Raptor Farming: Leechers?

In Rata Sum, I'm seeing a lot of people ask for leechers to join them on raptor farming. When I asked them why, they claimed that it got them better gold drops and the leeches got Asuran points in return.

Now, I think they're talking out of the wrong end of their bodies, but I'm also curious. Is there any truth to this at all?

Depending upon arrangements.

Due to Loot scaling, it's hardy a loss in the proportion of drops, while it benefits the group by increasing the total drop numbers. Perhaps the deal is that the leecher gives up the drops and only gets faction?

I think you best bet would be to join a group or two as a leecher and see.

No there is no truth to it. Infact they lose gold as it is shared between the whole party whether or not they are out of range. When party members are blacked out IE out of range the drops are the same as if you enter the instance solo.

It IS true.

I have run a lot of Raptorfarming with my E/Me and the loot IS increasing with full party. The group stays up at the shrine and get Asura rep points, but no xp or loot due to the distance from the kill.

I have tried going solo as well, but there is a huge difference in the droprate.
Better to take on leechers that can suck up som Asura reps as I get their loot.

So yes, it DOES work!

Well if you are the one killing things and they are off the radar then I fully agree with the statement above. I have also found that if I run missions solo I get way more drops then if I was to kill the same baddies in an explorable area.

Furthermore, my findings are that the "collectable item" that the baddies drop that I am seeking to stockpile are dropped more often in missons that in explorable areas.

Funny thing is, hero+hench do the same thing as people, but don't take time to find. Might be plenty of people looking to leech, but it takes time to add them all. Then you have to make sure they know what they need to do, or they come running into the cave with you. Hero+hench affect loot scaling the same way real people do, and they obey their flags, join when asked, and don't complain about your build.

Never tried it myself, so I don't know if it works. However, I wouldn't expect it to be any different. People claim it is, who do the farm though, so I either think they lie, or are correct.

or dumb enough to think their limited personal experience can tell them anything conclusive about how a full out-of-range party affects drop rates.

I really don't know if it works with the raptors or not but I do know that in pre-searing if I go north of the wall alone a little more than half the charrs drop something but if I have my 2nd account with me and leave him by the gate then I get nearly 100% drops.

The idea is supposed to be the same, that drops are triggered for a full party but are not assigned to the people who are off the radar.

However, it has been pretty convincingly shown that killing things very rapidly also limits drops and since you are killing 30+ in less than a minute I would strongly doubt there is much difference with a full party vs solo. (and in my experience there is not enough of a difference to notice) And even if it does, most of the difference would be in the amount of white and blue junk that I don't usually bother to pick up anyway (I want points or holiday items, neither of which is affected by loot scaling, and stopping to merch every 5 runs is a real pain).

However, giving free points is a nice thing to do and killing raptors all alone can get boring so its sometimes nice to have some conversation going on.

Have a look at farming section on this forum. Many people found a lot of valuable rules behind loot scaling etc on the basis of several repetitive tries on raptor farm and not only there. You can find there quite excessive studies made with some basic statistical knowledge and logical thinking put into practice. I would not discredit their effort since their observations match the facts perfectly. Actually have you ever heard the term statistics?

Because its nice,and the chat keeps you awake,oh and the fact that its almost double the cash..that kinda helps too.

I personally don't take leechers. They slow me down. In the time it takes to get a small group of them, a runner could have done 4 runs.

Personally I think the time/cash balance and/or sacrifice is worth it.
My current record is 4 golds in one run with no leechers. Not bad in my opinion. I rarely see anyone get more than that. And I've been a leecher before on other characters.

What if you take heroes and hench and flag them at the shrine??

Here is the thing...

If u go out ALONE, mobs will only drop 1/8 of the total loot.
If u go out with ONE party member, mobs will drop 2/8 of the total loot...

Same goes for gold COINS...

So if a party of 8 goes out, mobs will drop FULL 8/8 loot for the whole party.

If the farmer get out of radar range of his little buddies, 8/8 loot will drop at his feet IF his little buddies are HUMAN players.

If his little buddies are HEROES, the hero part of the loot will be magically transported into the pockets of forementioned little heroes...

So taking a party of 8 HUMAN players increase the LOOT, the GOLD COINS and the chance of UNIDENTIFIED GOLD ITEMS...

Everyone up to speed???

It is GOOD tp play with 8/8 HUUUUMANS

It is BAD to play with HEEEROES
It is BAD to play ALOOOOONE...

So MagmaRed, can u hear me on the back row in the classroom? U need to put on ur finest suite and go out and find REAL players to farm with... As they get Asura rep pts, the will not only thank you, the will be happy Who knows, if ur lucky, one of them just MIGHT be a REAL girl

listen, i'm not saying you're not right, but until you can give a source other than your own experience you shouldn't claim a theory is fact. there have been multiple threads that discuss loot scaling and the effects of a full party vs. solo farming and the only conclusive thing that can be gained from them is no one knows for sure. the same thing holds true in relation to a mainly AI party and a full human one.

Do you have any reliable source or solid empirical evidence backing these assertions? If the heroes are out of compass range (just like the human players typically are for this raptor farm) why would the loot be "transported" into their [non-existing] pockets instead of also "dropping at the feet" of the farmer? Doesn't make much sense really.

Perhaps what you are trying to say is that the loot scaling is not based on the party size, but based on the number of human players in the party. This would make more sense IMO.. But at this point I am not convinced that somebody really tested -- in a statistically significant manner -- that taking human leechers instead of H/H really makes a difference in the amount of [ scalable ] loot getting assigned to the farmer..

It is so wrong, it's funny.

But I'm pretty sure this post is a joke, so theres not point trying to correct it.

wow so many different opinions. guess imma just have to findout for maself :/

Well leech farming isn't for drops, in terms of gold, its mostly for speed. Since farmers don't want to travel back if they can just get someone to port back to Rata Sum it saves them time and time is money.

Resigning is pretty fast too :P. If you want to make sure that you're close to the entrance, zone out, back in, resign, and gogo.

Ok, you claim to know all of these facts through observation but it is just that, observation. Until you compile a large amount of statistics there is going to be doubt. Since when have greyed out heroes magically stolen loot? I honestly do not think leechers have any effect on drops(other than thieving coins), but again, that is just my opinion.


Making all these conclusions is just like the whole lockpick retention rate dilemna going on a few months ago. I could retain 20 lockpicks in a row with a 40% retention rate, but that doesnt mean my percentage is wrong because this is a fairly small sampling. The same goes for drop rate based on party size - you may observe that while in an eight man team you got double the regular drops than usual and jump to the conclusion that more people out of range=more drops.

If you can prove this with a large, detailed study maybe you can validate your points but otherwise all of your statements are merely assumptions.

Walk out the gate into Riven Earth. Walk back in to Rata Sum. Walk back out again. Now when you /resign, you end up right next to the gate to Riven Earth. I do that when I raptor farm.

Going by r4nd0m's posts and the way he talks, I think I can safely say that I'll wait for solid evidence before I start to consider taking leechers. As someone else said, by the time it takes to form them and explain the process to them, I can get a good 3 or 4 runs done.

At first, I thought that H/Hing the farm wouldn't work when I was reading through the post, but then I remembered some of my past farming experiences which I think should contribute.

In Sorrow's Furnace with my ritualist, I would use H/H (Hero/Henchmen) to clear all but the bosses and then flag them out of range (while I, too, ran out as to be away from angry boss) and then when grayed, I would run back, summon spirit army, etc. etc. and killed the boss. The drop was usually their green, but not always... However, they always did drop SOMETHING. My friend showed me this farm and I have done it periodically and it always works out the same way. Therefore, I believe that H/H farming would work just the same, however using real people may be more beneficial to all rather than just the farmer... for faction and whatnot.

I was interested in this, as I have always farmed alone, with my E/Me so I joined some HM farmers to see if they were getting more/better drops than myself.

I always went with E/X so that I could get a fairer comparison.

All examples were with full team of 7 leechers in HM
First farmer -
Run 1: ran to raptors, aggrod mobs, - died, foes killed - 0 drops:none
Run 2: ran to raptors, aggrod mobs, aggrod broodmother - died, foes killed 14 - drops - one white item
Decided it was time to find a better farmer!

Second Farmer:
Run 1: Ran to raptors, aggrod mobs, aggrod broodmother - and killed her! foes killed 31 - drops: couple of whites and bone
Run 2: As run 1
Run 3: Ran to raptos, aggrod mobs, got boxed in, killed raptors to free self, aggrod broodmother - died, foes killed 16 drops: saurian bone, brown dye.

After each run, some leechers would always leave, so time was then wasted collecting more.

Time taken: about 25 mins for 5 runs.

Conclusion - drops were no better in full party, and time between runs far to long compared to just going solo.

I spent alot of time leeching and soloing during the EOTN weekend. I saw nothing that convinced me either way. Soloing I got 4 golds on one run and leeching i saw one white collected. Is there a way we can post the answer to ANET or is this some big secret? What i have noticed is that since that weekend i have got what seems to be less bones...but even that could be random.

Ok, now this is purely *purely* based on my observations.... no facts, no hard evidence, nothing like that. Just have a read and see if you can match it up to your own experiences on the matter.

First thing to think about - and I know it seems somewhat off-topic, but run with me on this one - is HFFF. HFFF works because not everything spawns in a zone at the same time - you have to get close enough to 'trigger' the spawn, and Heroes don't count for that trigger, so they get a free ride. Spawn range - again, purely from observation, no way to truly test this - is a little more than radar range.

What I've found from H&H leeching the Snowman's Lair is that the first couple of mobs don't drop noticeably more loot with the H&H present but greyed-out than they do when I go there solo.... *but* later mobs drop considerably more loot (like the mobs by the second Beacon of Droknar). Why should this be? Here, then, is my theory...

When something spawns, it's loot drop (if any) is pre-assigned to a party member in radar range of the spawn-triggering character (depending on the loot-scaling party size vs max party size ratio thingy). Of course, if you're not in drop-range when the mob dies, you won't get the loot even if it was pre-assigned to you. So to get more drops with a leech-team, not only must they be greyed out when the kill takes place but they must also have been out of spawn range when the mob initially spawned. Again, I only have my own observations to support that, so it's not like I'm saying it's 100% true or anything. This isn't fact, this is supposition and should be treated as such.

So how does this relate to Raptor farming and leeching there? Well, when your horde of leechers come into Riven Earth they all seem to run straight to the shrine to the south. I'm pretty sure that, even though party members at the Shrine may appear greyed-out to someone in the Raptor cave, they've triggered the spawn of the Raptor nestlings and therefore triggered the loot-assignment. Of course, since they *are* greyed-out when the killing takes place, they won't actually get the drops - nevertheless, they've still prevented the 'active' player from acquiring more drops than they usually would have done.

Well, there you go - again, I'll say it's just speculation based on what I've seen. I'm not a prolific farmer and I've only ever used the permasin to farm, so my observations are inherently limited. Still, food for thought, maybe...

http://guildwarsguru.com/forum/showt...php?t=10225077

Take what you will from that thread as well.

The results of a solo raptor cave clear (all nestings and the broodmother) can net as low as about 300g worth of white drops and gold; or on the flipside give you multiple gold items (weapons and scrolls) and/or lockpicks and/or dyes (including whites and blacks).

Given such a large scope of variation you can't say whether or not having leachers present would be more profitable. Given that the solo farmer doesn't have to worry about anyone but themselves, I'd say solo works out the better, if only for the time lost in forming leacher parties which could be better spent splatting dinos

I have to agree with r4ndom in the sense that the loot and chance of gold drops is alot higher with a party of 8 even when the runner is alone in the area, and through my personal observation of leeching (100's of groups over last few months) the gold drops increase rapidly with party size and the loot is all given to the runner since everyone else is out of range.
This can't be a coincidence i believe that what r4ndom is saying has some basis, obviously his stats are another thing but the overall point behind it further backs what ive seen.

I don’t know if I believe in the leeching so...
R4nd0m said this:
If u go out ALONE, mobs will only drop 1/8 of the total loot.
If u go out with ONE party member, mobs will drop 2/8 of the total loot...

That I allrdy know and I agee.
So..
If I go farm I get 1/8 drops. That’s why some of the creeps I slay don’t give me a drop right?
Let’s say that an 8/8 party are going pve(Not farming just slaying mobs). The drop rate is 8/8 now.
That means that all creeps killed by the party will drop an item. Am I right? (I don’t know if that has chanced but if it has not..)

...Here comes my question:
If u go farming with an 8/8 party where 7 of them are leechers shouldn’t the farmer get an item for each creep he kills?
(Sry for bad English, and if u don’t understand what I want to know )

seeing as the leechers are nowhere near the battle all drops are given to the farmer, but in my opinion, the drops are not better/more frequent...

Wouldn't it be fastest just to hit "M" and click on Rata Sum?

you'd have to run all the way to the gate again after everytime, map travel spawns you in one of a couple random selected places in town.
Walk back into the portal to Rata Sum once and you'll spawn at the gate every time you /resign.

hope I made sense lol...

The Bard is correct about the zoning/resign. As long as you enter an area, then go back to town, then re enter your area, in almost all locations you will from then on after resigning show up at the doorway so all you need to do is hit X to turnaround and run directly out a short distance. Lutgardis is a notable exception to this rule

The best explanation I ever heard for a farmer taking leechers was "hey, I don't really know if it increases the drops. But there's a chance that it does. And people talking while waiting for me to kill raptors is more entertaining than silent henchmen."

I've leeched points a few times, and from what I could tell the drops didn't seem much better than when I would go out to farm solo. But as noted, the runs vary widely, so it's very difficult to tell without a whole lot of data gathering.

If this actually did work, I would suspect that ANET would silently nerf its effect into oblivion. I had tested it several times with a couple pcs at the house and saw no real growth in my drops over extended run amts, in the end, it is very difficult to determine the actual increase/decrease because of the varying nature of each run.

I think YOU're talking out of the wrong end. :P
It works, despite what the disbelievers say...of course this is all based on conjecture ANET hasn't confirmed anything really as far as I know.

If it works SOMETIMES then its probably just a particularly good run.
If it work always then thats fair enough. But I personally cannot see the servers as distinguishing between HH and Players... they assign the drops to a party number, and if it that player is henchmen it doesnt drop.

My personal opinion is that if it works, heroes would work just as well.

So no conclusions drawn from this thread?!

Heres a proposal ,if people can record there total drops for 20 runs and post here noting whether its with leechers or without we can compare the lists and try to draw a conclusion.

Yes it will vary a lot but I want to see not just what the total worth of the runs are but also the amount and the types of drops.

My runs were done in HM all the cave with boss 34 kills(according to the hm icon). Give or take. Only count full runs. doesnt include the outside raptors being pulled in as well.

Aim: to compare raptor farming with leecher and without and to compare the total drop list.

1st session : 20 runs Solo : no leechers : HM : 34 kills each run Sliver armor and degen build.

Gold items dropped 15, Gold coins 618g, sin tomes 3, Elite sin tome=1 , Purples 6, blues 10, whites 33, bones 39, gold scroll 1, dyes: 2 silver 2 white 1 red 1 orange 1 blue 1 brown 1yellow 1orange. 1 blue scroll, 3 green claws

Best one run of the lot. #5 : 5 golds, 1 tome, 1 purple, 2 blue 2 whites and one dino bone

pls post your 20 runs total list and lets have a look see....seeing that the halloween event is on there's sure to be a lot of farming going on..

This is a 2nd go of 20 runs done 2 days later with the halloween event on.

2nd session : 20 runs Solo : no leechers : HM : 34 kills each run Sliver armor and degen build.

Drops: Gold items 14, whites 39, blues 12, purples 4, bones 39, sin tome 2 : dyes red yellow blue brown. gold scrolls 2 blue scrolls 3 ,gold coinage 1233g.

trick or treat bags 78. Side note (lowest 0 highest 10) in a run. averaging about 4 a run.

Best one off run : 10 Tot bags, one gold item, 3 white item, one purple and 104gold coins.