Ultimate Beginner’s Guide: How to Get Tier 4 Essences in Nightingale

Introduction

You’re probably asking yourself – “I’ve completed the main storyline and reached The Watch, what do I do next?” You’re in the right place!

This guide is designed to help beginners efficiently acquire their first hundred Tier 4 essences (purple), a crucial step to dive into “Nightingale’s” endgame content. While I’ll have a separate guide for effective farming once you have the gear, this one is tailored for those who have just landed at The Watch with only Tier 3 essences (blue).

Brief Overview

Tier 4 essences (or simply, T4) play a crucial role in game progression, especially in Patch 0.5 which devs called Realm Rebuild, where they are used for various essential activities, such as:

• Purchase recipes for Ascended Cards, unlocking endgame realms with power levels of 67-220.
• Buy the Excellent Upgrade Bench and two schematics to upgrade gear to Uncommon, Rare, and Epic quality.
• Acquire various T4-grade armors.
• Buy end-game charms scematics
• Buy new building Regency designs and other non-essential items.

Where to Find T4 Essences

You can obtain T4 essences in three locations:

• Public Vault: A 5-man dungeon with a power level of 100 (can be soloed).
• Private Vault: A 5-man dungeon with power levels ranging from 67-220 (can be soloed).
• Ascended Worlds: Worlds with power levels from 67-220.

To unlock an Ascended world for the third option, you need to collect 55 T4 essences. The only way to get them initially is by running Vaults. Due to the lack of end-game players and gear, finding a group can be challenging. If you’re equipped with common items under level 100, the level 100 Vault mobs, designed for a 5-man group, will overwhelm you if faced directly. Here’s how to avoid that.

Acquiring Your First 55 Tier 4 Essences

Preparation

For this step you’ll need:

• Climbing picks – the higher tier, the easier the navigation.
• Umbrella – higher tier makes traversal easier.
• Caster’s weapon with Swarm and Immolation. OR
• The best ranged weapon with plenty of ammo. Personally, I used a bow and crafted additional arrows on the go.
• Charm of the Wanderer for dashing and kiting (one, they do not stack).
• Charm of Essence – for extra essence drops (one, they do not stack).

Steps to Get Essences Without Combat

1. Go to The Watch, enter the lowest floor, and use any of the 3 public portals. The leftmost portal, a desert biome, is recommended for better lighting and navigation.
2. If in a group, progress slowly with your team. Hold the E key to loot Essences – they are shared with everyone on the map, so grab them quickly. If solo, open the map and look for encounters labeled Agility, Intellect, or Insight. These usually involve little to no combat.
3. Complete the challenge and break all barrels in the room; they have about a 5% chance to drop essences too.
4. Check the next room on the map. If it’s a Defense or combat room, exit the dungeon and repeat the process.

Steps to Get Essences With Combat

If you decide to fight alone or in a small group, use kiting tactics or climb to higher ground to attack from safety. Some rooms lack areas that monsters can’t reach. In this case, lure them to a previously cleared room for easier combat.

This is how I managed to clear whole dungeon solo on a second day after release, and scored a Fabled Sun Giant kill.

Obtaining More Tier 4 Essences

Once you’ve collected 55 essences, go to the Essence Vendor in a the Watch and buy your first Ascended Card. I recommend choosing the Antiquarian, which will be needed for a quest later on.

Getting There

1. Go to your realm.
2. Craft the card; the Antiquarian Ascended Forest is ideal due to favorable terrain and enemy density.
3. I suggest crafting the Trickster minor card for low gravity too.
4. Gather materials for a Crude Remote Realmic Transmuter.
5. Craft a portal if you don’t have one.
6. Open the portal and set the difficulty to Explorer, reducing power to 67 for manageable combat (bottom left dropdown menu).
7. After landing, place the transmuter and change the weather to the Trickster card.
8. Disassemble the transmuter to take it with you.
9. Begin farming.

Early Farming Tips

• Avoid combat unless you can deal with enemies in 2-3 hits. With the Trickster card, you can jump and dash out of danger.
• Look for Agility, Intellect, or Insight sites; each completion grants 7-15 essences.
• Echo logs can be found throughout the area and grant 5 essences each.
• Use a sickle to cut grass in densely overgrown areas, as they sometimes drop essences too. The Trickster card also provides meat from glass nodes, solving hunger issues.
• Wisps are the main source of T4 essences, dropping 2-10 essences each and usually spawning in groups of 2-3. They flee quickly, so use Immolation or a bow to one-shot them from a distance.

With this method, you can earn around 400 essences per hour. In 60 minutes, you can return to The Watch, purchase the Excellent Upgrade Bench and the first “rare upgrade kit” (skip Epic for now), boosting your progression. This will enable you to handle more combat sites, increase difficulty to 100, and earn more essences through various activities or vault runs with friends.

For more advanced farming, your next stop is my guide for Top 3 most effective ways to gain Tier 4 Essences.