Ok, ok, so by now everyone who has leveled up their alliance somewhat, knows that acquiring Amber Stones of Vala becomes more and more important. At level 30, I could entrust roughly 300 stones per day, now I need to entrust over 750. More then enough to make keeping up with Alliance Bosses time consuming, and assuming the Stones aren’t bought in shop.

So farming these Stones becomes more and more important. Whether you do a whole lot in one Invul burst, or farm daily what you need to Entrust, knowing where to find them at the least might loss is important (it seems?).  I just want to give two small tips for farming the stones most efficiently.

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1. Which map?

I suggest going for the last 2 maps of Moria for farming them efficiently. For the lowest Alliance levels, Mirkwood and High Pass might seem fine, but that changes quickly, after about 5 levels of Alliance shop leveling.

Although Moria drops relatively less Stones per unit send in, the drops of themselves are larger, preventing you from needing to waste countless Stamina points at higher levels. As a side bonus, you’ll also be collecting the more valuable ‘Rare’ Valto runes.

2. Which levels? Normal or Boss?

Short answer: The NORMAL levels. This is because they drop much more frequently compared to the Boss levels. Earlier, I recommended the Boss levels, as you lost much less troops per Stone farmed when the level dropped, per these numbers:

• Moria 4-1: 42 Stones, 230 Giants: 5.47 Giants/Stone
• Moria 4-4: 46 Stones, 320 Giants: 6.96 Giants/Stone
• Moria 4-5: 173 Stones, 529 Giants: 3.06 Giants/Stone

• Moria 5-1: 93 Stones, 590 Giants: 6.34 Giants/Stone
• Moria 5-3: 104 Stones, 573 Giants: 5.51 Giants/Stone
• Moria 5-4: 263 Stones, 747 Giants: 2.84 Giants/Stone

But this assumed that the number of drops was roughly equal throughout the levels. However, I have now learned that the drop rate itself is significantly lower on the Boss levels. So much even, it becomes in fact more efficient to farm the normal levels.

Between the normal levels, which one is more efficient depends on the map part. As you can see above, for Moria 4, the first map is most efficient, but for Moria 5, it’s the last normal level. But the numbers are reasonably close, so choose the best ratios you can find or which maps suits you best…Also, most levels give a disproportionate amount of one type of resource, so spread it out to avoid ending up with millions surplus of one resource if you need rss to train or build.

At really high Alliance levels, even Moria 4 seems to offer too little stones to keep up. If that is the case, switch to Moria 5 all together. In the end, the goal is to limit troop losses, but also to be able to keep up with Stamina points needed to farm the stones. Right now, I do need at least one refill to gather my stones, but I gather enough points to buy back that refill in the shop. However, if I were to switch back to Moria 4, I would need more refills than I could buy back with the points gathered; a situation which in the end will not be sustainable…

3. Army setup

This section is more for higher level alliances, as the increasing number of stones needed to be farmed means an increasing number of troops lost in the process. During the first levels, you do not really have to worry about your losses, as they are small (assuming you are not a new player with little to no forces). You can send T1 armies, or T5, whatever you feel comfortable loosing. You could even add some Stone Giants to save your regular troops.

At a certain level, losses become more difficult to bare. Adding Stone Giants or other buffers becomes necessary, provided you have enough of them. Sending only T1 or T5 will start to hurt your might, and you probably want to use those troops for other means.

Using supply troops is a good way of sacrificing units you do not really need anyways, and which are easy to train. They cost limited amounts of resources and need resources in the same amount each for training, while training itself is also pretty fast.

Whether you send SG along with them depends on how many SG you have and whether or not you can keep up with training the supply troops. My army setup consists of a few k Rangers, 40k supply troops (dont worry, you wont lose them in one attack), and 100-250 SG, depending on which part and map of Moria Im attacking. The aim is to limit the loss of SG, while losing less or equal supply troops to the amount I can (and do) train each day.

So figure out the amount of supply troops you can actually train each day for longer periods of times, adjust the numbers of Stone Giants so you loose that amount of supply troops or slightly less each day while farming, and add a few k Rangers for the killing.

When Stone Giants become actually trainable, this article might be updated….