Help for those who are trying to farm drakes in NG+

I have been seeing a few misconceptions around that drakes do not respawn and others struggling to get wyrmlife crystals for their endgame grind. So I wanted to share my newly found route I am using to farm drakes in NG+.

Here is a copy-paste of my comment for another person:

Absolutely, got a good couple of tips that I have found out for NG+ that I haven't seen much of shared elsewhere so far. So apologies if this is a little bit of a dump but I am hoping this can help some people and get the info out there.

The route is based out of Bakbattahl. If you are anything like me, this may seem annoying as you may want to get straight into the gear grind in NG+ and not have to do the story once more. I got you. If you follow the route west from Harve, you can come across the Guerco Cavern. Follow into that cavern to use the path to go straight to Bakbattahl. It has some tough enemies but you should be fine as you should have reasonably strong gear coming into NG+. Once there I'd strongly suggest buying the house, it should be immediately available for purchase upon arrival.

From here, the main takeaway is that I know for a fact that everything will respawn after 9 days of rest at an inn or at a home. It may be seven but what I like to do is rest in intervals of 3 days, and then buy a ferrystone from the nearby vendor. This way I can supply my ferrystone stockpile as I force the world to spawn more drakes. Note: I have not managed to replicate the spawning using camps.

Then, the first drake is located slightly north of Bakbattahl, requiring you to exit out of the main entrance, heading north and cutting across the ruins that contain the golems. Continue towards the river, and simply follow the passage of the river in the direction of the shrine where Luz is at. Along this river is a drake. From here you can go back to the home via walking or ferrystone and rest to get your health back.

Then, leave towards the southwest exit of Bakbattahl that leads to the pathway you take when fighting Talos (the gigantus). This is immediately unlockable in NG+ as you have the godsbane (or should, I picked the true ending the first time so I can't speak for other endings). Follow down the path as you would when fighting Talos to the very end where there is a camp site, and right below it is another drake spawn. After this, you can go to the Volcanic Camp inn to rest, or simply rest at the nearby campsite.

The third drake is then in the direction of the Glintmoon tower. Once you journey towards there and come across the large bridge over the lava river, take the right path. Following that path to the end allows you to find another drake sitting in the lava river below. Be careful to not allow the drake to back up into the lava pool behind it when fighting it as it will insta-kill it, similar to the brine. However, dying and reloading the last save did spawn loot for me on this one.

I did the route and it seems fairly efficient, with the only constraint being a matter of convenience (ferrystones--gold). I plan on stockpiling a large amount of gold to get the ferrystones to really streamline this grind. This can also be made more efficient by simply placing portcrystals in these spawn locations if you do not care for them to be elsewhere and you have the ferrystone stockpile for this.

The drake most easily farmable is certainly the one at the end of the path of the gigantus fight. Fighting small adds are what will eat the majority of your "wasted" time, and by using this path, you can run past anything of concern and end up at the drake's feet. Using the method of buying ferrystones as you rest, and only using one ferrystone to return after this drake would have you farming drake materials and be up 2 stones each run, which is pretty good in my opinion. However, I'm sure others can find great ways to make this run more efficient as well.