Farm
From GuildWiki
Farming is the killing of monsters for the purpose of gathering items, experience, gold, Faction, or promotion points and is considered to be one of the quickest and easiest ways to amass wealth. Often you will find parties (especially in the harder areas of the game) searching for people to go farming with them.
Farming groups utilize strategies and techniques optimized for farming effectiveness. These strategies revolve around two seemingly contradicting principles:
- Reducing the number of party members: Smaller party size equals an increased chance for each member to get quality items. It similarly means fewer people to split the gold with. (Note this has been changed signifigantly since the April 19th Update. See below.)
- Increasing the number of party members: Increased DPS, expedites the deaths of enemies killed within a given time frame.
As such, dedicated farming groups experiment with builds in high-experience zones. Repeatedly dying or retreating is unfavorable for farming. Seek an effective party structure that clears out an area quickly and has less than a full party size.
As of the April 19th, 2007 update, with the introduction of the hard mode, Money making from farming was decreased in parties with less than the maximum party size, as loot is now scaled according to the amount of players in a party. When farming solo or having party members, you get less items then you normally would, and that amount is now comparable to that of full group farming. Shortly after the release of the hard mode, loot scaling has been slightly adjusted by causing tomes, scrolls, dye, rare materials, Domain of Anguish gemstones, gold level rarity items, unique items, and Special Event items to be excluded from the new system.
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[edit] Recommended Locations
Farming is the quickest and easiest way to get money. Common farming targets in Tyria (Prophecies) include Mountain Trolls in a cave to the north of Droknar's Forge, Desert Griffons to the south of Augury Rock, Mahgo Hydras in the Ring of Fire Islands and Minotaurs in Elona Reach. Pre-searing is a popular place to farm for dye, as they are reported to drop more frequently there. The most popular Pre-Searing farming location is currently The Catacombs. Another popular place to farm in Tyria is Sorrow's Furnace (SF) because of its great number of greens.
In Cantha (Factions), Vermin, Shiro'ken, Wardens, and Kirin are popular farming targets. Also in Seijun Woods and Kinya Province you can find a substantial number of creatures with a very high probability of dropping items, and since these Mantid, Kappa and Naga pose little threat, you may perform a solo hunt. Drops here are small in value, but abundant.
In Elona, Remains of Sahlahja can be farmed by using very specific builds. The Hidden City of Ahdashim is also very popular among the Spirit Bond monks, farming Djinns and Rain Beetles. The Shattered Ravines can be easily farmed with Junundu. In Hard Mode it is possible to farm Insects and Plants in the Plains of Jarin outside the Sunspear Great Hall. Another great location in hard mode is just outside Ascalon City in Old Ascalon. There are hulking elementals and/or Gargoyles there that are pretty easy and they have a pretty good droprate.
Click here for a list of farming builds.
[edit] Faction Farming
Faction farming is a form of farming in which players repeatedly complete certain tasks to gather Faction. The type of tasks done depends on the type of faction being farmed.
[edit] Farming Faction with the Kurzicks/Luxons
The main purpose of this type of farming is to amass Faction with the Kurzicks or Luxons. Faction farming is commonly practiced by members of an alliance trying to increase their Alliance Faction with either nation.
For each side, there are a few areas that players go to farm faction. These are:
- Competitive Missions: Fort Aspenwood and The Jade Quarry.
- Challenge Missions: Altrumm Ruins, Amatz Basin, Zos Shivros Channel and The Aurios Mines
- Alliance Battles
- Repeating PvE quests over and over. This tends to be the fastest way, but also is targeted by ArenaNet to tone down the speed by which players can gather faction. One of the best current examples of this is the Kurzick Securing Echovald Forest quest; see Lutgardis FFF team build
Kurzick faction farming allows an alliance to gain control over a town on the map of Cantha, should your alliance gain the most faction you gain control over the capital House zu Heltzer and with it access to the Urgoz's Warren the elite mission. Luxon faction farming works the same way but the eventual goal is the Luxon capital Cavalon and its elite mission, The Deep.
[edit] Farming Faction with Balthazar
Some players farm faction with Balthazar mainly for the purpose of unlocking weapon upgrades,runes, and skills for PvP. Some players farm faction with Balthazar simply by partaking in all sorts of PvP matches.
However, others farm it using PvE. This is mainly done in the Zaishen Challenge mission on the Battle Isles. Doing this challenge over and over rewards faction like a regular PvP match but is faster with the likelihood of losing being very slim.
Note: Farming using the Zaishen Challenge has a cap of 2,000 faction per day.
[edit] Sunspear and Lightbringer farming
- Sunspear Promotion Points are easily
farmed with heroes and henchmen while progressing through the
campaign.
- Restarting A Land of Heroes a few times before completing the quest is an effective farming method but will only obtain a maximum rank of Sunspear Commander.
- Lightbringer promotion points are often farmed early on in The Mirror of Lyss, and later in the Realm of Torment with Lightbringer's Gaze.
Click here for Lightbringer Point Farming strategies.
[edit] Notes
- Remember that the loot found in an area is proportional to the expected level of the character's development in the PvE game. That is, farming in Old Ascalon will yield items suitable for characters of level 3 to 6 (even if the party farming is all level 20), while farming in the Ring of Fire Islands will yield level 20 loot.
- An in-game hint screen states that repeatedly killing the same creature(s) in the same location will cause the value of the loot dropped to be reduced for a period of time. This is called the "anti-farm code".
- Quoted from Gaile Gray: "What we do is reduce the drops if a player goes into an area over and over again in a short period of time, for that directly impacts professional farmers and bot users. Which is a good thing!"
- A-Net occasionally nerfs
farming. Sometimes it is a wide reaching nerf such as:
- 10th November 2005 and 25th October 2006:. AI was updated, decreased the efficiency of a number of established solo / dual farming builds.
- A nerfed farming scenario occurred in the Underworld. Players discovered a specific build of monks (preferably aided by a necromancer or an elementalist to expedite things) can singlehandedly kill off most of the monsters in this high-level area. The underworld was commonly farmed by groups of two: an invincimonk and a Spiteful Spirit necromancer. Arenanet has introduced Dying Nightmares to make farming the underworld more difficult. ArenaNet continues trying to foil such strategies; in response, farming groups search for new ones.
- Other times only a specific area or skill of the game is
nerfed.
- March 2nd 2006: Scarabs added to the Crystal desert to nerf farming of Griffins and Minotaurs.
- August 25 2005: Protective Bond was nerfed to prevent its use by Invincimonks.
