Whether it’s for cooking, crafting, feeding your mount, or contributing to a Clan, ingredient quality plays a major role in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. In fact, there is pretty much no way you could play this game that would allow you to gloss over the need for Exquisite ingredients.
This guide will walk you through all of the many different ways you can increase your chances of finding Exquisite ingredients in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora so you can start cooking and crafting only the finest.
What are Exquisite ingredients in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora?
Every ingredient from any source has a rarity, and that rarity directly affects the stats it will offer when used to craft new gear or cook a meal. The three rarity tiers are:
- Fine (indicated by a green border)
- Superior (indicated by a purple border)
- Exquisite (indicated by a gold border)
The quality of ingredients controls the quality of gear, so if you want to craft Exquisite gear, you must use Exquisite ingredients. However, finding the highest tier of ingredients has some prerequisites that must be followed—and even within the Exquisite rarity tier, not all ingredients are created equal. Thankfully, once you understand how these tiers and sub-tiers work, consistently finding the highest quality ingredients is actually very easy in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.
How to get Exquisite Ingredients in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
There is one majorly important step that must be completed if you want to get the best possible ingredients in this game—you must lower Global Pollution Levels by wiping out RDA facilities throughout Pandora.
Yes, RDA facilities pollute their surrounding areas and make those sections of the map null, but they also contribute to the quality of ingredients available throughout the whole map.
Lower Global Pollution Levels
As you eliminate more and more RDA facilities, you will get different rewards for doing so. These rewards can be found by going to Journal then World Knowledge then Global Pollution. Every time you reach a new milestone in air quality, a new entry can be found in this section of your menu. It isn’t until you reach the third milestone, Revitalized Habitats, that Exquisite ingredients become available for gathering or hunting.
Revitalized Habitats causes the following effects:
- Mature animals can now be found and hunted.
- Superior ingredients are now sometimes available in Exquisite Quality.
This first step of lowering Global Pollution is not optional—you cannot find Exquisite Ingredients anywhere on the map until you unlock Revitalized Habitats by destroying enough RDA facilities. You can and should continue lowering pollution past this point as well, as all of the subsequent milestones will make finding Exquisite ingredients even easier. The next rank of Global Pollution perks is called Clear Skies, and that causes Exquisite Ingredients to become even more likely to spawn. After that, Returning Life will cause a swarm of Kaleidoscope Butterflies to surround Exquisite Ingredients, so they will be even easier to locate.
Use your Hunter’s Guide
Lowering pollution alone isn’t enough to find Exquisite ingredients; you must also be in the right Biome and specific location. In your Hunter’s Guide, every single plant, animal, and ingredient has its own entry. On an ingredients entry, a summary will tell you where to find rare variants of that ingredient. If you are not in the correct location, there is a near-zero chance of finding Exquisite ingredients, regardless of how much you have lowered pollution.
For example, the Stairfoot Bark entry in the Hunter’s Guide says the resource is most commonly found in Kinglor Forest, but that rarer Stairfoot Bark can be found among the great roots within the Rising Spires domain. This is a tiny area, so the chances of stumbling upon it while on the hunt for Stairfoot Bark are very low. If you want the best ingredients, you must use your Hunter’s Guide to actively ensure you are searching in the best locations.
Unlock skills
Finally, unlocking different skills can make the search for Exquisite Items much easier. Within the Hunter skill tree, there is a skill that causes all mature animals to receive an extra purple aura when viewed while using Na’vi Senses. Mature animals are the only animals that drop Exquisite ingredients, and without this skill, there isn’t any quick or convenient way to know an animals age from afar. This skill makes searching for Exquisite animal ingredients much easier.
There is also a skill within the Maker skill tree that causes Na’vi vendors to “trust you with their best ingredients,” which really just means they will now sell Exquisite Ingredients. This doesn’t make all of their items Exquisite, but every vendor will now have at least one Exquisite crafting ingredient available. The chances a vendor will happen to have the exact item you’re looking for still aren’t great, but this skill is still a must-have for anyone who is serious about crafting in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora—and if you’re concerned with finding Exquisite ingredients, that most likely means you’re concerned with crafting your own gear.
Meet both hunting and harvesting bonuses
Simply being Exquisite doesn’t guarantee an ingredient is the best of the best. Harvesting and Hunting each have two different bonuses that can be granted. For Harvesting, these bonuses are:
- Pristine
- Environmental Conditions
For Hunting, they are:
- Clean Kill
- Merciful
These bonuses cannot increase the rarity tier of an item, meaning a Superior ingredient cannot become Exquisite by getting both bonuses. However, rarity tiers each have three sub-tiers, and meeting these bonuses will increase the items sub-tier. If you hunt a mature animal without getting Clean Kill or Merciful, that animal will still drop Exquisite ingredients, however, they will still not be as powerful as if you had gotten both bonuses. If you want to maximize the quality of your crafting ingredients, it is crucial to get both bonuses.
