So, you’ve finally wrapped up your first run through the new Destiny 2 dungeon, Warlord’s Ruin? Odds are that you’ve noticed that you now have an all-new quest, In the Shadow of the Mountain. To complete this quest, you’ll need to farm Dark Ether Tinctures, and we can help.
Notably, Dark Ether Tinctures are a special Scorn item that comes into play when you reach the third step of the In the Shadow of the Mountain quest line. The unfortunate bit about this quest is that you’ll eventually need a whopping 100 Tinctures to get through just one step of it, which means lots and lots of farming Warlord’s Ruin.
But, what if there was a better, simpler, and easier way than just hunting around the dungeon aimlessly? Let’s start from the beginning, though.
Getting Dark Ether Tinctures in Destiny 2
Dark Ether Tinctures are, easily, the grindiest part of the entire Warlord’s Ruin Exotic quest line. These items only drop by damaging a specific kind of mini-boss Screeb enemy known as the Thieving Wretch. There are several different Thieving Wretch spawns strewn across the dungeon, and if you’re getting through a regular dungeon run, you will find up to three of them in total, from our findings:
- The first time, the Thieving Wretch spawns on a rope bridge just before the first dungeon boss
- The second time, the Thieving Wretch spawns in the maze after moving on from the first dungeon boss
- The third time, the Thieving Wretch appears after the second dungeon boss, during the mountaineering parkour section
Killing a Thieving Wretch is the usual, official way of progressing through the Warlord’s Ruin Exotic quest. Some players, however, have discovered that there’s a better way of farming Dark Ether Tinctures, if you’re into out-of-the-box solutions.
Farming Dark Ether Tinctures, the easy way
As the famous Destiny 2 Youtuber Esoterickk has discovered, you don’t actually need to complete several runs of Warlord’s Ruin at all to farm up enough Tinctures for the quest. Whereas actually killing the Thieving Wretch makes it so that the creature doesn’t spawn at all any more for the duration of the dungeon, simply dealing some damage to it is enough for a smaller amount of Tinctures to drop.
The winning strategy, according to Esoterickk, is to focus on the first Thieving Wretch spawn and farm it until you have enough Tinctures to go around. Basically, you want to damage the Thieving Wretch to the point that it drops some Dark Ether Tinctures, quickly collect these Tinctures, and then jump off the bridge to restart from your prior checkpoint.
Doing so without killing the Thieving Wretch will make it so that the creature, too, respawns at the bridge, and you can repeat the process for as many times as you need.
Do note that it is possible for the Thieving Wretch to not spawn at the bridge. In fact, it would appear that in some cases, it might not spawn at all. If that happens, you should either complete a run of Warlord’s Ruin for it to reset, or wipe the dungeon into its default state via the Director screen.
