I thought it would be nice to have a guide that explains everything about hunts in detail as i didn’t find much guides on hunts, so that there would be more people joining hunts opposed to thinking it’s something hard and staying away. Especially with the melee update announced. So well, here goes.
What are ‘Hunts’?
Hunts are a community driven events that has the purpose for hunting meteorites for their loot. Players or ‘Hunters’ will gather at a pre-announced time and place, either by discord hunt bot announcements(looking for group chat in the official boundless discord), in the forums(you’re looking at it), or though the ingame communities and events chat.
Okay, so why do you do hunts?
The biggest reason would be for the loot they give. Meteors give you rough oortstone, which are refined into oort shards. These are used to open and fuel semi-permanent portals. They also give you other loots as well, like fossils, tech parts, rough gems, sentinel’s crest seeds, ores, and all the loot from the mobs you kill in the process of defeating the meteor.
But why should I do the hunts in a group?
The loots are not shared between players. It’s not ‘first come, first serve’ where the first to pick up the loot gets everything, nor it is ‘shared’ in a pool where the system divides the loot drops for each player.
Everyone gets their own separate full loot for everything. This includes mob drops, not just meteor loot.
Not only that, but you also trigger larger meteors to drop with more people. Larger meteors will spawn more mobs, and stronger mobs. This will get you more creature loot compared to doing smaller meteors.
It is also harder to ‘fail’ the meteor, as there will be people going around reviving dead people. If you’re doing a meteor alone, your death will mean you fail the meteor, ending it there.
Running hunts? Speed hunts? What are these?
There are different ‘methods’ of hunting.
Running hunts, or ‘classic’ hunts are hunts that you run/grapple around the planet. You run into ‘regions’ to trigger them into spawning meteors. These are great for practicing your grapple skills, and for hunting road runners while moving from region to region.
Platform hunts, or Speed hunts are hunts done by warping to pre-built platforms at each region. This is done for convenience, as not everyone likes swinging around with grapples trying to keep up with the hunt leader.
Snowball hunts? Gleambow hunts?
These are special event hunts that happen during ingame event seasons. They have their own set of rules which will (probably) be explained by the hunt leader while it happens. These will not be explained in this guide.
T3 hunts? T6 hunts? what are these?
Those explain which tier planet the hunt will happen on. Normal meteors spawn on planets that are T3 (rugged) and higher. with increasing tier, the harder the meteors are, and will give better loot, like rough gems for T4+ planets, or meteorite ichor/lucent gems for T7 planets, and having better chances at getting rarer creature loot like eyes and trophies. The exception will be rough oortstone, as you will clear meteors faster on lower tier planets, and consequently clear out more meteors in the same time, getting more oortstones.
Preparing for hunts
Hunts are essentially fighting mobs for rewards. One can say it’s like raids in other games. And as any combat related content goes, you need proper equipment and preparations for it. However, these can vary a bit depending on the planet tier and type you hunt on.
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T3-T4 planets
These are the lower end of the difficulty spectrum. Much easier, so you can get away with less skills. You don’t need a full skillpage for doing hunts on these, you can even get away with hunting with a crafter character. In short, these are your ‘newbie-friendly’ hunts. Are also better for getting those precious oortstones.All you will need really are the following
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Grapples
Forged gold/titanium or better is recommended for any hunts. Reel speed is capped at 40m/s so it mostly only changes how far you can grapple past titanium. You will use these a lot to get around terrain. It is advised to bring more than one, in case the first one breaks, or if your style of grappling includes having a grapple in both hands.- Keep in mind you do NOT get fall damage while grappled to the ground. If you’re falling from a high place (like jumping down from a platform) don’t panic, and grapple the ground.
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Lootstick
Chisels/Spanners/Totems forged with magnet and glow. Lets you see in the dark and loots dead creatures and meteors just by getting close to them while holding this in your hand. You do NOT have to hit the dead creatures or dig out the meteor, altho you will have to pretty much sit next to it for the largest meteors. You may have to wait a few seconds for the loot stick to suck up loot. Chisel/spanner lootsticks are cheaper, but totems can have other functions like reviving other people or solidifying lava. More expensive ones have clear weather quirks on them to get rid of annoying weather effects. These are technically one-time purchase permanent equipment, as you don’t ‘use’ these to do anything but hold it in your hand. You will only consume durability when accidently hitting things with it (you can put warp augments in totems to prevent this), using revive augments to revive people, or solidifying lava to cross lava lakes. -
Weapons
Slingbows, Fists, or when the update hits, melee weapons. Well, you do need a weapon to kill things, won’t you?
Again, anything works, but it is advised to bring at least a titanium slingbow or higher, better if forged. Just so that you actually feel like you’re dishing out damage and killing things instead of feeling like you’re doing nothing. No point if you’re not having fun right? -
Basic food
Hunting consumes a lot of food with all the shooting, grappling and running. You will need a decent amount of food to keep you going. Higher zeal stat will let you go longer without food, but will also require more food to fill up, so bring food accordingly. Raw eathyams can suffice with 0 zeal, but you probably will want better food with higher zeal, like cooked earthyams or even eathyam soups. -
A point in the right atmospheric protection (T4 planets)
T4 planets and higher will have hostile atmosphere. You will want a point in the right atmospheric type protection skill (Caustic, Potent and Volatile protection) to negate the effects. While you ‘can’ get away with eating the corresponding protection chili or better food for a 30 minute buff, it will be removed on death, and severely impair your ability to see and put you on a breath timer until you eat another. Not something you want while getting revived in the middle of a battlefield.- It is recommended having at least one point in all three even if it isn’t a dedicated hunting alt/skillpage as it allows you to freely go to T4 planets for shopping and farming resources.
Things that are good to have (but are not required)
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Heal bombs
Not necessary, but very highly recommended. Heals all players in the area when it explodes. Generally a cheaper alternative to healing yourself compared to healing brews. You can also instantly detonate the thrown bomb by throwing it at a creature (dead or alive - still counts as ‘attacking’ the creature if it is alive, and can draw aggro to you) or other players. It will be hard to heal other players tho, as the lag very often makes the bomb explode ‘thinking’ it hit that player, but did not. Either throw bombs at them when they’re standing still or use bombs with high levels of AoE boons for this.- Healing bombs will more than likely have max level heal boons on them, meaning they’ll replenish your energy as well as health, and ‘cleanse’ you, reducing any timers of active debuffs. This will be useful to remove debuffs gained from elemental mobs or the 5 minute revive timer gained from reviving other people.
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Revive augments
For reviving dead people. Either drag it into your totem in the inventory menu, or ‘use’ it while holding it in your hand, with the totem in your other hand.- Remember, heal bombs can remove the revive timer cooldown.
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Reviver brews
For reviving yourself if you do accidently die, or for those that like catching falling meteors with your face.(there is an achievement for this
) Lasts 10 minutes (or longer depending on your zeal stat) and lets you revive on the spot once without the death penalty. -
Buff food and brews
Not really needed, but if you feel like you need the extra boost. Keep in mind buffs don’t stack for each type. You can only have one active food buff, one active brew buff and the reviver brew buff at once. Eating another buff food or brew while you have an active buff in that slot will overwrite it.-
If you’re a low level character and don’t have the Energy regeneration epic skill yet, eating starberry loaves/pies can be useful as it regenerates energy quickly over time. Great for learning grappling early on until you’re more used to it as well.
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Healing brews are great if you need health, but keep in mind three out of two kinds of healing brews will overwrite your active brew buff. ‘Healing’ brews will give you an active brew buff that heals you over time, ‘Smoothie healing’ brews will give you a lesser heal over time buff but also heal some of your health instantly. ‘Instant healing’ brew will just straight up heal you on the spot, but no healing over time buff. Use the Instant healing brews if you’re using other buff brews, or use heal bombs instead.
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Guild buffs
Not required, but always nice to have for any activity. Some guilds will provide guild buffs. Nice buffs to have on hunts are Grapple and run (longer grapple range and faster sprint speed), Weapon augment durability (makes augments last longer. You can even use revive augments twice!), Brew extention (makes brews last longer with each kill).
Don’t be shy to join guilds, they do need endeavor you generate when you get exp with that guild set as primary for the buffs. Some guilds are perfectly fine with you joining just for the buffs. -
Slingbow augments
For when you want the extra oomph when using a slingbow. Not really needed for a T3-T4 hunt with the right skills, but it can help if you feel like you’re not doing enough damage. The damage 3 augment is fairly cheap to buy/craft as well. Lasts 125 shots without guild buffs. -
Campfires and storage chests
This may look strange to go in the list of things, but it’s actually very useful. As you will be picking up a lot of loot, your inventory space will fill up very quickly. Instead having to drop the less wanted loots or make a trip back home mid-hunt to drop off loot, you can just place down a campfire and a chest, and drop off loot there. It will automatically reclaim after 2 hours for you to pick up at your home beacon later. Do keep in mind some sovereign planets will not give you permission to plot, stopping you from placing down the campfire. You may want to ask the hunt lead before the hunt starts before bringing campfires and chests.
- Solidifier Totems
Depending on the planet, it can have huge lava lakes to cross over. You may need it to cross them.
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T5/T6 planets
These are your ‘harder’ planets. You will want a proper hunting skillpage for these, and better gear compared to T3/T4 hunts. Are much better for getting rare creature loots.
Requirements
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A skillpage dedicated to hunting
Actually, not really needed, but very highly recommended. You will die a lot, you will not do much damage with a crafter alt here. People have limited inventory space, they can’t bring infinite revive augments. Things will go south if people can’t revive others near the end of the hunt because they ran out of revive augment reviving crafter alts over and over. At least bring revive brews if you know you will be dying a lot.
This will be explained in further detail later on in the post. -
Grapples
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Lootstick
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Weapons
While you still can get away with metal slingbows, it is highly recommended to bring forged gem slingbows. T5+ planets have elements associated with them, and mobs have a chance to spawn with that element. Elemental mobs have a chance to do an ‘elemental resist’ to incoming damage depending on the element type you attack with, and a chance to do the same if you’re attacking with non-element damage. Only gem bows and lucent gem bows do element damage, and with the correct element type, you can do increased damage instead. The reason for being forged simply because the mobs here are much tougher.
(Special thanks to the people that did these @Jiivita) -
Basic food
Good things to have
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Heal bombs
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Revive augments
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Reviver brews
Highly recommended as you’ll be dying more than T3/T4 hunts. -
Buff Food and brews
- Not a bad idea to bring Shielding pies/Invigorating pies and/or healing brews if you feel you’re dying too much.
- Strength brews are not bad to have either, as armor buffed cuttletrunks are very tanky, and can be hard to punch through their armor.
- Teaching pies are great to have if you can survive well without Shielding pies or Invigorating pies as you get MASSIVE exp from just looting completed meteors. You get an extra 4k exp per meteor on T5 worlds, and a whopping 8k exp bonus for T6 meteors. And you get double exp from the mobs as well.
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Guild buffs
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Slingbow augments
Highly recommended as it’s not as expensive as other methods of increasing your damage, and some mobs start getting tough enough to ignore/tank a lot of damage. -
Campfires and storage chests.
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Solidifirer totem
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T7 Hunts
RUN
These are mostly done without loot in mind as it takes forever to do a meteor. They’re done to have fundyingand have a challenge pushing yourself to your limit. They do not happen often either, T7 planets are only available as lucent exos.
Bring everything if you plan to participate in one. A full dedicated hunting skill page, heal bombs, instant healing brews, mega strength brews, shielding/invigorating pies, everything. If you have forged lucent bows and wish to use them, this is the time to bring them out.
They basically are two gem elements combined into one, they’ll be weak against two gem types, and strong against four. They will give you two different debuffs at the same time as one isn’t enough. Blink for example will slow you to a crawl, halve your max health and then send elite mobs at you while you’re unable to dodge. Enjoy -
Dedicated skill pages
You will want a dedicated skillpage or an alt for hunting eventually, as it is pretty much required for higher tier hunts. I personally have 3 different maxed out skill pages on my hunter alt for different occasions.
Disclaimer : The next planned update brings massive changes to how skill pages work. While I do plan to update the post when it happens, in the case I don’t, the following section may not apply.
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The essentials
While there are multiple different builds, I will go over a basic health/damage slingbow build. You do not have to make your build exactly the same as the guide.
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Vitality
The basic stat for max health. Max it out to have a higher max health. (8 points) -
Power
The basic stat for all damage calculations. Max it out for higher damage. (8 points) -
Luck
Increases meteor and creature loot drop chance. You’re hunting for more loot, makes no sense without this. (8 points) -
Attributes bonus
Increases all stats by 10. Max it out so you can max out vitality, power and luck. (5 points) -
Slingbow mastery
Makes you hit harder and faster with the slingbow. (5 points) -
Slingbow Epic
Increases slingbow damage and speed. (5 points) -
Health Epic
Triples your health. (5 points) -
Energy regeneration Epic
Increases the amount of energy you regenerate naturally every second by tenfold. You no longer have to wait forever for energy to regenerate, you just wait until it kicks in and you have full energy again. (5 points) -
Damage Epic
Triples your damage modifier. (5 points) -
4 points in each atmospheric protection
This is so that you can go up to T6 planets without having to redo your skills. (12 points)
This should use 66 skill points, leaving you with 34 points to work with on other nice to have skills.
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Those nice to have skills
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Dexterity
Makes you shoot faster and place blocks you accidently picked up faster. -
Agility
Makes you go faster, and increases crit chance. -
Intellegence
Makes your healing bombs more powerful. -
Zeal
Increases your max stamina, allowing you to shoot longer and grapple more often. Also makes your buffs last longer. -
Grapple mastery
Makes your grapple fly further and faster. Also increases fist weapon damage. -
Rapid fire Epic
Makes it so that you can just hold down your mouse/controller button to keep shooting. Not worth the 5 points if you use low speed bows, but worthwhile if you use extremely fast firing bows. Cannot be chosen together with Charging Epic. -
Charging Epic
Not really worth it honestly, but you could make use of it if you use slow firing shotguns for max damage. Allows you to ‘charge’ shots to do higher damage by holding down the fire button. Damage increases the longer you charge it, but it has a limit to how much you can charge. -
Kinetic/Impulse Armor and Resistance skills
Armor skills reduce incoming damage by a flat amount, resistance skills increases your chance to ‘resist’ damage and make it 0. Kinetic armor/resistance applies to most things that are not bomb attacks. Impulse pretty much applies on the bombs dropped by spitters and cuttletrunks. Armor skills have increasing returns (10, 30, 60, 100 and 150 increments per point)
I recommend having some kinetic armor skills if not max, as it allows you to ignore damage from lesser mobs (stouts and such) and it often allows you to take more hits before you die, giving you more time to run away and heal. Resistance is also nice to have, you can have 50% resist chance with maxed out resist skills and shielding pies, allowing you to just bounce around with no damage often. -
Falling armor
Can be useful if you’re getting used to grappling around and keep crashing into things. It isn’t powerful enough to stop deaths by getting thrown into walls by wildstocks tho. -
Durability Drain Epic
Your gear lasts longer. Enough said. -
Revive Power Epic
Revives players to full health and energy instead of half when revived by you. Nice to have if you revive people a lot. -
Revive Titmer Epic
Removes the 5 minute revive timer cooldown debuff when reviving people. Nice to have if you revive people a lot, but if you can only have one of either, I’d recommend getting Revive Power Epic and removing the cooldown debuff with heal bombs. -
Rage/Focus Epic skills
Seems good on paper, but they pretty much go together, and are not worth it if you just grab one skill. But having to spend 10-15 skill points for it to work usually means you don’t have enough skill points for all of them. May change with the upcoming update though. -
An extra ‘floater’ point that you reassign on the corresponding atmospheric protection skill for T7 hunts.
An example build would be what I use for T5/T6 hunts.
Tanky enough to survive well in T6 hunts without any buffs, works well with teaching pies to get lots of exp for more skill pages.
It may look sluggish with only 3 agility, but I use the grapple a lot to get around with the maxed out grapple mastery skill. You can sacrifice either Revive Power Epic, grapple mastery skills or kinetic resistance/impulse armor skills to max out agility if needed. -
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Actual Hunting
Well, we’re now prepared to hunt, so lets actually go hunting! But is there more to it than just simply killing things, then looting rewards by running around with your lootstick out?
Actually, there is. To make everyone’s hunting experience better, there are some general rules and etiquettes during a hunt.
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Track the hunt leader
Listening to the hunt leader is a given, but we all probably can agree the chat system needs an improvement. It can be hard to read the chat even out of combat, much harder to do so during combat. It is easy to miss what the hunt leader says. However, 90% of the times you will be fine with just tracking the hunt leader (by interacting with their character and choosing the track option or adding them to your friend list and tracking them there. Second option is also useful when joining mid-hunt) and following them well. If multiple meteors fall, just wait till you see which meteor the hunt leader goes to, then carefully follow them there. -
Wait for revives
DO NOT SANCTUM OUT IF YOU DIE. This is important. You may think you’re wasting somebody’s revive augments if you have them revive you, especially if you die often. You may think it’s better if you just revive through the sanctum and bear with the death penalty. WRONG. You lose your meteor life if you do so, increasing the chances of failing the meteor. Worse, you may activate a different meteor by yourself if there’s others nearby, failing it when you move away from it, or when dying again. This can and will cause frustration among some hunters, as they’re here to do meteors, and your actions denied them of it. If you’re feeling so bad of having others revive you over and over, consider bringing reviver/healing brews or putting more points into armor. -
Check for meteor life
However careful you are to follow the hunt leader, mistakes can happen. Or you can just be unlucky and have a meteor fall on you before you get to the current meteor. Do not worry, you can still get away from a meteor without failing it if you did not activate the meteor yet. This is done by gaining the ‘meteor life’ buff, which looks like this above your health bar.
Another way to check would be by looking at the meteor. It would show how many players are on it above the meteor’s health bar if it is activated.
You aquire meteor life by killing a creature that spawned from the meteor. So basically, you can safely get away if you did not kill anything.
Not really. Usually the above is true. But sometimes the meteors activate themselves for whatever reason, like having a creature kill themselves by drowning or something. Do not worry however, the game warns you of abandoning a meteor in LARGE LETTERS on your screen if you have gained meteor life and are moving away from it.
If you have accidently activated the wrong meteor and gained meteor life, stay there instead, and stay alive. Hang from a tree, dig a hole and bury yourself, until the rest of the group comes. -
Sanctum home when leaving
If you need to leave the hunt early, leave via the sanctum. Don’t make a warp on the spot as it can confuse other hunters thinking it leads to the next meteor/platform.
Also, check warp portals before heading into it for the next meteor/platform. If the warp leads to a different planet than what you’re hunting on, it probably means it does not lead where you want it to. -
Try not to run over dead players
This may be hard to do during the chaos of the battle, but it does frustrate people reviving dead players if their revives get cancelled due to soembody running between them and the dead player. You will make these people’s lives easier if you stay away from dead bodies if you don’t intend to revive them. I know it can be hard to keep track, but it doesn’t hurt to try
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Try to refrain from using words that look like orders
We know people do it with good intent when calling out new meteors, but it can confuse other players if you word it like ‘next meteor NE’ and it can look like you’re trying to take over the hunt. Simply ‘INC(incoming) E’ or ‘landed E’ is enough to alert the hunt lead. -
Kill pits and bombing trees
Some hunts have people bomb/dig holes below mob spawns or use bombs to remove trees. These are often done by predesignated people before the hunt, or not done at all depending on the hunt. ASK the hunt leader before doing these, they may not want those. -
Cross over to a region at the same time on platforms
On platform hunts, platforms often have doors or lines to mark where the region starts. Do not rush over. Cross over when the hunt lead opens the door or tells you to cross, as they’re trying to have people cross at the same time to trigger larger meteors for more rewards. -
Don’t drop trash
You’re out of inventory space, and you need more. We get that. But what you don’t want isn’t wanted by others either. Don’t go dropping them near people. If they are blocks, place them so people don’t pick them up. Just make a tower or something (but not with warp conduits, there are griefers that open warps to random places to lure people in). If they’re items, drop them somewhere far away so they’re less likely to be picked up by somebody’s lootstick.
I’m new!
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I’m new, I can’t get all the things for hunts!
Brown Town hunts are newbie friendly and does T3/T4 hunts exclusively. They also give/lend you gear as needed until you can afford your own, so don’t be shy and feel free to try it out. You also will get a lot of loot and oortstones, you should be able to get yourself lootsticks, gem grapples and slingbows by selling your aquired loot to request baskets. The ingame knowledge tab will show you what prices people buy your items at on your current planet, and will waypoint the shop if you select them. The BUTT tool also tells you what prices people buy/sell things at, but on all planets. -
I can’t get enough levels for high tier hunts!
The Future has portals to each region allowing you to get exp. Bring 2-3 Teaching pies and go through all the portals to each region. Should get you up to lv20 from scratch, and give you enough points to put points into atmospheric protection skills and health/armor skills to survive on T5/T6 hunts. Try your best and you should gain levels fast to fill out your hunting skill page. -
I don’t know when there are hunts!
As of now, there are the following hunts. The list may or may not be updated. Most hunts are announced beforehand in both discord and ingame. Keep an eye out for when and where to gather.- Dailiy hunts (May not happen due to real life things - Hunt leaders are not NPCs, they have life )
- Oortbusters hunt 2021-01-13T15:00:00Z → 2021-01-13T17:00:00Z T3 - T6 Platform hunts
- Grandeur hunt 2021-01-13T17:00:00Z → 2021-01-13T19:00:00Z T3 - T6 Mixed hunts
- Brown Town hunt 2021-01-13T20:00:00Z → 2021-01-13T22:00:00Z T3 -T4 Running hunts
- GTG hunt 2021-01-13T23:30:00Z → 2021-01-14T01:30:00Z T5 - T6 Running hunts
- C.
.R.E. Hunt 2021-01-14T04:00:00Z → 2021-01-14T06:00:00Z T4 -T6 Platform hunts - Does not run on Wednesdays
- Non-dailiy hunts
- Twisted dragon hunt Wednesdays 2021-01-14T02:00:00Z → 2021-01-14T06:00:00Z Usually T3
- Sasquatch hunt 2021-01-14T01:30:00Z → 2021-01-14T03:30:00Z Usually T5 - T6 Announces on discord and ingame when there is a hunt.
- And other hunts I may not know about.
- Dailiy hunts (May not happen due to real life things - Hunt leaders are not NPCs, they have life
I won’t be covering slingbow forge types as there’s too much of them, and it’s mostly personal preference. Just find the kind you like and stick with it, and remember to bring the right gem type to T5+ hunts
TL;DR : Bring reviver brews on your crafting alts on T5+ hunts.
This took me quite a long time to put together, so I might have missed things. Feedback and questions are very welcome, a better guide will benefit everyone after all
And sorry for the wall of text, I might have scared off people more with it
not to nag about it but to avoid probable future confusion.