Coyotedancer

So your answer is a non-answer.... Okay.

Serious question, here.... Why? Why try to push people into doing something they prefer to avoid? We're playing a game, not working a job or studying for a test. Why do we need something that's purely done for recreation to "push people out of their comfort zone"?

The Paragon Grange Association: "Farming in AE is fun!" The Anti-Farming League: "Farming in AE sucks and is ruining our game!" Both Sides: "Buzz off, buster! You're not the boss of me!" .... So, pretty much like every other thread about AE ever. 😆

Harvey Maylor's demon mission from the Bands arc is an Old School favorite. My /Fire brutes can both handle it... Although, as mentioned upthread, grab the KB Reducer from your base forge if you don't already have some KB protection. Those demons will swat you around if you don't have that.

In what way was that "out of context" or manipulated? The first half of the statement didn't, in any way, change the meaning of your statement. o_O

"I don't agree with some of you, so I hope everyone's playhouse burns down!" isn't a great look, Top...

When I post numbers for a character, I tend to include their AT and powersets for exactly that reason. Likewise which creator/map I'm on, since not all of them are created equal. My main AE fire farmers (Haroeris and Ossuni) are both Claws/Fire Brutes. They were built specifically for that. Suni is a somewhat slower/safer "zen mode" farmer. Harry is built for speed. He gives up some security in the name of more damage and so faster clearing times. I chose to use Suni for the tests because she's the one that I spend the lion's share of my farming time with. She's my base-line "average". The other two I've posted numbers for aren't optimized for AE farming, but are capable of it... One (Grey Kestrel) is a "Fireproof" Dual Blade/WP Scrapper updated from the Live game days, who was originally designed for plowing through Harvey's Praetorian demons. The other (Ironhorse) is a Dual Blade/Rad Brute with a general-purpose S/L build.

Beyond the mechanics of the powers and level shifts, on the "character fluff"/roleplaying side of things, the Lore is.... Not great. It's very limiting if you take it as-written. That whole business with The Well and the big, blue smurf hanging out in Ouro trying to manipulate us all.... It reminds me a lot of the Origin of Powers silliness, trying so hard to stuff each and every one of our characters into a neat little Lore box. Most of the character-focused people I've spent time with more or less completely ignore bits of the iLore. As we should, I'd argue, for exactly the same reason the Origin of Powers ought to be kicked to the curb. It's too limiting. Personally, my favorite Incarnated character here on Homecoming isn't even an Incarnate by description or backstory. Mechanically, Kai has all the iToys and level shifts. She has multiple T4s for some slots. But as a character? Nope. Not a would-be goddess. She has nothing to do with The Well. She's just a damned good mage who's learned or created a couple of really impressive spells. And as far as she's concerned, Prometheus can get stuffed. 😝

Sorry, Angel... But neither of my farmers get anywhere near 2.5m/IInf per minute. If yours do... that's impressive. But it's not in any way universal, as all of us who have been posting numbers here can tell you. It's beyond arrogant to assume that you have the only "accurate" numbers.

Indeed. Going in there without any KB reduction was just slapstick-worthy. 😝

Yep. The aggro changes will actually make farming on the big Freak World map easier. I'm honestly looking forward to it. Now, here's a bit more. I just did a fast test of Suni on Harvey's demon map. A timed 15 minute run. Her average there at +4/x8 solo was only 347,600 INF per for raw INF and 441,100 per minute when drops were sold. I expected it to be lower due to lower goon density and having a harder time pulling together multiple groups. What I DIDN'T expect was how much time Suni lost to bouncing on her butt! I had no idea Harvey's demons were capable of that much Knockback! I've just never gone after them with a character who didn't have pretty substantial anti-KB before. It was just ludicrous how much time that poor Brute spent getting bounced around. She was on her butt at least once or twice per group.... And that seriously shows up in her returns on the map, even though she absolutely ate the mobs alive when she *wasn't* flopping around like a spikey Oranbegan trout.

Okay.... Apologies for the back-to-back posting here, but I did a little running around with my zen-mode fire farmer this morning and thought you guys could use the results. Ossuni (Claws/Fire Brute), solo at +4/x8 on Brigg's "Bloody Rainbow" space map... Raw INF: 744.800 per minute INF After Sale of Drops: 832,600 per minute So, actually a little less than Flea's 1m per min mark when she's on her own. That actually surprises me a little, since her clear times seem to be pretty average. Depending on how the groups gather, it takes her about 6-7 minutes to clear the map. That's about half the time it took Ironhorse to clear a round in my earlier test with him on Humble's S/L version. The EBs account for some of that, but his slower killing speed in general (No Burn for instance, and not a lot in the way of damage procs in his build-) is most of the difference. Just for fun, I'm going to see how Suni does on Harvey's demon map next. She may be too specialized to do well in there, but I want to find out.... and more numbers are always more.

Or that flat-out can't be controlled by them (*she says, thinking of her middle nephew's crazy, nut-ball Gremlins*)...

That's why I didn't use the space map as my "average farm run" example... I spend more time in Atta's Cave or the Freak World sunken city, personally. But I suspect people pick that one because it's easy and quick to do a test run on. The highway tunnel might be another good option for fast testing, since it's also fairly small. ETA: IIRC, the highway tunnel has about the same number of groups as Harvey's Praetorian demon mission (The one on the Steel Canyon city block map-), they're just closer together which makes for faster flattening, as usual for a farming map.

In Homecoming's earlier days, I'd take a turn as the leader on PI "smash team" radios sometimes.... Mostly when one of the gang of roleplayer friends wanted to get those last few levels on their current alt in a social way. I always did that with Semnai, my very tanky Broadsword/Bio "regen monster" Brute. She grew up playing tank for a static trio team, and so had been built with at least some degree of aggro control in mind. I knew that with her I could take up any slack we might have damage-wise, while still keeping the goons away from our potential lowbies and squishy people.

I'll do a solo hour with Ossuni on the space map at some point, just to see how it works out. I suspect her numbers will be close to yours. There's no way she'll see anything like 2-2.5m, though. That would take adding FCM and his Blaster to even get close.

Exactly that. And since I'm leveling him, Sky was using a 2xXP. He didn't earn a single INF from killing goons, though he did get a few million from sold drops. (Nothing fancy for him, so nothing kept-) Not having Burn also slows Ironhorse down compared to a dedicated farm build. An optimized build would just plow through the mobs faster than he can, meaning more wolves murderized per minute spent. ETA: Like I said in my first numbers post about an average fire farm run on the Atta's Cave map, when I take in a level 50 sidekick like Cantus who earns regular INF, the combined total between the two is around 50m (give or take a few million depending on drop luck-). It takes about 45 minutes to completely clear that map on a casual run with a dedicated farmer like Suni, so putting aside the small bonus you get for a team of 2, the 1m/minute mark is probably right in line with yours if I were to run it solo.

I do that, too... I tend to finish one alt before I start up another one. That means that pretty much everyone in my current crew of 74 are fully set-equipped level 50s with a collection of at least T3 iToys. The favorites get all T4s and builds that are, in some cases, pretty ludicrous by Old School standards. If I hadn't already had all of the purples and WinterOs and other pricey bits in my stash, my zen-mode fire farmer's build for example probably *would* have hit a billion INF. Suni's speed-farming counterpart wouldn't have been much less. Everyone else? Not nearly so pricey. Depending on the AT and how silly I want to be with them, I usually spend somewhere between 100m and 300m when all is said and done. For what it's worth, I had just under 50 characters back in the Live days and had done the same with them. They were all level 50. All but a few favorites had builds that were less impressive than what my Homecoming characters have, sure... But giving everyone at least a reasonable IO set build was important to me, so I'd done it with all of them. I made my money by selling "blue things" mostly... common End Reduction and End Mod IOS on the auction house. It was slow going. It took me close to four years to finish the original Grey Kestrel's build. She was, by far, the priciest thing in my collection. All to perma-summon her Adept companion. When Incarnates came along, I systematically cycled through every single one of those characters and did the iTrial grind with them. Sets of T3 powers for most of them. T4s for the favorites. Nemissary, my much-beloved Death Mage Dark Defender, got his last VR bit to build his final T4 iPower at the end of the last Underground run we did on Liberty. Finishing him before the game disappeared was my very last City "bucket list" goal at the time. So, yeah. I've "been there, done that" with the grind and the lack of resources and the overpriced market.... I spent literal YEARS finishing a Main that mattered to me more than anyone else I'd ever built. I wouldn't, for one second, trade what we have now and what I can do here for those days. I rebuilt the current Scrapper version of Kestrel in a week with the resources I've built up here. I grin when I play her every bit as much as I did the original Stalker. I didn't miss the grind.

I've had good fun with Amtes (Demons/Thermal) and Hanano (giant monster hunting Ninja/FF from the Live days-), so... Nah. Unless we limit it to Mercs. Those guys are just goofy.

You'll pry my Sentinels out of my cold, dead pixel hands. >_< No. Seriously. Tavaris and Shonokin (my Dark/Bio and Dark/WP-) are favorites. They're great, if slow, soloists and I've had a heck of a lot of fun with both of them. Don't like the AT? That's fine. You don't have to play one, (I'm the same way with Warshades. Tried it... hated it. Not every character type is All That for every player, yeah?)

That's one of the reasons why I made that post a couple of days ago outlining what one of my "average" fire farm runs actually produces... People who don't farm, or who haven't done so since early in Homecoming's run, honestly wouldn't have a solid idea of what those numbers are. There definitely seem to be some pretty exaggerated assumptions out there. Talking to others, I'm apparently fairly typical for a run-of-the-mill, active-type fire farmer when it comes to map-clearing times and such, so my results ought to be solidly in the middle range. Some people will go slower and make less. Per Flea's post, some people are obviously faster and so can potentially make more... But odds are the majority are somewhere in the ballpark of my own totals.

Ouch.

I suspect there's some worry that the Powers That Be will eventually cave in to the pearl-clutching over how terrible it is letting people play "the wrong way"...

A little "data" for you guys, for whatever it's worth. Ironhorse (DB/Rad Brute) + door sitter side-kick Skyrunner (DB/WP Scrap), who had a 2xXP buff running Both maps were run at +4/x8 with bosses One hour on Wolf World Old School PI farm map (One full clear plus about 60% of a second run)... 16.1m INF after drops were sold. 1 Grav Anchor kept. 1 Catalyst kept. Sky got from lvl 35.7 to lvl 38.1 One hour in Humble's S/L Space farm map (Two full rounds and about half of a third before my hour was up-) 19.6m INF after drops were sold. 1 Hecca kept, 1 Panacea kept. Sky went from lvl 38.1 to lvl 40,2 So, yes. That farm was a little more efficient for the hour spent than Wolf World was, which has pretty much everything to do with the groups being closer together and more numerous in the farm than on the large, open mission map. (I was able to Taunt them in from the center of the map, and that saved quite a bit of time spent finding wolves rather than dicing them into kibble.) "Risk"-wise? Honestly, the farm critters were more of a hazard for Horse than the wolves were. I used his heal a lot more often in there, due pretty much entirely to the density of the goons, It wasn't unusual to look at what was in melee with him and find multiple EBs who had survived longer than the rest of the group they had come in with. That "flock of tough guys" situation never happened with the wolves.

Like I said earlier, that's the one huge advantage of farm maps... The density of the mobs. The guys were more into Deep Rock Galactic yesterday than the City, so I actually got to play around a little with the fireproof version of my DB Scrapper on Harvey's demon map and my S/L farm-capable DB/Rad Brute on Wolf World. They're leveling what will be a rebuild of the Fireproof Scrap design on my secondary account. In spite of the "outside" mobs giving more XP than the farm critters do on an individual basis, running through those Old School maps is a slower way to go. I knew those two wouldn't plow through the goons quite as quickly as my dedicated fire farmer goes through hers... neither of them have Burn, and that does make a significant difference in kill speed... but the space between groups also put them at a disadvantage. It was hard to engage multiple groups at once, especially on that huge ruins map, and with nothing patrolling you have to go searching for targets. As for INF-per-minute.... I could believe 2-2,5m per minute on the space map for a pair. I'm pretty sure FCM and I could do that taking Ossuni in duo with his fire-farming Blaster. Those two together can clear that map in a pretty brutally effective way... But if someone is managing it solo, I really want to see their build. It has to be a thing of truly ludicrous, overengineered beauty.