Low Level Farming

Ok, we all see these threads and say to ourselves, "Dear God! Another N00b wants to know how to farm!" Well, I hate to disappoint, but this isn't one of those threads. This thread is me offering my own personal methods to low level(and even high level) players. What to farm, where to farm, how to farm, and my own personal salt(because I can ^^ ).

All this is mostly low level areas, easy to do at the start, but doesn't really become high profit bearing until higher levels. The reason for that is the amount of work you can do. What may take a lvl 7 player an hour to accomplish, I can do at lvl 20 in five minutes. But they receive XP, where as, I don't.

Also, I'd like to point out before this becomes a flame thread, there is one semi-barrel run. I'll get to it when I get to it. But as for farming in general, its gonna happen, it has to happen, and don't go into the "it's gonna get nerfed' speech. If they didn't want us to farm, they wouldn't have 15k/pc sets or sets that require insane amounts of drops found in only two areas. They WANT us to farm. It's just supposed to be long and boring.

On that note, turn off the TV, put on your headphones, crank up the Ramstein, and get to farming!

Here is how it starts. You're fresh outta green leafy Ascalon and your ready to make a buck. Grab yourself TWO Ident Kits, FIVE Regular Salvage Kits, and ONE Expert Salvage Kit.



"What are we doing here?!" Easy. Charr Hides...Charr Hides...Charr Hides...and...you guessed it! Wood. (hee-hee) Making this run solo should net you almost 10 Charr hides on a bad day. Buddying up knocks it down, but it can be profitable if you do it enough times. Save the Charr Figurines, we'll be needing those. Anything else you come across, Ident and regular salvage. If you come across a high salvage item, use the expert kit on it, same goes for purple or gold items. I'm yet to get any gold items on this run and all purple have been runes. Either way, it's still good trade in money at low levels.

Ok, now that you've made the run, don't go home just yet. See the zone portal on the west end. Take it. Turn around, and come back. The end of the run features two good groups of Charr. You should have had to fight through them to get here. If you didn't, that's a new one. ^^ So, we have a bunch of kits and empty space. Just kill, collect, salvage, zone, and repeat. This is the heart of farming. "Rinse and repeat." After about an hour the drops should start to suck, but you should have a decent amout of Charr Hides and a crap load of those Char Figurines.

Take those figurines and head over to the Sanitarium. Sell any high profit stuff you may have decided to save or whatever and grab you enough salvage kits to salvage the Charr Figurines. Doing so should give you a good number of wood. "So what's the wood for?" Easy. Take the wood and any money you may have collected and exit the Sanitarium. Head straight out and there's a Material Crafter. 5 Wood + 20 gold = 1 Parchment. So 50 wood + 200 gold = 10 Parchment. Ascalon + Material Trader + 10 Parchment = Approx 700 gold on a bad day. If you get a good day, it can add up to about 1.1 plat. Eiother way, its good money. You may have also gotten some Tanned Leather Squares, save those, we'll need those next.



Ok, the Ft. Ranik area. This one is pretty straight forward. Same thing, Ident and Salvage Kits for everybody. Follow this path to the end. You'll come across a few Charr and a bunch of the Renegades. There are two things you are looking for here. First, you want the belt puch thingies the renegades drop. Number two, ever so often, a renegade will drop you some black dye. Now the black dye is really rare, but I've stillf ound more black dye here than I have anywhere else. Don't hold your breath, but it oculd happen.

After reaching the end, Map back to Ft. Ranik and do this all over again. After about an hour you should be getting tired of your CD(if you haven't already) and it's time for a break. You should have a large stack of Belt Pouches off the Renegades by now. So head back to the Fort and start salvageing those. Each one gives you the Tanned Leather Squares.

Take those Squares and head back over to the Sanitarium. Go outside and see our Material Crafter friend. Turn those Squares into the better versions of themselves, return to Ascalon and sell for profit. I stick to selling to the vendors...it's easier and I really don't like people tryign to rip me off. So I sell to the computer which pisses all those people off that try and rip rookies off. (hee-hee)

Always be sure to do the math before selling to the computer. Those prices jump up and down. Always try and make the best profit for your time. If you aren't sure or know you've seen higher prices, hold onto your stuff and move on to the next farmign area. Patience is the key to farming. So switch CD's and let's look at the next spot.



This one is easy, if not rewarding for it's implicity. Nothign real fancy here. Just take a couple salvage kits and an Ident kit. This run is so short, you're gonna laugh. All you do, head out the temple and kill the three big Stone Elemental mobs. Loot and repeat.

Salvage only actual items. Always be on the look-out for wood and leather squares. Those are your money makers. EVERYBODY needs 'em. Another nice thing to look out for are the lumps of charcoal. It's a rare drop otu here, but I've collected a few stacks from this region. A stack of those can net you almso 4 plat if you can wait it out.

What you are farmign here are the Collectors Stones that the Elementals drop. "Why do I want those?" you ask. Easy. Each one is worth 5 gold. At this point in the game, it's good money for not much work. never underestimate the selling power of the collectors items. Or the salvage potential either. 250 stones X 5 gold/each = 1250 gold. Each run has approx 15 elementals usualy dropping 10 stones per run, sometimes even more. It may take you about an hour at low levels to amass that much, but for now, it's good money. And when you can come back and tankt hem all at once. One run lasts about 2 minutes...maybe.

Rinse Repeat. Same thing, about an hour of farming, then move on. Don't want to draw the wrath of the farming Gods(they're very fickle you know).



Yeah yeah, I skipped Shiverpeaks North. I hate the snow. Now this is our only semi-barrel run. And the reaosn I say "semi-" is because I elarned this run from the barrel at the end, but found killing everything along the way actualy can get me a lot of wood. not to mention the Barrel has some good drops at the end most of the time.

Killing all the big tree thingies along the way will get you some "okay" cash and somed rops, but you mostly wanna keep your eye open for the wood. Staffs, axes, and seeds. The seeds give you plant fiber, but that's another crafting material, I'll get ot that later.

So make the run, kill some stuff and repeat. There are two way to get there. I found that the one I have posted is easier. But you CAN get there from Beetletun, just without as many trees-like enemies. So elss wood there. After an hour, take your stuff and run. Head back tot he sanitarium, trade in your wood and leather for their counterparts and move on.

*I can't make anymore tags for images, which is cool, I understand. Just imagine a big red dot outside of Bergen Hotsprings. Seriously, its right outside. But if you need a visual, here's the link anyway.*

http://www.geocities.com/ikari689/hotspring.JPG

Ok kiddies, this is the last one Uncle Elric is giving up. Not 'cause I'm stingy...mostly 'cause I'm tired of typing. Unless you can tank really well, you're gonna need some help with this until higher levels. Killing ALL the undead along this little patch will net you some good items and a bunch of runes. This is one of my favorite spots to just come and kill.

Seriously, I've come back from trips with a few gold items, a dozen purple items, and more than a handful of runes for about 15 minutes worth of solo-work. As a team, it won't be as much, but you'll live longer and still walk away with a lion's share. Do this for an hour, then start over, go do something else, or for the love of God get some sun!(just kidding, sun is bad, go play some more ^^ )

~~~~~
Ok, a couple more things to know when it comes to farming aside from when, where, why, and how long. If you can afford it, take yourself some extra Expert Salvage Kits. The reason is Wands, Shields, and Axes(yes Swords too, but I rarely get anything good from them). These items and an Expert Salvage Kit, even if they are unmodified items, can yield you Steel Ingots. And as we all should know by now, can get you a nice chunk of change. Even if spending 500 gold for 25 charges nets you 13 Steel Ingots, that's 1.3 plat, double what you spent on the Salvage Kit. Plus whatever else you got from the last 12 Salvages. If you can afford it, it's worth the investment.

Last, but not least. IMHO, farming is a part of any game like this. It will never be destroyed. It's just SUPPOSED to be long, tedious, and boring. So as far as I'm concerned, if these runs are nerfed, we're all doomed.

But anyway, try these out. See how they work for you. War's will have the easiest time, monk should too. Especialy against the undead. Ele's, go for PBAOE and Necro's stay away from the Hotsprings run. There's no way for you to raise enough minions down there. If this works for you, feel free to share these strategies with your friends and guildmates, I won't mind. Good luck, and good hunting! ^^

Dude, that's a long post.

And farming is a long process. It's only fitting its explination should also be long. ^^

1) dang that was one long post - (waiting to see if the forums go quiet for the next 15 minutes while people read)
2)thanks - there was nothing I didnt really know already, but it is great to see someone else that doesnt believe simply mentioning a farming spot will get it nerfed within an hour
3)waits for those that believe these spots will get nerfed immediatly to start the flames

ur pictures didnt work. or not on my comp. ill get on my newer comp and see if they work. but nice and appreciated

Last night the trader was offering 300g for 10 Parchment... I checked several times throughout the evening, no change. Guess that must have been a really bad day...

Edit: Pictures are visible now. And thank you.

I've never farmed for materials. I find that just conserving my drops along the way has netted me a lot of good stuff (750 iron ingots, 1000 wood planks, 500 bones, 250 of about 6 other items).

But this is a great post, it was fun to read and quite informative for farming in general, not just the areas you mentioned.

oohh previous post was because I'm dumb.. I didn't read your posts correctly.

Yeah, last night hit really low for some reason, I saw that. not sure what happened there. But then again, last night the dye was selling for only one gold too. so i guess the economic structure of the game went through a self-correction or something.

I know it's long, and I'm sorry. Just how it goes. Farming takes time. none the less, I'm glad some people found it informative. And not just for these areas, but farming in general. i'll try to keep things up to date in regards to areas and the like to help the community. But yeah, some days are really bad for farming and some days aren't. i haven't been able to correlate anything for those times but if i come across anything to shed some light on that i'll be sure to share it.

Again, hope it all helps, sorry for the long read, and good hunting eveyrone. ^^

Not so long if you take it like a guide, faq or especialized walkthrough.

Thanks for the info, didn't farmed for materials ever, now I'll try some of those!

Is salvaging for materials really that profitable, because at some moment i simply stopped doing it since it was costing me a piece of my profit on some runs.
say for instance that you get like 6 gold for a sword or something.
And by salvaging you get 1 iron ingot which is worth 5 or something.
net loss (100/25) + 1

although i don't know how this relates to expert salvaging

Thats quite a usefull piece of work Elric, i think im gunna try some of that stuff myself.

Thanks for the info. I already knew most of it but this could be very informative to new players describing the basic mechanics of farming. Good Job.

Okay, the math is a little different. At lower level areas this is what I figure. Maybe this can flesh it out a little more Stratos. ^^ (no, I'm not targeting you or anything, just explaining my logic to clear it up a little more, thx for bringing it up)

Say you have 50 items worth 6 gold each. Selling that yields you 300 gold, straight profit. Salvaging(200 gold for two salvage kits) for this example will yield you say 50 pieces of wood. That wood for 200 gold is converted into Parchment. So the running total is 400 gold for the kits and the material conversion. Now, at that price you have 10 Parchment. That Parchment can be sold for almost 1000 gold if you wait out the market.

Now, let's take the lowest I personaly sell at, 800 gold. Minus the 400 for production cost, I made 400 gold as opposed to the straight 300 for selling the items individualy. Not much of a difference right? But here's the kicker. How many trips would you have had to make back to town then back to your farming location to do that? A lot more than i do as a Salvage Farmer.

See, farming isn't as much about big profit as most people want it to be. A lot of people i see on the boards want the big and fast scores. Real farming is rarely like that. It's possible, but the time and effort devoted to finding those locations is too much for me IMHO.

It may take you 30 minutes to collect those 50 items. That's time spent getting to the farming location, Map'ing to town, running back, getting more items, and repeating the process. So in one hour you make 600 gold. Where as by Salvaging on the spot, i can stay there until I run out of kits, thus the need for so many at the start. So in 30 minutes i can Salvage 150 wood, worth 3 stacks of Parchments. Those 3 stacks bring me 1200 gold profit, so in 1 hour I made 2400 gold profit compared to the 600 gold running back and forth. Not to mention it's a lot simpler. I don't know about ya'll, but i get tired of looking at the loading screen. ^^

Of course, there are exceptions. If you get Priceless Items, don't Salvage, sell those. Also, the armor drops can give you more than one of an item, and some regular items will too. Especialy if you use the Expert Salvage Kit. So in all actuality, I may use my Kits 25 time, but I can net a lot more than that in salvaged goods. Higher level items yield higher amounts of salvaged parts. Expecialy High Level and Highly Salvageable Items. i've gotten as many as 17 crafting materials off of One Salvage.

Not to mention, during these runs you pick up runes and items with weapon mods. I've seen Vampiric Bowstrings go for small fortunes. And i've salvaged many of those. Hell, some days i get tired of shouting WTS and just start giving them away. I gave one to a guy the other day just 'cause we both had the same last name. And this was in Fort Ranik. imagine his surprise when I forked over a 1.2 Plat item for free. Same thing goes with runes. I pick up so many and don't feel compelled to start trying to haggle, I give them to Party members(assuming they answer the simple question of "What skills do you use?" Most don't, but that just means i don't give them anything...their loss, but w/e).

At higher levels you get better items, but they too yield more product or can sell for a lot more. It just depends one how much time you are willing to spend. I know starting in Kryta you can salvage multiple bolts of cloth off of the Emblems the Undead drop. So nomatter where you go, it evens itself out. Farming is all about time. You can spend a lot of time hoping for the big score. Or, you can spend a lot of time making the little scores you know will always be there. It's up to you, but i find the latter of the two less stress inducing. ^^

as for the pictures, it's yahoo..what can i say. They have their own limits and what not, not much i can do about it. i'm sorry.

Just joined these forums. I'm fairly new... Just got my first character to level 20 and did ascention missions for the first time.

Really just wanted to thank you Eric for taking the time to make those long and detailed posts. I guess it's my noobness.... but I kept saying to myself...
Geezus... how do these people have so much money and materials???

My level 20 W/R has about 600 gold in his pockets on a good day....
When I see people saying things like WTS bla bla bla 4.5k whisper if interested
I just go.... wow.. I'm doing something wrong.

After reading your posts... now I'm going "Geez how I could I be sooo stupid..." I'm sure my gold cache will increase as soon as I'm off work thanks to you....

I basically do a lot of farming runs as it is... just helping people trying to do the "hey I'm level 4 but want to get to Lions Arch" run.... just never occured to me to actually pick up the drops and salvage em....

Anyways thanks again.... will give me something constructive to do next time I'm helping a noob

Elric, you make a lot of good points. As I play a lot of characters that need cloth for their armor, I do spend a certain amount of time running around whacking stuff for the drops. I get a lot of bows which I usually just sell as is. By salvaging them and selling the wood I can make some money WHILE I'm collecting cloth. Oooo, multitasking hurts my brain!

Hakaido, Auntie I; glad I could help. Trust me, you're bank acounts will be much healthier for it. After a while you end up with a big chunk of change. I already have two pieces of Dragon armor for my farming War/Mo(breastplate and legs) and that's with one night of farming. My Guild only has three members, but i guarentee we're all well off. It's why i farm. so it IS possible to make a lot of money for multiple characters.

Anyway, I think that answers everyone's thoughts for now. Feel free to post or PM me or get a hold of me in game if you have any more questions. When i get off vacation I'll come back and post some more locations and farming strategies. So good luck everyone and good hunting. ^^

Gates of Krayts = Gold/purple(itmes) and Scales Bling !! Bling !!

This is a really good post. I already knew the joys of kill all of the soft squishy things and salavage all of there droppings. but even then it was nice that you took all of the time to let everyone else know about it too.

Do you guys really need the money at a low level? Couldn't you wait a few days or a week to do hill giants and amass 50k a day if you're lucky? I may be wrong, but when I played through my first time, I had the money to afford one set of droknars armor.

50K a day... What the hell are you farming?

Superior Vigor and Absorption runes. Courtesy of Giants, gotta lo- oh SNAP area net's coming with nerfs, everyone RUN.

Right now, this is for farming starting at low levels. Something EVERYONE can do without havign to build a farmer or worry too much about dieing all the time. There are better spots. As pointed out, Hill Giants are a great one. Gates of Kryta, also a good spot, but i really hate doing missions to farm. Cause if you die you're screwed. But you can also farm the White mantle in a later mission if you are willing to do it(War/Mo, that's your best spot aside from Hydras). Can't remember the name right now, like i said, on vacation. anyway, i just wanted to post something everyone can use at any time and not have too much stress or have to consider building a whole new farmer. Those things will come in time. It seems everyone liked what i had to say, so I'll try to keep things up to date and post some more of my strategies and stuff for the community to use. but, again, that'll be in a few days when i get home. Until then, good hunting. ^^

This is an awesome thread, thank you Elric.

I have one question though regarding salvaging... I've been getting confusing results from my salvage kits. It's common wisdom that one should use an Expert Kit on highly salvageable items and for rare or purple ones, and I've even seen some suggest to use them on everything. But at the price difference for an Expert kit, it doesn't seem reasonable to do that in the long run. And here's why I think that...

Often times I'll use my normal salvage kit on Highly Salvageble item and still get +10 items from it. Sometimes I'll use an Expert Kit on one, or on a higher level item, and get only 1 or 2 items. In my experience so far, and I've salvaged a lot of stuff with both kits, there doesn't seem to be any pattern to Expert Kits consistently giving more materials than normal kits do, and sometimes it seems to be the opposite.

Do you use Expert Kits on everything? Have you tried using normal kits on high salvages, not including rare and purple items, and noticed a significant difference between the two?

My concern is whether it's more reasonable to just use a normal kit for all non-rare/purple items, which is what I'd started doing recently, or not. I swear, I've tried using both expert and normal kits on Charr Carvings for example, and never noticed a difference between the two in what I get back, which led me to stop using the expert kits on them.

Kali Ma, my pleasure. As for your question...this is my personal view of it.

Expert salvage kits are mostly for Runes and Weapon mods. However, there are items that you can get using an expert salvage kit that you can't with a normal. For example, you will never get Steel Ingots from wands using a normal Salvage Kit. As for the long term cost/benefit comparison, it depends on how much you are willing to risk or how much you have at your disposal. But most importantly, do you even want to play that part of the market. I don't mind risking some extra money to get a few Steel Ingots. But realisticly, IMHO, it's not a very good idea. Possibly profitable, but a gamble none the less. i've been pretty lucky most of the time, but sometimes i get jack for what i pay out.

As for using the Expert Salvage Kits on Highly Salvageabel Items, the only reason I suggest it is this. If you do manage to Salvage the Rare Crafting Materials from them, you will get a lot of them, not just one or two like you normaly would. to me, risking 1/25 of a 500 gold Kit is worth the possibility of getting back 12 Steel Ingots or 11 Parchments or w/e the rare Salvage may be.

Purple Items are a little different. They may or may not have a weapon mod on them. If selling mods is your cup of tea, then use the Expert kits, if not, a normal one will suffice. Again, it all comes down to how much you want to risk in the process.

As for the collector Items, i don't use the expert kits on them since I am yet to see them yield anything worth the cost of the Expert Kit. Supposedly you can get Lumps of Charcoal from the Fire Imp Hearts you can collect in Kryta, using the Expert Salvage kit. But I have yet to test this theory so I can neither confirm nor deny the correctness of that statement. so try at your own risk.

in general, normal kits are good for anything that doesn't say Highly Salvageable, rune of "whatever," or come with a weapon mod you may want to try and sell. So using normal on everything purple and lower is a pretty safe bet.

I hope this answers your question. if not, feel free to write back or pm me, i'll help as best i can. Good hunting. ^^

scroundels rise is a good farming spot for mergoyle skulls and some more purple gold stuff +dyes hehe on a good day i get 50 bleu items 20 purple and maybe 10 gold im not kidding you only need to have an ele with an AoE spell or and ranger with that ignite arrows skill.

killing mergoyles is easy because they dont use skills hehe


ooh an im gonna try that charr hide farming spot one i need some cash.

that is helpfull and i thank you

Excellent article Elric. I agree farming is part of the game. After all, we play for what we, as individuals, get out of the game. I try and solo most of the time, and have been picking up lots of crafting materials via salvaging. But I must say, I learnt a hell of a lot from your post.

/raises glass

i got a few more tips on the same topic, you can use the same method at the flame temple corridor(where ashes quest is) it is full of charr, and there is a zone in the back so you can come back and do it over, just bring partner or a hench with you so you dont get in trouble for farming.

also the charr hides, alot of people will buy them for 50 gold, which seems like a good price for something so common and only worth 3 gold at shop WRONG! you can trade 4 charr hides for a fur square, fur squares you can sell to the rare material trader for 250-500 gold depending on how many he has at the time, so basically these people buying them for 50 are making gold off of people easily, so keep em and do it yourself, you'll get alot more gold

wow good thread.ive done the beetletun barrel thing and got some golds and alot of purps.never thought of salvaging the non rares.im gona start doing that to earn some $.thx alot

I'm a lvl 14 N/E, Do you think i could make it through your route without getting killed?

Great post!

Your ideas must have really caught on....I tried to take some parchment to the trader....best offer was only 50 gold....


(wonder if Anet watches this board....hmmmm)

got 800 gold from Healy(sp?) in ascalon for parchment

Just went back in and looked...price was down to 20 gold...wonder why?

I tried to do the DC run, but his Map track does not look the same as mine.

Wierd, I only end up at the small vila, where there is a farmer felma?(name)
and a collector.

Question is, am I going the right way?

I just wanted to add my thanks to Elric, I'm not huge on the farming thing. I get bored doing the same thing over and over again so I didn't know the places to go. But after my guild got our guild hall this weekend my fundage was very low and picking up stacks of Charr Hides helped to bring my funds back to about half of where it was. Many thanks for the info!

Maby i'm just lucky, i have sold 40 rolls of parchment, the price has been between 700 & 800 everytime..

Nitradamus - At that level you'll want your Death magic at max pretty much. Necro farming is mostly about minions and death nova. Make a minion, slap death nova on it and let it die. Only problem is, you can't do the Hot Springs Section because of the undead. Can't make more minions out of someone else's minions I guess, lol.

As for the low price of Parchment. I have no clue yet why that happens. Sometimes it comes up at like 20 or 50, sometimes it comes up at 1100. I still have no idea how it happens or why it happens. Either the economy is self-correcting, ANet lowers the prices every once in a while to discourage farming, or everyone and their mother turned Parcments in at that point in time. If that happens, I usualy just hold onto my stacks and wait until Tuesday or Thursday to turn them in. Prices are usualy really good then. At least that's how it is for me. I'll keep trying to figure out what causes these massive drops in price for both materials and dyes, but no guarentees. Just hold onto your stuff until the price goes back up, that's the best I can do for now.

DC Run - Follow the path straight out of DC, after a good jog you'll get to some Tengu on your left and a big hill in front of you. Go over the fill and you'll have a ridge on the other side. There should be about 3 groups of the big trees. There should be one right in front of you if you are still faceing east. You should see another chunk of road either next to or behind this eastern group of Big Killy-Tree-Thingies. To the south of that road is an open field, in that open field is the barrel you are looking for. I don't know where you're ending up Artemis, sorry.

There is some confusion over the price of parchment.

Here's the deal. You can sell it by the singles to the Rare Material Merchant. Or you can sell it in lots of 10 to the Material Merchant. I just found this out.

I've been tracking the Rare Material Merchant prices for the past few days at different times of the day.

Parchment bid prices have ranged between 20 and 75, the average bid price being 58.6 per sheet of parchment. This translates into 586gp for 10 sheets.
The ask prices have ranged between 150 and 175. The bid/ask spread for parchment is always 100gp, except when the merchant hits the artificial ask floor, in which case the ask price stays at 150 while the bid price can drop lower than 50--for example to 20 in one of my samples.

Now for some reason the Material Trader has a higher bid price on parchments. I just checked right now. The rare material merchant was bidding 55gp per sheet (= 550gp for 10 sheets). The Material Merchant was offering 735gp for 10 sheets. That's almost 200gp more per lot of sheets. I don't know why this is, but the answer is clear: check both merchants and sell to the higher one.

As far as the economy in general, I'm still collecting data to try and figure it out.

Black Dye for example. The bid/ask spread is not constant like it appears to be for parchment.
The bid price is always approximately 79% of the ask price. This percentage changes on each sample, but it is always within +/- 1% of 79%. During my sample period, the ask price has ranged between 4,662gp and 6,061gp

Silver Dye ask price has ranged between 566 and 811. It's bid price is always approx. 74% (+/- 1%) of the ask price.

I need to bite the bullet and buy some ectoplasm and obsidian shards so I can monitor their spreads as well.

Wow, thanks for the info Dazzler. Saved me the trouble of sorting it out myself. You're a life-saver. ^^ I'll try and monitor the Obsidian Shards and Ecto-plasms too. Hard to come by as they may be, but that's my next farming project. ^^