[MERGED] Farming with Henchmen

You guys do realize that doing 5, 6, 10 runs has absolute no statistical relevance, right? You're off by at least an order of magnitude in terms of being able to recognize patterns and tendencies in drop characteristics. I would say even 50 runs is way too small a sample. But be that as it may...

Other than the obvious answer of: "its random", our guild has had no real problems with green items dropping, whether in human only, or hench/human parties, as well as in party size (ranging from 4 to 8). The only difference is that the henches will gobble up their proportionate share of the drops.

There's 5 or 6 of us in our guild alone that now have between 25 and 30 different greens, not counting all the doubles we've collectively gotten. I'm sure there are real hardcore types out there who have completed the full set of 72 by now.

There's no great secret, or conspiracy centred around obtaining green items.
Like all farming or collecting, its just a matter of patience and repetition. Thats all.

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i have gotten 3 greens in about 15 runs killing only the boss's in grenths footprint. the times i have gone with real ppl i haven't even killed the first boss in grenths. (because for some reason the nukers that day decided they wanted to act as tanks) so personally i farm with henchies, but this might be so because ihave no guild and all my friends have no lvl 20's...

Ive gotten three green items (staff,shadestone,thorgalls hammer)

Everytime with henchies i got the hammer and shadestone on same day i think i went for a run through to see if they would drop any and they dropped hammer then i went again and got nothing decided to go one more time got shadestone and the next day i went and i got the staff so i almost got 3 in a row

but maybe im just lucking i seem to be lucky with the chests around that area too
and key drops

I dont put it down to luck really, I havent spent anywhere near enough time with the henchies as some of the people who have posted because I realised it was in vain after doing sf and grenth's only twice. In those two times I killed about 10 bosses, not very many but they dropped NOTHING, not a god damn thing, and the drops I had from the other bad guys was worse than awful, i think about 8 or 9 white items and less than 500g in the two runs. Conversely, I have partied with 6 other players and mhenlo and seen almost every boss drop a green. There is definately something preventing drops when there is a lack of real players IMO.

I learnt my lesson quickly and just stick with 5 man groups now where I would expect to see 2-3 green drops for the party and pick up 1k in gold myself each run. An explantaion I would expect would be that if everyone could get normal drops with henchies, what would be the point in teamplay, for which GW was designed

I would expect this situation to stay like this really, if you want some decent drops better get a good group together and hope no-one quits

16 greens in about 30 trips so far, although many are doubles. Wish the damn things would stack.

I know it's been said here many many times, but I feel I must reiterate...

Henchies in no way affect the green drop rate, period.

People are just quick to assume that because the greens that drop for the henchies are invisible. Think about it, if you go out in a party of 6 humans and run SF with no quest, killing 12 bosses or so, how many actual greens will drop for you in that run? Not for the whole team, just you. I would say that the normal rate for any single person would be 1 green per 2 runs. That has been my experience and I've been in SF too many times to count.

That said, try the exact same thing with a henchy group. I guarantee that there is no difference in drop rate, or better, there has been no difference for me. I've been making runs into SF with humans and henchies since the update that introduced SF so I have lots of empirical data to base my conclusions on. Admittedly some players seem to get more drops than others in any particular run, as I've seen players get 2-3 greens in a full run while I got nothing, or vice versa. Maybe in the runs that people complain about, Lina and Devona got all the drops and we'll never know

Anyway, I've rambled on enough it seems. Bottom line: Take humans or henchies, your green drops will be exactly the same, period.

Yesterday I went to Sorrow's from War Camp. Me, 2 guildmates, 5 henchmen. I got a green drop out of 3 bosses killed, no other green drops. (2 of us had to go.)

Later last night I went through Grenth's Footprint with me and only 5 henchmen (Lina, Mhenlo, Cynn, Devona, Eve.) 6 bosses killed, 0 green drops.

I don't care enough to figure what % or crap that all is, but I've done some GF/SF exploration with only henchies about 20+ times. No green drops. Ever. I do a little bit and only 3 bosses killed, full party including 5 henchmen, and I get a green.

I don't think that's exactly the same. (I'm not arguing it, but it really doesn't seem like henchies give you the same chance of a drop as humans do.)

I didn't believe it either, but you can get green drops with a henchie group:

http://pages.cthome.net/billj/images...wars/gw100.JPG

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I got the Fleshcleaver while I was with Henchies just the other day.
It was totally unexpected after reading this thread.

I have farmed many times with people in small groups and only sometimes get green. Usually there is someone who does’nt follow instructions, leaves or is rude. Some do not attack called targets etc even when you ask them to and so on.

I have found on most occasions that farming with hench more reliable as they attack same target, never leave and if you use them right can be better than some players (of course not all that would be stupid to say that) and of course I know a lot of people who wont farm with any on their team cos they steal the drops. The fact is that its just same as seeing someone else get a drop ie...you don’t get it so it makes no difference to me ig i don’t see a drop for a longer period.

Now here is where it gets interesting and I advise you to try this yourself... if you lead a team it appears from my experience that you are more likely to get green drops. I say this because I have noticed this when leading parties and also as I seem to get 1 green a run with a full team of hench and thats more than with players.

You have to be careful with hench though at times that they dont draw aggro from mobs, but I have had far more success leading a team of hench for greens that with players and you can progress far quicker and kill more bosses and also explore more of sorrows as you get to go exactly where you want to.

This I know is all down to personal preference so Im not trying to open a debate for people to tell me what they think is different for them that what I already know is different for me, Im just trying to broaden a few horizons a little.. and spread a little of good advice for some people who (like me) may get better results...... in 5 farming runs Im 4 greens better off.

fact is fact for me that farming with hench in sorrows = better results.

Yup, i totally agree with you.
I was on yesterday playing around with my much negleted necro, and after sitting in the warcamp for two hours spamming for a party I took out a pack of henchies.

Granted it wasn't one of the greens that I really, really wanted.But its a green, and most importantly of all, nobody in my party said "OMG NOE MINIONZ!!1111" and disconnected.

I think Im gonna take out another set just to be sure it wasn't a fluke.

cheers.

When henchies get a drop, they take it and you cant stop them, but when one of your teamates gets a drop they dont have to pick it up
Yesterday I was farming with a pug, and one of our monks got thornbeards horned bow, we told him he got it, but he never picked it up...so a few minutes later, i picked up the bow... (the skin of the bow was ivory bow, today i got gargashs bow with the skin of a dead bow).

EDIT: I thought I spelled henchies...turned out I spelled minions (too many minions for me since I am necro)

I'm up to 22 greens, all with a full complement of genchies!

I use henchies all the time.. i find that i can clear out teh footprint in 15-20 min and even if i dont get a green everytime ive always come back with 1k, purple armors and weapons a bunch of blues and summit badges for halloween .. so its all good

It seemed like I would never get a green either, but then someone on another forum advised that I try to do Final Assault farming. The beauty of this is that you run into about 6 or so bosses in a period of about 30 mins if you have a decent group. (Dont advise using hench though unless you yourself are a stance tank and can hold the kegs to attract all the damage). On my first 2 runs while on this quest, which lasted a total of about an hour, I got my first 2 greens. How it works: find a 5-person group to do the quest. only 1 party member actually needs to have it. go outside of the warcamp and talk to ennis granitewhateverhisnameis and he and the keg guy will follow you to SF. Once inside DO NOT talk to ennis again. Fight your way through the bosses towards the furnace room (you will know you are at the end of the bosses when you run into Rago Kinderlock). rinse and repeat. there are certain bosses, however, that will only appear on the Orozar quest (the necro boss Bortak, for example), so try the same thing on that quest to get those drops.

Remember that no matter what the actual odds of a green drop are that sometimes the universe will conspire against you so that it seems that there are no odds at all. remember odds are limit calculations, over an infinite number of tries, the number of green drops tends towards x. Odds are that if i flip a coin i will get heads 50% percent of the time, but it is not impossible for me to get 100 tails in a row instead. also remember that if you are truly farming all this time, you are collecting money and salvage items, runes etc etc etc which you could sell in order to just buy the desired green item from another player.

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Minion Master + 3 henchmen = win

ok here is another question for you....

How many hench do you farm with and which ones?

i was a bit sceptic at first about farming with henchies, but when i read the thread today, I immediately tried it out, and i'm very pleased with it

my party was: me (ranger), cynn, devona, little thom, alesia, mhenlo

it was not as fun as with real people (u miss the interaction), but i'm definitely gonna do this again, cause u can control where u go and u don't have any jerks who mess it up for u by aggroing

I'm not absolutely sure about this because I haven't written the information down yet, but I will keep track of it the next time I do this.

There is a particular boss in Factions who drops an item I want and I can solo the boss, which is level 28. I probably killed that boss 20 times last night solo and did not get the drop. There are a couple things that occurred to me:

1. I already have one of those green items customized for the particular character I was using to solo the boss. I did put the item in storage and then on another character part way through the farming but nothing changed.

2. If I avoided everything else between me and the boss and killed only him, I got no drop of any kind. If I killed a few other critters on my way there (mostly between level 20 and 22), I got some drop but not very valuable. If I killed 10 or 20 enemies before I went to the boss then I got more valuable drops from it, but still nothing above a purple -- this is true even when I soloed 3 level 28 oni's before the boss.

Again this is with no henchies and no other human players so I should have gotten every drop possible. The standard stuff like gold coins and white items did not seem to drop significantly more than if I had taken a whole team either.

It does appear to me as though they are specifically trying to keep people from farming, but I don't understand why. I'd think the more people who played your game the better it would be for you in the long run.

I'm not in favor of bots and I only farm for specific items that I want for a specific character rather than a way to make cash, but to me if you put in the time and effort you should be rewarded.

If I get better/more information on how many enemies I killed before the boss vs. how good the boss drops were I'll post it when I can, but it's very time consuming to solo groups with a mix of casters and phys damage enemies

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While it should ALWAYS be avoided, if you are absolutely dedicated to Henching a green, try Kephket Marrowfeast. You'll get one about 1 in 12 trips with full henchies.