While you’ll find your inventory overflowing with all sorts of gear upgrade materials in Avowed, the same can’t be said for adra. If you want to brave everything the Living Lands has to throw at you, it’s necessary to increase both the quality tier of your weapons and armour, as well as each gear level as you progress further. Doing so requires you to find heaps of this precious crystal.
You’re in luck though, as there are a handful of ways to get adra in Avowed, many of which can be done as soon as you arrive in Dawnshore. And no, you can’t take a chunk out of the massive adra pillars that serve as base camps throughout your adventure (though I did try).
How to get adra in Avowed
There are three main ways to get adra in Avowed:
- Looting boss enemies and yellow-quality containers
- Purchasing them from merchants
- Breaking down unique items for crafting materials
- Cleansing Strangled Adra
Now, you’ve likely seen the in-game tooltip explaining how to upgrade uniques across quality tiers, including how to get your hands on adra. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. This tooltip is somewhat misleading as you’re not guaranteed to get adra for breaking down unique items, nor does it specify what “areas of high challenge” really are. After exploring every inch of the Living Lands, here’s how to actually get adra.
Since adra is a rare loot item you can’t find it at random. The so-called “areas of high challenge” actually refer to boss fights, and not venturing into areas intentionally under-levelled as the tooltip seems to suggest. The good news is that these bosses can be found in a variety of main and side quests, so you’ll end up with quite a few adra chunks just from exploring and questing. For example, you’re likely to get your first piece of adra after defeating the infected bear early on in the main story. These rewards are either on the boss’ body or in a nearby container, though bodies with adra don’t glow orange like chests containing this rare material do. Instead, they glow white like any normal dead mob with loot, so you’ll have to rummage.
Another consistent method of finding adra is purchasing it from merchants. Various merchants will sell a handful of adra at a time, costing 625 gold each. This is a tad pricey when you’re just starting out, but completing a few quests and bounties will see your purse sufficiently padded. Once you reach Emerald Stair, the second major region, merchants begin to sell awakened adra, which is even more costly. Like the other materials used to upgrade equipment, your ability to find and purchase higher-tier adra is tied to your progression through the story.
You can get adra by deconstructing upgraded items. You can do this either through your inventory or via the upgrade station at a camp. Breaking down gear will give you a handful of crafting resources that you can then use to upgrade other equipment. Deconstructing higher-tier gear will give you adra as well, effectively refunding any you've spent if it's an item you upgraded yourself. As you progress through the game, gear will begin to drop at higher quality tiers which can then also be deconstructed to gain adra–and higher quality adra, too.
Lastly, you get one adra every time you cleanse a Strangled Adra. These are adra pillars that you can find while exploring that are tangled in roots, often requiring you to complete a few puzzles or parkour your way up to them first. Nevertheless, interact with these to cleanse them and earn your adra. As you progress, the quality of adra increases all the way up to adra dan, the highest tier.
There are five Strangled Adra locations to find, one in each zone:
- Next to the Emerald Stair Gatehouse to the far south of Dawnshore
- Just north of Tama's Cabin in the northwest of Emerald Stair
- At the Broken Crown Rock in the Great Sand Sea of Shatterscarp, to the northeast of Thirdborn
- Southeast of the Southern Warden Tower in Galawain's Tusks, near the camp
- North of the Broken Aqueduct campsite in The Garden
Adra locations
Since adra generally spawns in set locations or is given as a reward for certain milestones, you can quickly stock up once you know where to look. Here are the easiest locations I’ve found to get adra early on in Dawnshore:
- After defeating the bear during the Message from Afar main quest, head over to the Aedyran soldier’s body at the centre of the room to find a piece of adra.
- Merchants Gweneth and Sanza in Paradis. Gweneth is a blacksmith located in Paradis Market District who sells adra and high-quality gear. Cartographer Sanza, located in Sanza’s Emporium in Northern Paradis High Market, sells adra alongside trinkets and even clues to find the Woedica Totem.
- A yellow-quality chest at the top of the Watcher’s Tower in northern Dawnshore
- In an underwater chest to the east of the Western Pargrun Wall fast travel beacon at the base of the smuggler’s lift. While you’re here, you could also grab Captain Henqua’s Spoils treasure map for some additional goodies.
- In a chest in a hut to the south of Yellowband Camp in eastern Dawnshore. This is guarded by several bandits who are involved in a bounty quest.
After you’ve collected these easily accessible adra and have levelled up a bit, I recommend completing sidequests like Dawntreader, various bounties (like Ralga), and exploring further to the southeast in areas like Castol’s Folly and the Emerald Stair Gatehouse.
Once you reach the second major region, Emerald Stair, you will begin to earn awakened adra, a higher-tier upgrade material used to upgrade equipment from Fine to Exquisite quality. This trend continues as you progress, so if you’re ever wondering why you can’t seem to find any quality-improving materials, perhaps you just need to do some main story quests and enter the next region.
