No more drake hunting. Now what to do for item hunting?

The drakes in divinity coast are good to farm, haven't gone there in a couple days so not sure if it's been nerfed or not. For runes the hill giants in riverside are best.

Nothing wrong with farming though, some people enjoy it ( Like me ) and while items don't make as huge of a difference as in some games you still aren't handed the best stuff. If you want the perfect mods on a max dmg wep you'll either have to pay big money for it or farm it, some people just like having the absolute best. Plus there's also the armor that costs 15k per piece ( Heard of a 30k per piece one too but not sure if that's true or not ) and while it's same stats as the 1.5k stuff it supposedly has a different look and looking different than others beyond just a different color is always good.

The majority of the folks you're talking about have already spent time "pushing our way through the high level content", yet they are coming back to lower-level areas to farm, like Riverside, because the actual high level areas are much more difficult to farm gold and items in when you're still low enough to get xp for the kills. Some people will completely stop or slow their advancement quite a bit to make up wealth if they feel they are lacking it badly enough.

Herdslaying mobs to farm their drops, from I have been successful with, is only feasible once you are much higher level than the mobs or have some of the better elite skills in your tray to work with. The XP sucks, but you can stop at a good spot for a few hours, and easily catch up any bankroll problems you might have. Getting 75k for the nicer looking armor takes alot of scheming and swindling, or farming to acquire. The key is that when you are 4+ to the mobs(less for some builds), you don't need henchies or teammates anymore and are free to collect all the golds and purps for yourself. Anything that requires more than one is usually done with an all human team, so people can exchange drops and everyone gets ahead. There is no such thing as farming with henchmen, you always keep it to real people that you know, simply because you have access to everyone's drops, i.e. no purps and golds are getting lost at all. If it's with RL friends and guildmates, farming an area for drops gets everyone involved ahead financially.

I like to keep my characters farming in pre-sear until I have around 2 or 3k, because I stick to the main quest and co-ops until shiverpeak, and I will miss out on alot of the early farming and exploring I did with my first character. Acquisition of wealth seems to be easiest, to me anyway, when I am too high level for an area. Level 8s hunting skales and grawls for days prior to the academy is one of the more common ways people are "staying ahead of the economy". The fact that I need 10k worth of fur squares just to make a good set of L10 armor is reason enough to farm till my eyes cross. You do what you like, but the only ignorance I detect is your own.

GW does alot to lessen the burden and outright requirement of farming, though it is far from "handing you everything you need" in the normal course of the game. Just the scarcity of certain items and crafting materials mean that if I have more money than so-and-so, I can easily outbid him and take his priority from any seller to get what I need before he can. Money talks and farming, even in GW, yields the most currency for your time...

yeah i have one of those swords looted off a hydra. i didn't farm anything for it though i was just questing.

there's an old chinese proverb that fits this thread quite nicely. It goes something like this..."you can take the crap hunting out of the game, but you can't take the crap hunter out of the gamer"

But it's pretty reasonable when you think about it...people lead shallow existences in real life, and find gratification through the aquisition of expensive crap. I guess it's unreasonable of me to expect people to be any different ingame.

I'm the odd-ball here and i realize it.

If everyone in the usa was like me there would be no such a thing as a mall, or a wal-mart.

Im not american but wal-mart is pretty cheap store to me and it has everything a housewife needs
As for farming: I completed all missions, almost all sidequests. Bought 3 pieces of 15k armor (will post pics later, necro 15k bonelace armor is looks much better than 1.5k armor, same stats though), thats 45k, few major runes.. And I needed like 6-7k for the last piece. So I went farming. As there aren't many drops when you go with henchies I decided to go alone. But not so easy for my N/Me as for standard build E/Mo. Thats why i switched to N/E. And went farming Justicars in Riverside, was killing them till i got my money and bought armor Before farming by myself it seemed stupid for me.. And now I liked it because it's very challenging for Necro to farm alone.
I am now so experienced that I can kill 2 hydras easily in crystal desert...
have fun farming

sure walmart has necesities, but 99.9% of their inventory is frivolous, disposable crap, which was my point, and it's the common person's desire to posess frivolous, disposable crap that keeps walmart in business, is the reason behind the greatly accellerated consumption of the worlds doomed resources, and compels people to grind gold in a game where you can have THE BEST equipment by just playing.

People grind in RL, they grind ingame.

But your desire to posess frivolous, disposable crap seems to make you all very happy so carry on.

Meh.. I think you Generalizing WAY to much. If you don't watch movies, eat cereal, wear clothes, or use aspirin, then yeah you really are different than everyone. I don't shop much at Wal-Mart, but from what I've seen, it's not nearly as bad as you make it out to be. Spencer Gifts? ok.. THAT is frivolous. Don't get so wrapped up in yourself that you forget you are person like everyone else. Consequently this GAME is frivolus. What great store did you buy it from?

As for the Farming/items in GW, are you saying that trading/selling is useless? That sounds pretty dumb. Shouldn't the game be taking advantage of the community & economy? I'm still (apparently) pre-searing, and when I play RPGs, I love being able to craft, create or build up weapons, items & armor. From what you are saying, it sounds like I just get everything handed to me when I quest. What's the challenge in that? It would be nice if I had to work/figure out how to get the tools & items to create/acquire that cool robe etc... That's what I don't like about things so far, it takes no special effort to get weapons. They just pop out of enemies along the quest. I should have to work specifically to get them. Are you saying the only thing to do in this game is run quests?

-Romac

Since you enjoy tossing around proverbs, here is a good one for you: "Those who live in glass houses should not cast stones."

Based on your logic, you life is not all that gratifying either. You purchased a frivilous item, e.g. a PC game, the computer to run it, and the web access to play it. Elighten us - do you have a cellphone? Plasma TV? PDA? Cable/Satelite service?

All of those items are frivilous in the grand scheme of life, but I have met more people with your line of thinking that owns every one of those items.

I agree, i've gone on 2 hunts and they were a waste of my time considering I've gotten better armor and drops later on into the game and the fact that I have money up the wazzoo

People farm because they want the good armor before they move on in the game I think, I honestly should have well over enough by end game to buy the 15k's

you're funny, im up to amnoon oasis and almost done that region, and thats having covered 90% of the map, yet i have ~20k gold minus all the profits i made selling items.. how much longer do you think it'll take for me to reach 75k gold without selling items?

this post was meant to give out the best locations for item hunting since they are constantly being nerfed as we speak so if you dont like item hunting then leave..

The thing is, you do have a chance to get what you'll need(not want, need) just from doing missions and side-quests, so on one hand Romac is right, but it's not likely at all. Identical mobs drop different things with each reset, so you could get lucky and find something useful to you on the first run, but it could easily take many more. So far, no one in my guild has become immune to farming in GW, we've all had to do it to get a decent weapon dropped for us, and we're all fairly wealthy as a side effect of the many late-night hours spent farming drops. Not to mention, what Romac is missing, is that if you are trying to unlock the runes and upgrades for PvP-only characters, you will need to possess a weapon bearing each of those runes and upgrades at least one time, something that is nigh impossible without a seemingly endless amount of farming. When our guild finds a good weapon, rune, or upgrade, we pass it along to several other guildmates so each of us can unlock those PvP-only options with greater ease without having to buy or find each individually.

By farming an area over and over, you increase the likelihood of finding an item that suits you, all the while earning gold for the junk that doesn't, either through selling to merchants, salvaging and selling the materials, or even trading/selling the items or materials to other players. There is more money to be had from other players, as always, but it can take alot of time to find the right buyer unless you don't mind hopping districts alot. The easiest way to price an item's worth is about 10x it's actual value, but most people start their pricing off at 12-15x to allow another player to barter down a bit and feel like they're getting a deal. A good rule of thumb is 10x the value on items that cannot be bought and about 50-75% of what the trader wants for items that can. As long as you get more than you could sell for and the buyer pays less than he can buy for, you both should end up making out and being happy.

A big part of farming, is the time of day(or night) that you're available to play and what areas you try to farm in. It seems at first that with the way maps are instanced it doesn't matter, but several of my guildmates have noticed they rake in the rares more often in the wee hours of the night, when there are less districts and fewer american players online. We believe there is an anti-inflation feature in GW that limits how many rares are available to be dropped in any one area in a set time period. We could be wrong, but it really seems that once a good farming spot is revealed, the drops get less and less as more and more people flock there to farm goodies. The result is that smart farmers don't give up their prime spots, because everyone will start going there and slow down the drop rates. For now, I do quests during the hours when everyone is online and save the farming for when I pull an allnighter.

If you want to put alot of effort into finding and crafting just the right weapons, armor, and the finding the upgrades and runes to make the weapons and armor really good, you're in for a treat, because it *will* take alot of effort to do it. Even in pre-sear, you can spend alot of time farming the northlands for better drops than you'll see in post-sear for awhile, and since fewer people go there the good blues are plentiful. These better items are worth less gold than most standard non-magical ones in post, but they are way more useful until you can get past post-apocalyptic ascalon, and they can be expert salvaged later for the upgrades. They make great gifts, too!

Don't give up until you see how hard it is for some people to get materials for their first crafted set of armor, if you're a warrior or ranger it should prove to be quite a challenge to find or afford fur squares to craft your level 10 armor. They just revamped the scarcity of fur, silk, and linen, so hopefully players won't have to sell their first born to get some decent armor anymore. Good luck, and I hope this sheds some light on farming and it's benefits.

scweeeet! sound very cool! I'm begining to understand a bit more. Thanks Ancient!

It also sounds like the post-searing world has very saisfying quests & story. I am excited to see what ways I can deck out my Elementalist & Ranger and understanding the Rune system.

GW is VERY differnet from MMOGs I have played, so I still feel a bit lost. Also I bought the game online so I don't have a manual.. makes it a bit harder.

Furs, dont know why its in such a high demand.. Im W/MO and I need fur for certain armor but I shielded away from it.. no point, so expensive, so rare, not like the armor is 20x better.. heck, gladiators armor is good enough for me, for now.. recently i sold 2 furs for 2000, and after the update i sold 1 for 500.. i made good money off of that, but only because people were desperate for fur squares.. now i heard there's a trader in ascalon that offers fur for 4 charr hides.. defeats the whole purpose of fur now

This topic isn't right, i still get good drops frequently... They have actually increased the chance if you read the website.. which obviously didn't happen: http://www.guildwars.com/news/gameupdates.html

increased the chance of getting purple/golden CRAPPY ITEMS..

i got a lot today, 7 purples, 1 gold.. yet i would never use any of them.. they were normal blue items with a small difference in stats.. maybe +4 armor or 10% enchantment, nothing special at all, nothing worth keeping.. not even sure if it'll sell for much :\

if you want to farm for items, then do it, if you dont, then dont, its just a game, play how you want, quit hating on everybody else.

they really screwed up big time.

i got a golden holy rod, yet a blue holy staff has better stats.

SIGH.

Whoa. This is some drama.

It's pretty easy to figure out where to farm. I agree with what was said about the excitement of finding rare items.

For me, I need a superior fire rune and a good wand. These things are nearly friggin impossible to trade for unless you want to pay 15k. I've heard rumours of superior fire runes going for over 40k. So honestly, I'm not going to pay that much for it. I'd RATHER find it myself, and so that is what I am doing. Is that farming? Absolutely, but I just don't see the problem in that.

I also trade. I don't see a prob with that either. I was selling items for 200-300 dollars less than other people in ascalon. Why? Simply because when I started this game I was irritated that I could not buy weapons, and therefore wanted to supply people with some better items so they could get through the game.

Anyhow, I really don't think it's something worth getting so worked up over. In a few months when the game has been out longer the market will stabilize and it will probably be a lot easier to find good items. Until then, happy hunting :)

there was alot of people exploiting the mirror self aswell. every time you beat it it would drop a gold or purple item. its fixed now. so you go try it

You're using logic on a community forum! My god, think of the kids man! The kids!




I totally agree with you.