Solo vs Team farm (loot scaling)

spandexninja

Academy Page

Join Date: Sep 2010

So I stopped playing GW before they added loot scaling where solo farming got many more ectos than any team farmer could get. Now with loot scaling, is it still worth it to solo farm?

Would a solo farmer in Underworld still get way more ectos/hour than a person farming with a team, or is the difference much smaller now?

Demon of FIRE

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Jun 2011

Kent, England

Finding It Really Easy [FIRE]

R/

I would say most people still solo farm things like Vaettirs, Raptors and the UW. I know I do anyway

Venganza

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Feb 2011

Fire

Solo UW I get 8 or so ectos clearing plains only (15 was my best + a sapphire)

You are always going to get decent drops solo

FoxBat

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Apr 2006

Amazon Basin [AB]

Mo/Me

Loot scaling doesn't apply to rare materials, such as ectos. In other words, ecto drops work exactly the same as release. The full list of exempted items is here: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Loot_scaling

spandexninja

Academy Page

Join Date: Sep 2010

Quote:
Originally Posted by FoxBat View Post
Loot scaling doesn't apply to rare materials, such as ectos. In other words, ecto drops work exactly the same as release. The full list of exempted items is here: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Loot_scaling ok thanks for the clarification

Fay Vert

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Apr 2006

R/

Also consider that the "official" loot scaling entry is wrong, it doesn't work by scaling to party size, it scales the the speed you kill things. If you farm by killing things one at a time you will get a drop off of pretty much everything just as before. Kill everything in one go and you will get very little, except the things that are excempt from the effect.

The other thing to consider is that anti-farming code similar to the old days, after about 54-6 runs your drops will get poorer in quality.

However, farming ecto solo is unaffected.

Spiritz

Forge Runner

Join Date: Apr 2007

DMFC

I think Fay means 5-6 runs not 54-6.
The killing scale is true even tho anets never explained it - raptors/snowmen/vaetires are gd examples - if we take vaetires and say an e/me who kills 24 mob at once and the top 36 at once they may get in total say 8 drops , if the e/me was using a single kill process (and that takes time itself ) they could get 3x the amount of drops.
Best ppl to ask are those who do snowmen and vaetires - we dont use heros nor need leechers.
Another gray area is leechers but thats best left for its own thread , another supposed theory is to wait a min or 2 when u enter a zone before killing and another is to die a few times to get better drops.
The only 100% certain thing we do know is most of the time your loot is down to LUCK !!

Fay Vert

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Apr 2006

R/

Yes 5-6

The wait 1-2 mins is a good tip as you start a zone with full rate of kill effect on. You will never get anything if you kill things immediately after zoning in.

peter81

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Sep 2007

HHG

W/N

Yeah - fast killing is painful
I do SoO runs with 7hero - when i did it with my own slow builds - i had no place in my inventory for all items that dropped. Now im doing it with 5 SoJ builds and i get only 15-20 items from whole run.
And no golds at all

Kraviec

Academy Page

Join Date: Mar 2008

Blood Templars Order

Me/

There was a theory like a year ago that it doesn't matter how fast nor how many people are in the party, but the summary drops depend solely on the instance entry time. Has anyone proven it wrong yet?

gw_poster

gw_poster

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Jan 2007

so cal

R/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kraviec View Post
There was a theory like a year ago that it doesn't matter how fast nor how many people are in the party, but the summary drops depend solely on the instance entry time. Has anyone proven it wrong yet? couple of interesting threads to ponder - not sure how much has been proven, but as I recall Skinny Corpse's discovery was pretty amazing at the time

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/d...tml?t=10225077 -- Skinny's

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/d...=skinny+corpse - a "synthesis" (relying heavily on Skinny's thread)

A Simple Farmer

A Simple Farmer

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Oct 2007

ECTOS

E/

Occasionally I drop by the farming thread to see if the game has changed enough to play again. This thread did catch my eye.

Thought I'd offer some clarification.
Basically if you kill one at a time you'll get more junk, good for mats and such.
If you kill all at once, you'll get all the golds and rares event items as wiki states. (this is what skinny's thread proves)
It's almost impossible to sync runs as skinny did you'll need two comps on a LAN.

@OP
I'm not sure what's worth a lot in the economy ATM I assume that ectos are still worth a bit, and that's all you'd want from the runs. Essentially you'll be sharing the ectos when group farming and keeping them all to yourself when soloing. So basically you want to ask which is faster. Is a two man farm 2x faster? Of course to complicate things, larger groups might handle more foes, which of course have different drop rates.

Pardon the math but you could do something like this...

Basically take the number of foes you kill times the drop rate which should give you the aprox number of ecto you'll get in a run.
take that number then divide by the number of people in your party (heros incl).
Divide that number by the total time per run.

Now do the same calculations for the full party.

Personally I'd just solo.


ASF
----------------------------------------------------------
No I'm not back so don't PM me :-)

tkwondave

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Jun 2011

how does it work if i throw in 7 heroes? does the same amount of ecto drop when they are in range as if i'd solo? i guess not, otherwise anybody would go into uw with a full hero party.