Guide:Blue Ice Sickle/Igno's Blue Ice Sickle Grinding Guide

THIS GUIDE IS STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS

Introduction

The foraging tool Blue Ice Sickle is probably one of the most sought after items. Boasting powerful stats this legendary sickle is only toppled by an eternal quality Hydrilium Sickle in terms of power. The grind for one, however, can be a long and tedious road, with some users having spent upwards of 2 million steps before getting one.

The purpose of this guide is to prepare you in the best possible way, before heading up to keep the penguins.

Requirements and Practical Info

Before you can access the Winter Waves Glacier you need to purchase the Mysterious Northern Map, at the Adventurers' Guild Outpost down at the Horn of Respite. The map has a cost of 100 Adventurers' Guild Tokens, the exact amount you receive as a reward from unlocking the guild at 20 Achievement points. If you are both without tokens and the map, fear not - you can grind some more doing the activity Rescue Team.

Next up is the skill requirements. In order to do the Glacier Foraging activity, you need both Agility and Foraging to be level 30.

Now once these requirements are out of the way, you will be able to start the actual grind, there is one small caveat though, the W.E.A.R. of 892,308 steps.

But wait, there is more! Glacier Foraging also has a chance of dropping the collectible Expedition Journal which gives you a passive bonus to foraging Work Efficiency of 1%, the Journal has a WEAR of 232,000 steps.

Last but not least, there is also an achievement tied to the place, Are You Sickle Of It Yet?, which requires you to complete the activity 2500 times.

It's time to gear up!

Summary

• Level 30 Agility and Foraging
• Mysterious Northern Map
• Blue Ice Sickle WEAR is 892,308 steps.
• Expedition Journal WEAR is 232,000 steps.
• Are You Sickle Of It Yet? requires 2500 completions of the activity.

Gearing Up

The most effective way to reduce our WEAR is to increase our Double Action and Double Rewards stats. Foraging gear almost exclusively come from the Foraging Chest, which means we are off to treasure hunt. When trying to grind skill chests, the most effective method is to load up on global and skill relevant Chest Finding. There is a few items that you can specifically grind, in order to increase your global and foraging Chest Finding, these are:

• Omni-Tool - One of the most versatile tools in the game.
• Golden Frisbee - Global Chest Finding makes this an excellent tool to slot in, if you got empty tool slots. Note that it does require you to have completed the Frisbee Golfing (Beginner) activity 20 times, before you can equip it.
• Clay Frisbee - Same as the above, except it has no requirements. The two Frisbee's do stack .
• Smelly Socks - A drop from Litter Looting which double serves as a requirement for the normal achievement Master Has Given Dobby A Sock, which is worth 3 ap. It has a WEAR of 12,065 steps.
• Fireflies in a Jar - A very strong tool, giving 15% CF to both Foraging and Agility. Drops from the activity Butterfly Catching which require Foraging level 40 and Agility level 30. It has a WEAR of 62,746 steps.
• The three rings: Old Copper Ring, Old Gold Ring and Ring of the Eel. These have a wear of respectively: 30,000, 45,000 and 60,000 steps though. If you do decide to grab some rings, I recommend doing Gold Panning, as it can drop both the Old Copper and Gold Ring.

The only tool of the above I wouldn't advice getting beforehand is the Fireflies in a Jar. With a max efficiency cap of 80%, it requires good gear to reach the already high WEAR, and it will only serve as a major detour.

The Smelly Socks is a maybe, depending on your current gear. You will already have 25% WE from levels over requirement. If your current gear has a total of 30% Work Efficiency it will bring the WEAR down to a reasonable ~15,000 steps.

The tool which will improve your chances of getting the BIS the most, is of course the craftable sickles. Ideally you wont start the grind without at least a Steel Sickle of excellent quality, but preferably a Hydrilium Sickle of excellent or better quality. This should be your number 1 priority.

Summary

• Number 1 priority is crafting a Hydrilium Sickle of at least excellent quality. If you don't have the required levels to do this, craft a Steel Sickle of at least excellent quality instead.
• Buy both Frisbees, and make sure to do 20 completions of Frisbee Golfing (Beginner).
• Decide whether you want to spend a smaller detour grinding the Smelly Socks.
• Consider doing Gold Panning for rings.

Choosing What Activity To Do For Chests

Now that you have assembled a chest finding gearset, it's time to choose which activity to head to. What we are looking for is activities with a low step amount, which might also yield some useful loot. This leaves us with only 2 choices:

• Forest Foraging
• Plains Foraging

Let's take a look at what differentiates these from each other.

Forest Foraging

With a base step amount of 75, it is only beaten by Cave Foraging, which has 74. The amount of steps required can be brought as low as 38, although that requires 100% Work Efficiency bonus. The loot table is a big hodgepodge of low level ingredients and sticks and stones, and it doesn't offer much except for Wheat, for which it has a droprate of 13.158%. Another benefit of Forest Foraging is that you can do it in Horn of Respite which has a deposit through the Adventurers Guild, or Disenchanted Forest which is close to Kallaheim.