end of first-gen, through second-gen: suck-ass loot for the effort So I made a list of archive items, in the same order as the monsters they drop or are alchemied from, as they appear in the game's Summon Monster page. Next on the list after Helm of Dragon Power was 3 Soul Crushers, of which I had zero. Each SC is made of 1 Death Touch Gauntlet, and 1 Soulstone. The DTG is an "epic" drop from Lotus Ravenmoore, with ~6% chance of any epic drop being the DTG. 2M damage assures 2 epics and a chance of a third. Annoying, but do-able with patient persistence and without stam refills. I had one DTG lined up; it was one of the things I dogged late 2011 or early 2012 to seal my "first generation" monster goals.
The Soulstone is a "legendary" drop from War of the Red Plains. The difficulty curve spikes early and hard: minimum damage threshold for a guaranteed legendary drop from WoRP is ~25.5M, and only ~10% odds of that drop being the Soulstone. I can do that without stam refills only if the battle is "slow kill". Being bored with my current monster goal, I joined a slow kill WoRP group, and summoned a battle.
12 people saw my post in the group page. None joined.
Ditto my guild's monster page.
After ~20 hours, the mage "deflect" battle status came up.
I had joined as a warrior, naturally, to pump up the party health bar.
After 6 hours with no deflection, the party health bar was nuked.
So I said "screw it" and made the monster public. Now slow kill was out of the question. I spent a few stam refills to get legendary-threshold damage in, lucked out and got the Soulstone drop. Won't be calling WoRP again without an actually active slow-kill group.
Looking ahead to archive items I still have zero of, next on the list is Crown of Flames. Each requires 2 legendary drops from Gehenna, the Fire Elemental. Assured legendary minimum for Gehenna is ~30.5M damage. The odds of the drop being either of the 2 different required drops is less than coin-toss, and once you get one, the odds of a legendary drop being the other one are only ~1 in 6.
After Crown of Flames comes 2 legendary drops from The Lion's Rebellion, with similar damage requirements and miserable drop rates. Then, the legendary Eye of the Storm drop from Valhalla the Air Elemental, with assured legendary minimum ~55M damage and only ~25% drop rate. I might be able to reach that on a slow kill with favorable start timing, with a head-start of stam built up, and spanning two level-ups. Maybe.
Seems there just isn't enough player interest in these abusively difficult 2nd-gen monsters to support active slow-kill groups.
3rd gen: slow+steady Divine Power alchemies
After Valhalla, we start seeing third-generation (Divine Power) monsters, with much lower damage thresholds for assured loot, and much better drop rates for the drops of interest. But instead of needing just 2 or 3 drops with huge damage investment for 1-in-6 or worse drop rates, their archive items now require 14, 18, recent ones as many as 26 epic drops, to alchemy the big-deal goal items.
In monster order, next is Aurora's Heart of the Woods alchemy. This was my second Divine Power path goal and best-in-slot defensive weapon for its time, so I have one already. Moving along then, Glacius's Helm of Frost alchemy, then Ambrosia's Helm of Arcane Energy alchemy. The HoAE happens to also be my next Divine Power path goal, so I just might shuffle one of that to the front of the line.
Then we bounce back to second-gen monsters, with Transcendence alchemy from Alpha Bahamut and Azriel, and Soulforge alchemy from Alpha Meh. True to second-gen form, both of these require legendary drops. Alpha Meh does not have an assured legendary drop threshold - at 30M damage the odds of a legendary drop are about 66% and apparently don't get any better than that. Azriel is even worse with measly 30% legendary odds at 50M damage.
After that it's all 3rd-gen-and-up monsters: Malekus's Helm of the Conqueror, a straight-up epic drop, not alchemy; and Keeper of Chaos, which is a complicated alchemy of 24 total epic Malekus drops of 4 different items, some of which are the aforementioned Helm. KoC is the step after Helm of Arcane Energy in my Divine Power path, so I might shuffle Malekus to the front after my first HoAE. That will bring my Divine Power to 705, which exceeds the divine armor of the most recent monster, Aspect of Death.
Of course there'll be new monsters that exceed my DP by then.
I'm OK with being a step behind the leading edge of the gear spiral.
4th gen: resistance monsters
That brings me to Kesseran's Living Death alchemy item. I joined a slow-kill group to finish my first LD, and Item Archive was introduced with a max of 2 LD applicable, so I decided to chase a second, but the applicable LD max was bumped to 4 when I was halfway done with LD #2... lawl... Being bored with Kess and not wanting to slog through another what? 50-60 more? was why I started eyeballing lower-level archive items in the first place.
After Kess there's no particularly game-changing archive items to chase (yet), and just one each of the Helm of Arcane Energy and Keeper of Chaos will keep me busy for a long time, so the rest is a post for another day.