How do increase my rare drop rate?

Hello All

I have been playing Guild Wars for about 6 months and I have pretty much beaten most of the areas and finished most of the quests for all three campaigns but I still do not get good drops.

My cousin who has only been playing for three months can go outside Ascalon or Kamandan and get greens of golds every time he goes out.

I on the other hand farm in areas like FoW, UW, Tombs and Tourment but am lucky if I get a gold item and it us usually not even a good gold its crappy and not worth a whole lot. I have also never gotten any rare materials except 1 ecto and in fact from the things I pick up in in FoW or UW i can barely make the entry fee to get in.

I would like to know if there is something I am doing wrong when everyone around even people who are not as good of players as I am get better things. I can farm all day and only maybe I'll make 10k on a good day and usually about 3k is my average even when traveling with experienced players.

If someone could help me figure out how to increase my drops that would be great thanks. I don't mean to complain but it is starting to frustrate me that noobs are making more at farming than I am.

Drop rates are random, there's no way to influence it except playing in HM and high end areas. You are just unlucky that's all.

ok idk how you play so i cannot say exactly, cause it may just be really bad luck ^^.

but going without heros/henchmen = better chance of you getting the rare.

figuring out where to farm is another good thing, farming high farm aeras are not always the best. i farmed darkroot for a while *before he was reduced to one boss v.v* and that was good profits cause almost no one farmed tehre so i could sell the daggers quite easy and quite high.

as far as money making goes, one thing to remeber packratting is a great way to get some cash. this will not make you rich but if you pick up everthing assigned to you and merch it, it adds up. then you can pay for entry fees ^^

the final and best way to increase drops, pray to lady luck. really it all falls back to luck in the end

Thank you for the information.

Well my cuz must have some really good luck!
I do farm other areas as well for a while I was farming grawl outside of droks and was getting supperior vigor runes almost everytime but after about 3 of those they no longer dropped, so I moved on.

Anothr farming spot was outside Kamandan which sounds weird but i would get high merch value items nothing super great but it really takes no effort and you can get a 1-2k out of it

I do "pack rat" as you say and sell items to merchant.

I farm the high farm areas in groups usually but I have 2 builds for farming solo with either my derv or ranger so I do that as well neither way is profitable. I am trying to get the high ticket tems like ectos, shard, preacious gems and I understand you don't get them every time but I have been to UW and FoW more times than I can count and I have only gotten 1 ecto in 3 months.

Its just frustrating that's all and I still can't imagine having 300k in your storage when I've never had more than 25k total on all my accounts.

Thanks again for the input everyone

I declare shenanigans on that one if you imply that other humans in a party make for a better chance of getting the drop! (If you're talking about solo-farming though, ignore this post)...

Heroes and henchies are effectively just like other people in the party as regards their influence on drop rates. They just happen to pick up their drops before they even hit the ground.... (though with a quick eye you CAN see them drop, and I've seen them get golds and even greens before, to my chagrin). The ONLY way you'd have a better chance of getting stuff with other people is if you're asking them to give it to you... or they don't pick it up at all (and you come back 10 minutes later)... -_-;

This may seem like an unrelated question, but do you have pretty much just one main character that you play? I ask because I've found that the character which I play the most gets the worst drops, and the character I rarely play (my lil farmer) comes out and gets tons o loot and goes rigt back into hiding.

yea also i would like to know if you got factions cause i got some ways for you to farm that i can help you out with... *i still think factions is best farming game* just contact me ingame and i will prolly help ya out. but i really have a lot going on right now so i prolly cant help for too long >.<

oh and SotiCoto i did mean solo lol.

There is 1 simple way to increase drop rate.
That is to pray hard that they drop.

SotiCoto
I do both and have about the same luck both ways. I was soloing UW and FoW but I rarely would make the entry fee from it so I haven't gone solo in a while.
Also I know what you mean about the henchie/hero pickups cause I've seen that myself. Actually I have something I wanted drop before and then when the fight is over i goto get it and when I click on it the the item changes into something else... I guess it was a glitch and the item was meant for henchie.

Another note as of the beginning of this month there was an update to the system and all drops are based on 8 member party, so your drop will be the same with 8 people or solo. I believe you can check that out on the GW website.

lennymon
I have 8 characters and I regularly play with at least 4 of those and quite often with the other four they are each setup to do different things.

tenshi_strife
Yes I own factions my character aren't quite as far in factions as they are in Prophecies and nightfall. I would like to go farming with you though I always enjoy going new places with new people makes the game interesting.

Thank you all for the help so far it has been great.

Are you doing UW solo right?
Normally, you should be able to pay up for the entry by picking the junks and by the time you reached the 2nd room, you should have earned 700++ g
If ecto dropped, you will pay up for the entry.
When you solo UW, how much did you solo?

Well you could become supertitious, personaly each time I go with a specifique guildie in Hm I get tones of drop last time I went with him I got 4 out of the 5 gold that run.

Other then that, pray to lady luck and the loot god ( maybe give a offering or sacrifice to either? )

that said, yeah, on the same boat as you the rest of the time

Quantity>quality is my motto in Guild Wars.

In the past week of doing Hard Mode (always do it with 1 friend or just hero/hench the easy missions) that friend has gotten EVERY gold drop (no I'm not exaggerating.....EVERY GOLD DROP) that has dropped for us. I get some purples and the usual whites.

I pretty much gave up on quality drops. I started solo farming UW almost 2 years ago now and always chose ecto quantity over quality. I found good farming spots that yielded some rare skin weapons but was never after them to begin with. I always made more money farming for drops than the rare skinned weapons. I've opened close to 1000 chests recently and never got anything better than a req 9 Dead Bow and Req 10 Sephis which turned out to not even have a damage mod.

I currently am very happy with 10k per hour not counting golds/mods/other collectibles I don't sell (plus they give wisdom points) farming since that's very good with the loot scaling. I go into UW whenever said friend from above wants to go but that's about all the UW farming I do anymore.

ichigo_panty
Yes I do UW among others too... I have been to UW at least 40 or 50 times in the last 3 months, if not more. out of those times I've only made the entry fee, the 1k, 20 times. half those times was with groups so I split the entry and was actually a head by like 300g. I've only gotten 1 ecto the whole time I've ever been to UW and my friend gets 1 almost everytime and couple times he's gotten 3 or 4 of them in 1 run.

Halmyr
Well I have to say I'm not that superstitious, but I do live in a place where it's the culture to be so. Also I don't want to say I never get anything good, but I could play for weeks and be lucky to get a couple of things half way decent. Right now I've got 10k in my storage and 1k in each of my characters and that's a good day for me.

Jedi Battousai
Well I know how you feel my cousin is that way if I go with him he will get every gold drop and any greens that drop as well. I would like ectos if I could get them but I've almost given up on those. As for making 10k in and hour well... I would kill for that, Sorry little pun there. I usually make about 10k in a day, after about 8 - 10 hours of play and I've tried everything that people have told me and I've farmed just about every spot from Ascalon to Ababddon lair and the tourment.

hard mode just killing the stupid minotaurs outside of ice tooth cave can easily make 10-20k an hour, plus some decent gold drops, assuming you have a relatively efficient solo build.

The only way to increase the rare drop rate is to increase the chance of rare drops. Kill more things, quicker. As for 10K an hour, that should be your target, at a minimum. Check the farming forum and the dervish section for builds, and spots to farm.

@lennymon: I don't buy that theory of better drops for lesser-played characters. One of our guildies has 14mil XP on his monk, and he snatches lots of ecto, and has farmed collossal scimitars, gloom shields, insert rare skin here, and tons of other golds. He does this by killing lots of things, quickly.

OK that I can do... Kill things quickly! I will check the forums and thanks for the help everyone

People don't generally make their gold from the rare drops. Pick up all the white junk, ID it, even tho there won't be mods on, it will be worth more to the merchant, usually 30-50g more to the merchant when 1 ID costs 4g.

Sell all your white and blue items. going from start to finish in a campaign usually lands me 150k. (not including greens and golds)

I've found this to be true aswell.

Anthei: Yeah I was kinding a bit mroe then any thing , sorry if I offeded you in any way.

Its been said before, pick up all the junk and don't spend much of it, it hads up rather quickly.

I barely farm, when I do, its more for the fun and challenge of it, and some times I get lucky, I don't spend hours spamming WTS either, when you enter Kamadan/LA/ *Faction trading town*, check the trade pannel, I got a few lucky sells there.

Just watch for oportunity

I've been playing for 21 months, around 1500 hours or so. Probably half or so of that farm, I have had a grand total of *two* sup vigors drop. I suspect I'm on the unlucky side on this, however getting three superior runes that fast is *rare*. If they actually dropped at that rate anywhere they wouldn't cost what they do at the trader would they

Basically, you can not get real rares to drop all the time - otherwise they wouldn't be rares (I mean like sup vigors, elemental swords, not just gold items - they drop like candy in HM). I do not know if the chance to drop golds is even on every mob - I *very* rarely had them drop from mountain trolls yet quite often from Griffins. I still see the same thing, some spots seems to have a decent gold item drop rate, others almost never. It could be just luck, may not be there. Best thing to do is go read the farming section for a while - lots and lots of good information there. It is easy as a casual farmer to have several areas that average around 10gp/hour from just merching or selling stuff to the traders. None of my spots are secret - all of my current spots are still in the first few pages of the farming section so no reason to list them.

As has been said - the only to increase the likely hood of getting one is to kill more things per hour.

I have that happen often while solo-farming too. It just seems to be a glitch. I generally chalk it up to my computer being slow and showing something one would normally rarely see. Even then it's not very often it happens.

*cough* nf *cough* I think with experiance, you will realize its way easier to get inscribable drops from nf then anything else. Factions just isnt worth it, the chances of anyone getting a decent drop are slim, but if youre lucky enough to get something, the mods turn out crap.

I also think its because although a dervish is perhaps one / the strongest prof doesnt make it the best farmer. I have a derv myself, and its very usefull for FoW beach farming / and other farms (although FoW farming is rather rubish, too slow, and the drops arent worth it). But in term of actual farming, isnt all that usefull, a 55 necro with ss is far more effective then a derv who swings his scythe or a ranger that sets up traps. (A 55hp soj monk also works)

Id just like to add, its pure luck, I got a gold Req 10 Jade sword with a +5 energy inscription before the update with a team of 8 henches / heroes, however Ive also had several collosal swords from solo farming. (Before they turned into the dead swords of the next generation that is.)

Im just suggesting there arebetter ways to farm, even w/rt UW soloing can be very effective, as its a pretty easy, safe farm. (I hve gotten up to 4 ectos in 1 run)

If you find that killing smites isnt for you, take it up a notch and start sving aatxes with a 55hp necro build. (drop rates are quite high concidering.)

Well I played all evening for about 4 hours and only made about 4k farming and that was mostly from selling the little dinky items to the merchant. so I think it must be me I'm not doing something right here. I will check the farming forums and see what I can pick up there.

Dahl
I'll try that, thanks

Halmyr
I took no offence to what you said so don't worry.

strcpy
I know that you are right about rare items, it just seems as though I never really get any. as for my questions they based on the fact that I thought that by getting rares I would make more money, in turn have more than 10k in my locker.

Thank you everyone for your input it has been very helpful so far.

MakeMeHealFfs
I usually do farm in Nightfall cause I am less familiar with factions, but I do farm in all campaigns.

[EDIT]
I would like to clear some things up... I use more than a Dervish for this game.
- My Dervish is my main character and is setup to solo FoW and UW and for doing runs from to Droks.
- I also have a ranger that can farm almost anywhere. I primarily use it for a build I invented as a solo trapper, is quite effective.
- I have a Necro and a Monk that I am setting up for 55 but have no cash hence the problem. My necro is also setup for MM and some other team builds.
- My new character that I like allot better than the Necro is a Ritualist. I set her up as a MM at the moment and is quite effective, it's basically another version of a necro.
- Assassin which is setup to solo tombs and quite effectively I might add but a little slow compared to group farming there.
- I have a paragon I rarely use.
- lastly I have an ele, this is my new character and the only one without a farming build other than the paragon.

So like I said I farm with all my characters and they are setup to farm different areas.

well I will keep you guys posted on if my luck improves thanks again for all the help

I average around 8-10k an hour with HM hydras on my 130hp dervish. Everything merch'd - it is the best combination of money and exp. Since I'm slowly getting my skill hunter title I need both.

Prot spirit, mystic regen, fleeting stability, mystic vigor, mystic sweep, reaper's sweep, essence bond, and blath's sprit.

I exit the north portal from Augary, cast essence and balths then wait for my energy to regen to full. Go stand near a group of hydras (no more than four at a time) and cast mystic regen, prot spirit, and fleeting stability then aggro them. At the first point I can cast mystic vigor I do - since it is 5e then that is easy. I usually just wait until the first one finally moves itself into melee range and I start swinging my scythe - if they do not bunch up where you are hitting them all then just walk backwards a bit and let them come to you, they will clump up nicely. After that just cast your two attack skills when you energy is full and make sure you have enough for when the four required ones are full. The attack skills aren't needed, you kill them quickly if you do nothing other than swing your scythe.

When you are down to two then you no longer need to keep mystic vigor up, the last one you will probably not be able to use attack skills. Prot, mystic regen, and fleeting stability need up 100% of the time.

There are lots and lots of hydras in that area and nothing but them in a large area. It's not that great for golds, but the normal drops add up in a hurry. This is pretty much how I farm everything I do with my 130hp - the only skill that gets swapped out is fleeting stability and some runs require you to suicide from time to time.

If you have a 55 monk or a 55 necro (the necro is faster) just go outside of the Marketplace in Cantha to the Wajjun Bazaar, there are two groups of three jade nights - they are *really* simple to kill in HM and drops lots of gold, purple, and blue armors (runes) - nice easy money. It is *really* boring and *really* repetitive but still averages more than what you are talking about. While the Dervish can do this it is *really* slow, not enough damage against a high armor target.

Thanks that is most helpful and I happen to have a 130 derv setup already so I will try some of that. Thanks for the help

Just remember that we are talking "average", not median. That is, give the area a few hours before you make up your mind.

For example, I time my runs by TV shows since I farm while I watch TV - I usually get a little over two in during a one hour show. During that time I *average* 4-5k per run. Sometimes I get a good run at 15k+ an hour, sometimes 4 or 5k per hour. At some time I may do better and use /age at the end of a run and figure exactly my average, but until them you get what you get

For instance, today I had one of the worst runs since HM was release. I completed it in a little more than a half hour show. I killed 74 freaking hydra's - not one single gold and two whole purples, one from a chest. That was one of the densest maps I have ever seen, upon entering the area I smiled adding up what the loot should average (not so by the end). I also usually go by two, sometimes three chests, this time only one at the very end (actually, in the area of the last three hydra's I killed) - it dropped a purple. I ended up with about 3 plat, though lots of nice exp for my derv looking for the skill hunter title track (I need about 15 more skill points until I no longer care and I switch to most profitable). Just make sure you give an area enough time that you know if it works or not.

Best profit for me is Hard Mode dead sword farming (and that is only merching/trading things, not including sales to players which I am stockpiling). I suicide once per group and replace fleeting stability with Mirage Cloak. Same tactics, however there is a lot of experience goes into when to ignore the melee'rs and go for the healers and how to properly position yourself to scythe the correct amount. My 55 monk is now three missions out so I hope to have a dedicated HM dead sword run farmer.

Once you get good at the hydra's then you should be able to learn the HM dead sword farm or any other place - just make sure you are adaptable and try and understand what is happening, not just follow the cookie cutter build. The hardest part of the dead sword run is getting there. The freaking Sand Elementals hit for 450 damage per hit and worm sprint doesn't break aggro as quick in HM, it can be hard to get by them in even worm form.

I would also add that if you really want to farm gold, pick your places and kit out a few classes. A 130hp dervish or a 55 necro is a great start - they are cheap and effective. Work towards a 55 monk also, once you have all three of them there is pretty much no farming area that can not be tackled. Not only does it allow you to maximize profits due to flexibility, but it also alleviates boredom of doing the same thing over and over.

um,..about the drops in HM. For me at least, the drop seem to be totally random. I used 55 monk to farm in different areas of Elona, sometime I would get a lot of gold stuff drops (3-4 in a row), other time only white drops, then purples & tomes etc, sometime only a handful of junk.

I normally spent about 30-60 mins farming, not everyday and depend if I have any other things to do. I've never got a green drop from normal play, had to farm for that. Like the above posted said, switch to different area, don't farm the same area over and over, seeing that "no anti farming code in HM" is a bit of a misleading. Also farming in the same area lots of time can be mind numbing.

Thanks again for all the help...
I went farming slash objective achievement tonight and I'd say it went well. I got 3 gold drops and a green, My First Green , Hooray!! I can finally say I got one. I made about 8 or 9k in a couple of hours, I'd like to say 2 1/2 hours sounds right, selling mostly junk. Also that green helped out cause I was focusing on getting equipment for my rit tonight so I farmed what I needed and the green happened to be a max rit weap for the exact build i made for her.

I also am using the ID kit on everything and it has incresed the value of junk tremendously. some of the junk items were worth more than the special items i picked up.

For my dervish I am quite good with her and she is my favorite character. which is kind of funny cause I tend to like support characters or in the action kind of roles. I also mod my builds almost everytime I go out inorder to combat the local inhabitants in the area I farm.

I only farmed Nightfall tonight with exception of the naphui quarter mission in factions with my rit, which actually turned out to be quite profitable... I think I made 2 or 3k just in that mission and it took me 20 mins to complete with henchies.

That's actually funny... I watch TV while I play mos tof the time as well
thanks again all the input you guys have been giving me has been very helpful thanks again