Farming

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 significantly 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 fewer items than you normally would; the amount being 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.

Recommended Locations

Farming is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get money. Common farming targets in Tyria (Prophecies) include Mountain Trolls in a cave to the north of Droknar's Forge, Mahgo Hydras in the Ring of Fire Islands, Undead outside of Bergen Hot Springs in hard mode 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 location for this is currently The Catacombs. Another popular place to farm in Tyria is Sorrow's Furnace (SF) because of its great number of greens. A good location in hard mode is just outside Ascalon City in Old Ascalon. There are Hulking Stone Elementals and/or Gargoyles there that are reasonably easy to farm and have a reasonable drop rate. Also, just into the Gates of Kryta Mission, behind the house by Oink, is a large group of Undead.

In Cantha (Factions), Vermin, Shiro'ken, Wardens, and Kirin are popular farming targets. Also in Seijun Woods and Kinya Province a substantial number of creatures with a very high probability of dropping items and very low levels: Mantid, Kappa and Naga. Drops here are small in value, but abundant. Raiyan Cave, located in Panjiang Peninsula, is also a good farming spot, with lots of Naga. Killing 35-40 Mantid Drones and Monitors in Sunqua Vale in Hard Mode can yield between 2 and 5 platinum in 20-30 minutes.

In Elona (Nightfall), 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. Outside Yohlon Haven, Tusked Howlers and Tusked Hunters can be farmed, as can various mobs in the Sulfurous Wastes.

The Domain of Anguish is an extremely good way to make money, and can be 3 man farmed, in Hard Mode. However, it requires 2 monks and a ranger, all with very specific armor runes/insignias, and a precise build. Also, the overall skill and reactions of the players must be quite good. If properly done, it is possible to make 30k - 60k in around an hour and a half. As with all farming, it was far easier to make money before the party scaling update, yielding between 80k - 120k.

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.

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.
• Blessing of the Kurzicks and Blessing of the Luxons, available respectively in explorable areas of the Echovald Forest and the Jade Sea, provide faction per kill with bonuses awarded for defeating bosses.
• Vanquishing Kurzick or Luxon areas.

Known Quests for Faction Farming

Kurzick

• In the Army Now
• Kurzick Supply Lines
• Securing Echovald Forest
• Duel of the Houses
• Scouting Ferndale

Luxon

• In the Army
• Luxon Supply Lines
• The Jade Arena - See also FFF
• Scouting Maishang Hills
• Scout the Coast

Note: many of these, especially the ones that cover a lot of ground, combine very well with the Blessing of the Kurzicks/Luxons for increased faction gain.

Farming Faction with Balthazar

Some players farm faction with Balthazar mainly for the purpose of unlocking weapon upgrades, runes, and skills for PvP or for purchasing Zaishen Keys from Tolkano to use or sell. 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 rewards faction like a regular PvP match but can be faster as there are several ways to take advantage of the foes and their AI.

Note: Farming using the Zaishen Challenge has a cap of 2,000 faction per day, unless you have access to Zaishen Elite, which can go up to 6,000 faction per day (although you need to be able to survive until the 16th round which is easily accomplished using trapping rangers).

Additional info

• See also: Fast Faction Farming, also known as: FFF
• See also: Category:Gives Luxon points and Category:Gives Kurzick points
• See also: Talk:Allegiance_rank#Faction_farming_research

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.

Additional Info

• Lightbringer point farming
• Sunspear point farming

Reputation Farming

In the GW:EN expansion, farming for reputation points of the Asura, Norn, Deldrimor and Ebon Vanguard is popular. Typically, this involves attaining a blessing (such as Norn Hunting Party or Asuran Bodyguard) and eliminating all creatures in a select area. Since blessing increase in rank (and give more reputation points per kill) as you kill more foes, large areas are preferred, as it allows reputation to be gathered more efficiently, and re-zoning will remove all blessings. A typical farming mission will also include frequent stops to the guards of resurrection shrines, as they will often grant bonus reputation according to how much you have killed.

Norn Reputation Farming

• The most common form of farming Norn points is to enter Varajar Fells in Hard Mode, and repeatedly killing the bosses spawned by the quest, The Path to Revelations.

Asuran Reputation Farming

• Asuran points are commonly farmed by either hiring a W/N farmer to kill Raptor Nestlings outside of Rata Sum, or repeatedly clearing Magus Stones.

Deldrimor Reputation Farming

• A common place to farm Deldrimor reputation points is to join a 600/Smite group doing Temple of the Damned.

• The Secret Lair of the Snowmen dungeon, accessed with the repeatable quest Lost Treasure of King Hundar can be done with henchmen or heroes for quick deldrimor points. The quest is given by Koris Deeprunner in Umbral Grotto and becomes available after completion by zoning out and back in. This mode of farming Deldrimor Reputation points is by far faster than Temple of the Damned.

Ebon Vanguard Reputation Farming

• Of the four EotN factions, the Ebon Vanguard are by far the hardest to gain reputation with, as there are only three explorable areas associated with the faction. To make matters worse, these three areas are among the hardest in the game due to large balanced parties of Charr. Nevertheless, the fastest way to gain reputation is by repeatedly clearing Sacnoth Valley, saving the four bosses in the large Charr base for last to maximize point gain.

• A good way to farm EV Points is to repeat the Snowball Dominance quest. You can acquire 500 points, 500 gold, 5 tonics and 10 CC Shards in 2 minutes, but the quest is available only during Wintersday.

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.
• Loot now scales according to party size. Items of greater value (gold items, greens, etc) are exempt from scaling.
• 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.
• The Sorrow's Furnace update introduced the key system for chests. This may have been a response to chest-farmers, who would use runner builds to farm easily reached chests, in areas such as Witman's Folly.
• 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) could 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 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 Griffons and Minotaurs.
  • August 25 2005: Protective Bond was nerfed to prevent its use by Invincimonks.