Where are the Leads?

barney2525 · June 2023

Background - New Account, Single character, to start from scratch and someday have every achievement.
Created character, started getting all skill lines opened, did antiquities tutorial, started psyjic quest just up to entering Arteum, leveled antiquities to 5 in Arteum so I could dig up purple Leads.
Started doing zones - This mean All Skyshards, All Delves, All Public Dungeons with All bosses killed in each, All Lorebooks, Open all chests I find, grab all Mat nodes possible (brand new acct had nothing obviously) All Fishing rare fish, All Dolmens, located all Mundus and Crafting areas. And did Not run past Mobs. (especially mobs that drop rare Mats)
Only thing I did not do was Main Questline in each zone, not sure if that would cause problems later on with Cadwell silver/gold questlines

Started with Ebonheart. Completed Stonefalls. Got 2 purple and 1 gold Lead. Dug up the purples.

Next, Completed DeShaan After completing absolutely everything - Got 0 Leads. Thats zero... as in ZERO Leads.

Next completed Shadowfen After completing absolutely everything - Got 1 Gold Lead, and 0 purple Leads... as in ZERO Purple Leads.

Now I'm continuing on but, am I supposed to go back and wander around for days hoping to find a purple? Are there zones that don't Have any Leads? If so, can we get a list?

Necrotech_Master · June 2023

all zones have 3 base leads

green (which you can dig up repeatedly anytime)
blue (which can be repeatedly dug up after digging up the green)
purple (can only be dug up once)

other purple leads are purely random drop, and most of them can come from almost anywhere or anything, though they may have significantly higher chances from certain locations

gold leads usually come from very specific activities, usually also within a specific zone (for example the kilt lead from shadowfen alchemical plants will only drop in that zone)

if your on PC, there is a display leads addon which gives you a listing of every known antiquity lead along with the locations that they drop

there are tons of leads, but most are limited to specific zones, and some are limited to specific delves, group dungeons, public dungeons (namely only the bosses too)

there are only maybe 2 dozen purple leads that can literally drop from almost anything, but the chances for those are generally pretty low outside of certain zones