It That Was Esh/Tul Farm

Overview

Hive Colony is a level 83 boss area opened with a Hivebrain Gland on the Atlas, ending in a joint fight against It That Was Tul and It That Was Esh. Killing the pair guarantees one Breach unique from a fixed pool alongside a random Foulborn Breach unique, which makes it a short, single-fragment encounter with a guaranteed unique payout every run. The first clear also grants access to the Otherworldly Tree and the Breachlord Bloodline ascendancy.

Setup

• Hivebrain Gland — one per run, consumed on the Atlas to open the area. Nothing else is spent.
• Run time — about 3 and a half minutes end to end, covering the hallway, the fight and the reset, not just the boss. That is a modelled house estimate for a competent build clearing it cleanly, not a measured average, and it assumes the Gland is already in hand rather than bought each run.

The Encounter

• Rolling Lightning Nova — Esh charges an outward-expanding wall of heavy lightning damage, telegraphed by glyphs appearing around it; move out early, and bring chaos resistance since 30% of it converts.
• Spawn Orbs — Esh seeds the arena with orb hazards that fire projectiles and detonate on contact; they shrink the safe floor, so clear space before the next charge.
• Projectile Barrage — Esh's projectiles bounce off the arena walls, so hugging the edge is worse than standing mid-arena.
• Tentacle Slam — Tul slams the ground and leaves a Boiling Blood pool dealing physical damage over time, marked by a flame edge; do not stand in it to melee.
• Ice Shower — Tul shields itself and the shield doubles as a safe zone from the surrounding cold and physical damage, but it ends with a slam inside, so leave before the cast finishes.
• Phasing — the two alternate twice until 40% health, then fight together on a shared health bar for the rest of the encounter, which is where the damage overlaps and most deaths happen.

How These Numbers Were Calculated

These figures are a model, not recorded runs. The sample is a synthetic 100 kills built from the wiki's published drop rates: a drop listed at 3% is counted three times across the sample, a guaranteed drop 100 times, expenses are one run's Gland cost multiplied by the same 100 runs, and the hourly figure is that net total spread over 100 runs at three and a half minutes each.

• The rates are estimates. The wiki's table is drawn from a sample of 330 kills on version 3.28.0 and is explicitly flagged as approximate; two rows, The Grey Wind and Uul-Netol's Vow, are given as rough figures rather than measured ones. Results over a short run of kills will differ substantially.
• Both bosses share one drop pool. They are killed together and drop a single unique between them, so the pool is counted once even though the wiki repeats the identical table on each boss's page.
• Some value is not counted. The guaranteed random 1-mod Foulborn Breach unique, the Hiveblood, the first-clear Breachlord Limbs and the Grasping Coffer chests along the hallway are all left out, because none of them resolves to a single priceable item. Actual returns should run above the modelled profit rather than below it.
• Concentration. No single row dominates, but two carry most of it: Flesh of Xesht at a 20% chance is about 35% of modelled profit and The Sundered Will at 4% is about 26%. The Sundered Will is the rarest slice of the guaranteed ring pool, so a long stretch without one is normal variance rather than a sign the strategy is broken.