I farm act one a lot with my friends, act 2 is slow going and takes forever to kill all the mobs that run, but my question is, do you guys get a lot more cash from doing Butcher runs than Skeleton king runs?
We usually go back a quest or two so we get 5 stacks, lots of drops and gold pick ups. Obviously the Butcher runs take a little longer, and we have some issues with the dps being able to dodge his moves, but down him in 1-2 attempts.
Obviously there's better drops from butcher, but I always feel like I'm getting gold super fast in the skeleton king runs. We've also run from quest 3 through the whole act, that took like 3 hours though but yielded 450k, including normal AH sales (a couple of ok yellows that go for 20-50k a pop..)
I'm just wondering, barring very lucky drops, what's the most efficient way to farm gold in act 1? Like I said before, we don't really have any issues in clearing groups or bosses and everything drops fast (I'm a tank monk and I have two dps I run with that are up over 46k dmg now.), I'm just curious if anyone's noticed if Butcher run's yield considerably more gold… Thanks in advance!
Also, I'm not interested in any cheese method for farming gold, we like killing shit and getting drops we can sell or even possibly use.
Best Answer
The butcher run by far is much better, as you get two bosses.
You don't want to start on the butcher phase but the one before it where you kill the warden. What we did was teleport to the Cemetery of the Forsaken clear the fake tombs (If it has 2 levels it is the real tomb). There is usually a special event the Jar of Souls , or the The Matriarch's Bones quest. We would grab 3 stacks then do the event. Jar of souls usually was really nice for gold since there is just so many skeletons you can kill if you have good DPS.
Once we finished we would take the way-point to Hall of Agony level 2, exit to Highlands Crossing then to The Cursed Hold. The Cursed Hold is fantastic as there is just so many easy skeletons to kill that can drop 1K+ gold. Once you free the prisoners the warden spawns in the middle of the map. He counts as a full boss. So because you now have 5 Nephilim stacks. He drops 5 additional loot. Finish the run off heading to Halls of Agony Level 3 and kill the butcher for his normal loot and 5 additional drops due to the Nephilim Stacks.
UPDATE: The other nice thing about those 2 events that I mentioned is both of the rewards require a click to activate. What this means is you can put on all your Magic Find gear then activate the reward.