A rotation.

[Giantconch]

3 minutes ago, Man_In_Suitcase said:

Hieracon or Triton hasn't been nerf'd it's simply RNG and we've already had a flurry of threads made in regards to this. So it pretty much leaves Sorites because of those 25, 50 r5 core rewards, and T4 interceptions. However any level 20+ surv mission, correct me if I'm wrong, has a chance of dropping r5 packs in rot A so Cupid on Uranus a decent node.

 

I hear that said and "backed up" by people who have claimed to gotten tons of cores but have yet to see it for myself since the change to the way excavators are distributed though the map came into play. 40 excavator runs regularly enough, and hardly ever getting over 20 total cores (4 drops of 5xR5 packs) leads me to strongly believe that yes the drop rate was tuned down.

[(XBOX)C0gnitive 0n3]

@Cyborg-Rox...I farm fusion cores because running Sorties has netted me more lenses than anything else. In the time that Sorties have become a thing, I have been awarded fusion cores on JUST 3 occasions. I have had better luck on Heiracon/Triton than I have doing Sorties. With the update, where I do my last mission in public, that COULD change things around, I hope, but time will tell.

@Zilchy...I will try and do a longer run - hopefully, I'll get a crew that's willing to stay longer.

@Burgingham...I understand that 1000 is low. Prior to U18.5 hitting consoles, I would average 10-15 in that same run - I guess I was expecting that same return this time around. The longest I've stayed, with a team who just "wanted to see how far they could go", was 8700 cryotic - it was a great time and we did get over 50 cores. As I mentioned to Zilchy, I'll have to recruit a team of like-minded people who are willing to go the distance and see how many cores we can get.

[rage4198]

triton neptune probably

[(PSN)Agent_CHAR]

26 minutes ago, (XB1)C0gnitive 0n3 said:

.I understand that 1000 is low. Prior to U18.5 hitting consoles, I would average 10-15 in that same run - I guess I was expecting that same return this time around.

The drop chance on cores was 25% so in 1000 cryotic (6 A's) so you should be expecting 1.5 of them to be cores.  Or 3 drops / 15 cores in two runs to 1000 to make the numbers even.

You expecting 15 cores in 6 drops would require a 50% drop chance... something we've never had.  So for a while you were seeing better than expected luck and now RNG is catching up to you and evening out.  I don't see any thing that supports a nerf theory.

[(PSN)Cwellann]

2 hours ago, (XB1)C0gnitive 0n3 said:

For the first time since U18.5 hit consoles, I went back into Heiracon to farm fusion cores. I understand that the mechanic has changed where you now do more running around from one Extractor to the next. What I wasn't prepared for was that the drop chance of R5's seems to have been, considerably, nerf'd. I did 2 separate runs to 1000 cryotic and between the 2 runs, I netted 10 fusion cores. In the past, I could've gotten that in under 900 Cryotic in 1 run. I understand that RNG plays a factor in what Excavators award which is why I ran it twice - maybe that was the issue and I need to run it again tonight to make sure, but in the meantime, I was wondering if anyone has found another spot/node where R5's drop has a better chance of dropping?

I consider myself more of an endurance runner and enjoy staying in missions for as long as I can. I don't like the idea of staying 5 minutes for an award, extracting and repeating. But if that's what it's come to - I'll suck it up.

Two runs is not any better than one, really.  For statistical significance you'd need over 1000 data points, and your two runs gave you a total of 12.  Anecdotally, my experience has been the opposite of yours.  The two times I've been there since the update, it's rained cores.  Walked out with 26 25 (could've sworn there was a dropped one, mah bad) on my last run, which was only to 1546 1633 (sorry, 1546 was when I got fed up and ran for extraction) cryotic (got tired, too many people in my backpack).  What you're seeing is just a combination of RNG and confirmation bias.

I agree with you on the doing 5 minute repeats by the way - Zeugma Phobos is my preferred T3 key farm, and I usually solo repeats to 300 with Booben, and it is a drag.  

Edited April 12, 2016 by (PS4)Cwellann
Looked at the pic of the mission results in my capture gallery

[(XBOX)C0gnitive 0n3]

53 minutes ago, (PS4)Agent_CHAR said:

So for a while you were seeing better than expected luck and now RNG is catching up to you and evening out.

If this is the case and I run Sorties everyday, I should get cores everyday for the next 2 weeks. :D

But, I understand that RNG can't be with us all. I'll continue the grind.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

I also get lots of cores on Uranus Caelus Interception if you don't mind Archwing.

[Specter42]

Try the ODD or tower def ( t3 or t4 is better) , last time i hit the ODD i netted 9 r5 gold and 3 r5 silver cores (20 waves)

[DakotaStorm]

The most I got on heiracon was 15 but that was a run of 2400 cryo

[Sh4dowWalker96]

On 4/12/2016 at 8:40 AM, Man_In_Suitcase said:

However any level 20+ surv mission, correct me if I'm wrong, has a chance of dropping r5 packs in rot A so Cupid on Uranus a decent node.

Yup, this is why Hymeno, Eris is my core farm. 25% chance for 5 R5 on rot A.

[DuskLegendary]

If you're just farming for cores, don't stay for anything else. Hit those first 2 drills, if you get something, leave. If you don't get anything, abort the mission immediately. Using this method, I now have 895 Gold Cores in my inventory. Hiericon and Triton still seem to be the best for core farming in my opinion. I say abort if you don't get anything because by the time you drop another 2 drills, you could have aborted and been back in the mission for 2 more A cycles, which is what we want.

Edited April 16, 2016 by DuskLegendary

[DuskLegendary]

On 4/12/2016 at 9:34 AM, Cyborg-Rox said:

I really don't understand how Fusion Core farming is still a thing. All you need is to do the Sorties every day and eventually you'll get guaranteed 25-50 R5 cores for far less time and work than Hieracon farming.

Well, it is a nice change of pace I'll agree, but you have to also consider the new players. New players won't be able to reliably do Sorties, and why? Well, because they're lacking the mods, so they will need to level them. And how do new players level mods without resorting to being carried in Sorties? Hiericon or Triton. In fact, if the average person put a bit of grind in, one could easily farm 100-150 gold cores a day, tried and true. Even better? Triton has the same drop chance as Hiericon, and is also noob friendly. So say you did put just a bit of core grind in a day, and grinded 100 gold cores every day for a week. Well, that's 700, enough to max nearly 2 Rare R10 mods, and enough for 1 Legendary mod with some cores left over to spare.

What I'm saying is, sometimes you need a mod now for a build, and it just can't wait. Sure, you can score 25-50 gold cores every time you complete a Sortie. But how many Sorties do you have to complete before that actually happens? 13, 14? That's 2 weeks straight before you really start getting any cores, unless you're as lucky as some of these people I've been seeing that seem to get nothing but cores from their daily Sorties instead of other stuff. Now that I have everything I want maxed, I do use Sorties to core grind, but not too long ago, this just wasn't an option for me, because Sorties were just way too hard without the proper mods on my gear... mods that I now have.

So this answered your question. Core farming exists for people in a hurry, or new players who just can't do sorties.

Edited April 16, 2016 by DuskLegendary

[-CdG-Zilchy]

I usually do about 2-3k cryotic before extracting. Averages about 30-40 cores per run. Usually there for keys anyway. I'd rather do the Sortie and a few Void missions and Draco focus farming to get my daily amount of cores. I usually get about 50 cores per day doing this without the tedium of Extraction. More than enough to slowly build up my stock of them.

Edited April 12, 2016 by Zilchy

[Man_In_Suitcase]

Hieracon or Triton hasn't been nerf'd it's simply RNG and we've already had a flurry of threads made in regards to this. So it pretty much leaves Sorites because of those 25, 50 r5 core rewards, and T4 interceptions. However any level 20+ surv mission, correct me if I'm wrong, has a chance of dropping r5 packs in rot A so Cupid on Uranus a decent node.

[Cyborg-Rox]

I really don't understand how Fusion Core farming is still a thing. All you need is to do the Sorties every day and eventually you'll get guaranteed 25-50 R5 cores for far less time and work than Hieracon farming.

Edited April 12, 2016 by Cyborg-Rox