As a professional gamer who has accumulated over 400 hours exploring the dark recesses of Sanctuary since early access launched, I‘ve developed efficient methods for acquiring as many whispering keys as possible. These eerie keys provide reliable access to the abundance of valuable loot hidden away inside silent chests scattered across the land.
In this guide, I‘ll share expert tips to help you stockpile keys, farm murmuring obols quickly, and leverage both to accelerate your character‘s power. Soon you too can reap the epic rewards slumbering inside otherwise overlooked silent chests.
What Are Whispering Keys?
Whispering keys are ornately engraved magical keys used to unlock silent chests sealed with ghostly locks. They emit soft whispers hinting at the locations of such chests and can be used repeatedly.
These keys are the only method for accessing the bounty of rare loot hidden within silent chests. And trust me, after unveiling over 2000 such chests already, the weapons, legendary gems, accessories, and armor sets locked within are well worth the effort hunting down keys enables.
Acquiring Whispering Keys from Hidden Vendors
So where do whispering keys come from originally? Players must purchase them from an inconspicuous NPC named the Purveyor of Curiosities that appears in most major towns.
I’ve compiled a list above of every location the vendor was found while exploring during early access. Take note to remember these positions later for quick access.
Interacting with the purveyor allows the purchase of arcane artifacts, oddities, and crucially, whispering keys for 20 murmuring obols each.
As detailed later, keeping return waypoints for efficient access back to her shops ensures you can purchase new keys the moment you hit the currency threshold. This also provides easy resupply between dungeon runs or play sessions.
Now, 20 obols may initially seem expensive if this is your first exposure, so let’s address the acquisition of this unique currency next.
How to Rapidly Farm Murmuring Obols
Murmuring obols are vital in keeping your whispering key supply steadily stocked. Here are the most efficient methods for farming obols I’ve discovered across my extensive playtime:
- Dynamic world events – Participating in public events marked by orange circles on maps yields 2-8 obols per event completion depending on length. These take just minutes and should be prioritized.
- Wanted monster contracts – Slaying unique super bosses grants around 5 murmuring obols (and chest-purchasing gold).
- Town project donations – Donating wood, ore, etc contributes 1-3 obols depending on material rarity.
- Hidden cache cairns – Smashing small rock piles hiding caches rewards a consistent ~50 obols jackpot per.
- Bestiary codex entries – Defeating new creatures awards 1-2 obols per documented species.
- Occultist bounties – Hunting down mini-bosses nets ~5 obols each.
- Gambling – Playing hidden luck games in town converts gold into obols at profitable rates.
As you can see, obols are acquired through virtually all forms of gameplay. But optimizing for speedy key purchases means selectively pursuing higher yield activities displayed above.
I‘d recommend regularly checking for events between other obol sources. Knocking out an event or two while en route to the next bounty optimizes potential income. Coordinate with groups to clear them swiftly for maximum efficiency.
Hit Currency Cap Milestones Quickly
An essential tip I‘ve learned is to teleport back to town to deposit obols once hitting certain key purchase milestones before your currency cap is reached.
For example, portaling after accumulating 95-180+ obols allows buying 3-6 keys, then immediately redeploying to continue collecting. This ensures no downtime at capped obols, leading to significantly elevated hourly income rates, such as 375-500 obols per 60 minutes.
Maintaining Adequate Whispering Key Reserves
While devoting some play sessions to dedicated obol farming is perfectly viable, maintaining general parity between obols spent on keys and obols collected while playing is ideal.
Stockpile in Advance
I like to build a healthy initial buffer of ~15 whispering keys as fast as possible. This covers any urgent silent chests during early progression when opportune loot would make the biggest impact. It also offsets potential future bad luck with obol drops.
Having enough keys available to open chests without needing to go farm obols specifically reduces friction while exploring dungeons and keeps you focused on other progression tasks instead.
You can see above I keep between 3-15 unused keys in my inventory at most times as a buffer for spontaneously discovered silent chests. Keeping some backup keys here rather than in stash ensures no disruption to opening chests while tackling dangerous dungeon content far from town portals. I‘d suggest mimicking a similar 3-15 key buffer range based on your playstyle and risk tolerance.
I replenish my supply either proactively before it dips below 3 keys, or reactively shortly after it becomes fully depleted, spending exactly enough obols to return to my target buffer range. This keeps me from wasting potential obol collection at the currency cap mentioned earlier.
Key Use Cadence
I average encountering approximately 1 silent chest every 15-30 minutes of gameplay spent actively exploring dungeons and overworld zones. Higher rates occur when intentionally hunting chests, while lower frequencies happen if idling in town often instead.
Adjusting my key purchase pacing to this encounter rate ensures I almost always have keys ready to use immediately upon discovering chests. The only short farming detours needed are when clusters of chests happen to spawn beyond the supply of my backup keys.
Tracking your own silent chest discovery frequency will allow tuning this system for your RNG and play patterns. If you deplete reserves too quickly, buy more keys per trip. If you‘re capped on keys frequently, reduce purchases until parity is achieved at your encounter pace.
Optimizing this balance reduces potential lost opportunity time from both key depletion and obol capping.
Identifying Silent Chest Locations
Silent chests blend into environments seamlessly. But veterans can pinpoint likely spawn spots. Here are the telltale signs indicating a nearby chest:
- Faint otherworldly humming
- Glowing spirit residues
- Odd drafts of wind in enclosed dungeons
- Whispers Answering the keys themselves
- Chests spawned at dead ends or puzzle solutions
Whenever I detect these omen combinations, I thoroughly search everyinteractable object, transition, and geometry in the area. More often than not this ritual reveals hidden passages and rooms where devious chests lurk in the shadows!
Certain landmarks and room configurations also tend to frequently house chests once recognized:
- Multi-layered library shelves
- Under cave waterfall basins
- Behind clandestine torch sconces
- Inside hollow tree trunks
- Sealed sarcophagi
- Pentagram pedestal chambers
Memorizing where chests materialize across different tiles allows selectively targeting chest-rich zones. Whenever I encounter familiar series of caves or huts for example, I make a point to triple check known chest spawns there.
Silent Chest Strategies
Finally, let‘s review best practices when actually unlocking silent chests themselves:
- openings chests during combat without interrupting fights
- town portal evacuations if inventory fills with loot
- using identifies reveals properties early
- gear comparing new drops without having to identify
- stacking magic find bonuses before opening
- targeting chests in higher difficulty zones
Learning these tips accumulated across my countless opened chests will help you capitalize on their treasures most effectively!
And that covers all my hard-earned knowledge on acquiring whispering keys, farming obols, maintaining ongoing key supplies, locating chests, and leveraging both to accelerate loot acquisition! Let me know if you have any other questions down below.
Happy chest hunting!
