Non-Fire/Spines Farming

[TheMultiVitamin]

Recently looked into farming, not wanting to dedicate too much of my time to it as I did that in other games and it killed my interest in them but I'm okay with doing it now and again. However I see that most farm missions are Fire farms, so I'd to know if there are any that aren't fire farms or if there's any way to farm Inf. or Salvage without needing to dedicate a whole character to it? I make characters based off of concepts and theming rather then mechanics so making a character specifically for farming just feels wrong to me.

[Triumphant]

For what it's worth, I also make characters this way.

 

There are S/L (smashing/lethal) farms you can do.  Just put S/L farm into the searchbox and some should come up.  Boombox by Will lo is one I run semi-frequently.  I typically run farms with some of my more well built characters, though I don't build characters "specifically" dedicated to it.   It can work (depending on the character), but will not be as efficient as one made specifically for farming, of course.  But it works just fine for those of us who just like to occassionally "dabble" in farming.  You will want a decently built melee toon, level 50, well-slotted, with some of your T1 incarnates (alpha, judgement, etc.) to make it worth your time, I think. 

 

Otherwise, just join paper/radio missions and/or SF/TF whenever you need influence.  Selling the drops you get from running these missions can net you a lot of influence pretty quickly.  Folks often run Peregrine Island missions and many of them accept anyone of any level.  You'll pick up a lot of lvl 50 enhancement recipes that way.  Even the basic ones sell for like 100k a pop, and you can acrue a lot of these over several paper/radio missions.

[TheMultiVitamin]

9 minutes ago, Triumphant said:

For what it's worth, I also make characters this way.

 

There are S/L (smashing/lethal) farms you can do.  Just put S/L farm into the searchbox and some should come up.  Boombox by Will lo is one I run semi-frequently.  I typically run farms with some of my more well built characters, though I don't build characters "specifically" dedicated to it.   It can work (depending on the character), but will not be as efficient as one made specifically for farming, of course.  But it works just fine for those of us who just like to occassionally "dabble" in farming.  You will want a decently built melee toon, level 50, well-slotted, with some of your T1 incarnates (alpha, judgement, etc.) to make it worth your time, I think. 

 

Otherwise, just join paper/radio missions and/or SF/TF whenever you need influence.  Selling the drops you get from running these missions can net you a lot of influence pretty quickly.  Folks often run Peregrine Island missions and many of them accept anyone of any level.  You'll pick up a lot of lvl 50 enhancement recipes that way.  Even the basic ones sell for like 100k a pop, and you can acrue a lot of these over several paper/radio missions.

Ah yea I saw a few of those S/L Farms, though the knockback on them just made it impossible and insta-2 shotted me. Mostly cause they're 1-54 rather then exemplaring up to 50 so even though I'm fighting 'em at my level they still beat me hard.

Was unaware of the SF/TF's giving good stuff to sell, mostly cause I just do those once each for the story for that character and that's it, thanks for the advice!

[Erratic1]

3 minutes ago, TheMultiVitamin said:

Was unaware of the SF/TF's giving good stuff to sell, mostly cause I just do those once each for the story for that character and that's it, thanks for the advice!

 

SF/TFs reward you with merits (double for the weekly once per character per week). Merits are your short path to influence and the things bought with influence. Repeating them is seriously the norm. 

 

Though I do have to wonder how far a character could go doing no bit of content more than once. Even radio missions repeat. Only doing something once and never doing it again...strikes me as really limiting.

[TheMultiVitamin]

7 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

SF/TFs reward you with merits (double for the weekly once per character per week). Merits are your short path to influence and the things bought with influence. Repeating them is seriously the norm. 

 

Though I do have to wonder how far a character could go doing no bit of content more than once. Even radio missions repeat. Only doing something once and never doing it again...strikes me as really limiting.

In terms of Radio Missions and the like, those are fine to do more than once because they're meant to be repeatable to do the Bank missions. Same with Alignment/Morality missions.

Edited 10 hours ago by TheMultiVitamin

[Erratic1]

3 minutes ago, TheMultiVitamin said:

In terms of Radio Missions and the like, those are fine to do more than once because they're meant to be repeatable to do the Bank missions. Same with Alignment/Morality missions.

 

Bank missions repeat. You fight a limited set of opponents on them. Are you going to stop doing them and radio missions after you have done every Bank mission which exists?

 

And if the notion is that Radios are fine to repeat, then what makes SF/TFs less fine?

 

 

Edited 10 hours ago by Erratic1

[TheMultiVitamin]

Just now, Erratic1 said:

 

Bank missions repeat. You fight a limited set of opponents on them.

 

And if the notion is that Radios are fine to repeat, then what makes SF/TFs less fine?

In my casing, it's that they have story to them. They're not just for leveling and farming, but they have plotlines and the like. I play my characters as RPed as I can so SF/TF's having story means, narratively, it'd be weird if my character did them more then once. Of course that's me being pedantic as all hell but that's just how it is for me.

[Erratic1]

1 minute ago, TheMultiVitamin said:

In my casing, it's that they have story to them. They're not just for leveling and farming, but they have plotlines and the like. I play my characters as RPed as I can so SF/TF's having story means, narratively, it'd be weird if my character did them more then once. Of course that's me being pedantic as all hell but that's just how it is for me.

 

Well, there is no singular "right way" to play the game. But as I noted, you are going to run out of content at some point. There are a finite number of different bank and radio missions on top of story arcs and trials. Boy, there is something that is going to be interesting...only going after Hamidon once, win or lose because narratively, you could win or lose and whatever happens is whatever happens. Let me seriously warn you about going after Lord Recluse because I have seen that one fail more than once.

 

OTOH, you could always recreate a powerset combo as the offspring of the previous hero, determined to take down the things that their parent could not handle. 

[TheMultiVitamin]

1 minute ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Well, there is no singular "right way" to play the game. But as I noted, you are going to run out of content at some point. There are a finite number of different bank and radio missions on top of story arcs and trials. Boy, there is something that is going to be interesting...only going after Hamidon once, win or lose because narratively, you could win or lose and whatever happens is whatever happens. Let me seriously warn you about going after Lord Recluse because I have seen that one fail more than once.

 

OTOH, you could always recreate a powerset combo as the offspring of the previous hero, determined to take down the things that their parent could not handle. 

Typically even if I do them once I mainly do it as a success of it, rather then just entirely once overall. 

Though making an offspring of one of my characters sounds so interesting, that's a cool idea I didn't even think of.

[Erratic1]

2 minutes ago, TheMultiVitamin said:

Though making an offspring of one of my characters sounds so interesting, that's a cool idea I didn't even think of.

 

My original character in Live was a Radiation/Electrical defender. Many years later, after I was no longer playing the original (for reasons we'll skip past), I made a character who was her son as a Dark Melee/Electrical armor brute, corrupted in the womb by the dark magics used by one of the foes his mother had fought before knowing she was pregnant. 

 

Even took the brute around the alignment wheel via morality missions (as opposed to Null) to represent him falling to the corruption and redeeming himself (had to get those Patron powers some way). 

[tidge]

3 hours ago, TheMultiVitamin said:

Recently looked into farming, not wanting to dedicate too much of my time to it as I did that in other games and it killed my interest in them but I'm okay with doing it now and again. However I see that most farm missions are Fire farms, so I'd to know if there are any that aren't fire farms or if there's any way to farm Inf. or Salvage without needing to dedicate a whole character to it? I make characters based off of concepts and theming rather then mechanics so making a character specifically for farming just feels wrong to me.

 

It's possible to 'farm' just about all the games' content with a level 50 character. If there is 'one simple trick' to farming what you want, it is "find content that allows you to complete it in a time that is acceptable for you that gives you the rewards you want."

 

If you want Inf and drops, pretty much any mission at +0x8 (even level, so +N if Incarnates are involved) should be fine. AE maps are used because they are essentially 'tuned' to have enemies that only do and/or are susceptible to a few types of damage, and the critter spawns are easy to find/gather. I have a couple of characters that can quickly clean up Carnies without worry (even with Illusionists) so they are fine for using level 50 tip missions, even with a regular warehouse map.

 

"Fire Farms" for 'dedicated farmers' became the de facto for a few obvious reasons:

• Fire defense was straightforward to build for, and AE mission are easy to build with enemies that (pretty much) only do Fire damage. 
• Fire Primary/Secondary sets include typed-damage PBAoE

The second point is IMO a slight hangover in player thinking from the earliest days of Live when a Fiery Aura Tanker could trivially use Blazing Aura and collect XP from DE Swarms. The game has had a lot of changes since then, but PBAoE damage where a player has to do very little to earn rewards has a strong appeal to some.

 

When you read certain (older) threads specifically about "nerfs to fire farms", most of what the complaints involved was that the 'default' mobs in 'Fire Farms' used Fiery Melee attacks which were given a Defense debuff component, so previously 'soft-capped' Fiery Defensive characters couldn't simply rely on the Fire defenses alone... so AFK farming had to be rethought by those players. Other Homecoming changes have been seen as 'nerf to farms', including an XP exploit that allowed for massive Inf by characters permanently locked at level 49, and a change to limit the ultimate amount of Empyrian merits that can be collected by characters via simply hitting every 3rd level.

 

If a solo player wants Incarnate rewards, they probably can't do better than Heather Townshend's DA arc at x1. That can be run with very few necessary fights in about 10 minutes, with some variety based on a character's damage types/output. It can be 'farmed' for inf and drops at x8.

 

If a solo player wants Vanguard merits, the best mission IMO is Ghost Falcon's. There are plenty of other Rikti-based missions, but I find that wide-open map to be a pretty convenient one to use at x8. Rikti aren't generally popular to "farm" outside of a Mothership raid or Invasion event for reasons... but any character that can chew through them does just fine 'farming' that mission in my experience.

 

For Merits, the most straightforward method of solo is to find a (low level) mission that grants merit rewards. There are a variety that offer roughly 1 Merit/minute. You can do better than that, but sometimes the total time investment is more than I like to invest.

[TheMultiVitamin]

2 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

It's possible to 'farm' just about all the games' content with a level 50 character. If there is 'one simple trick' to farming what you want, it is "find content that allows you to complete it in a time that is acceptable for you that gives you the rewards you want."

 

If you want Inf and drops, pretty much any mission at +0x8 (even level, so +N if Incarnates are involved) should be fine. AE maps are used because they are essentially 'tuned' to have enemies that only do and/or are susceptible to a few types of damage, and the critter spawns are easy to find/gather. I have a couple of characters that can quickly clean up Carnies without worry (even with Illusionists) so they are fine for using level 50 tip missions, even with a regular warehouse map.

 

"Fire Farms" for 'dedicated farmers' became the de facto for a few obvious reasons:

• Fire defense was straightforward to build for, and AE mission are easy to build with enemies that (pretty much) only do Fire damage. 
• Fire Primary/Secondary sets include typed-damage PBAoE

The second point is IMO a slight hangover in player thinking from the earliest days of Live when a Fiery Aura Tanker could trivially use Blazing Aura and collect XP from DE Swarms. The game has had a lot of changes since then, but PBAoE damage where a player has to do very little to earn rewards has a strong appeal to some.

 

When you read certain (older) threads specifically about "nerfs to fire farms", most of what the complaints involved was that the 'default' mobs in 'Fire Farms' used Fiery Melee attacks which were given a Defense debuff component, so previously 'soft-capped' Fiery Defensive characters couldn't simply rely on the Fire defenses alone... so AFK farming had to be rethought by those players. Other Homecoming changes have been seen as 'nerf to farms', including an XP exploit that allowed for massive Inf by characters permanently locked at level 49, and a change to limit the ultimate amount of Empyrian merits that can be collected by characters via simply hitting every 3rd level.

 

If a solo player wants Incarnate rewards, they probably can't do better than Heather Townshend's DA arc at x1. That can be run with very few necessary fights in about 10 minutes, with some variety based on a character's damage types/output. It can be 'farmed' for inf and drops at x8.

 

If a solo player wants Vanguard merits, the best mission IMO is Ghost Falcon's. There are plenty of other Rikti-based missions, but I find that wide-open map to be a pretty convenient one to use at x8. Rikti aren't generally popular to "farm" outside of a Mothership raid or Invasion event for reasons... but any character that can chew through them does just fine 'farming' that mission in my experience.

 

For Merits, the most straightforward method of solo is to find a (low level) mission that grants merit rewards. There are a variety that offer roughly 1 Merit/minute. You can do better than that, but sometimes the total time investment is more than I like to invest.

I actually also discovered Converter Roulette (as the entire reason I want to farm is purely for Inf.) and that's been going well!

[arcane]

3 hours ago, TheMultiVitamin said:

In my casing, it's that they have story to them. They're not just for leveling and farming, but they have plotlines and the like. I play my characters as RPed as I can so SF/TF's having story means, narratively, it'd be weird if my character did them more then once. Of course that's me being pedantic as all hell but that's just how it is for me.

That’s going to be insanely limiting in the endgame. Good luck with that.

[Laucianna]

You can farm on almost any kind of toon, I've seen Blasters and Controllers farming with ease and I know I can farm with ease on my Kheldian, with a good build it isn't difficult (And you can have 3 builds on 1 character so you can have a build more tailored to farming if you want)

The main thing I never really understood about the whole theme of the character limiting what they can do (From what I have seen) seems to only apply to farming? If you join a MSR you are killing around a thousand Rikti as a league, if you join most TFs you are fighting an Arch Villain/Hero, so when it comes to Artificial battles (Fire Farms) would your character in lore not be able to do it 💛

[TheMultiVitamin]

9 minutes ago, arcane said:

That’s going to be insanely limiting in the endgame. Good luck with that.

Sure, but only if I'm trying to incarnate them and the like, which isn't my goal for characters. I play purely for story and RP, nothing else really. Mechanics are cool and I might indulge, hence why I'm farming Inf., but not my focus.

[TheMultiVitamin]

57 minutes ago, Laucianna said:

You can farm on almost any kind of toon, I've seen Blasters and Controllers farming with ease and I know I can farm with ease on my Kheldian, with a good build it isn't difficult (And you can have 3 builds on 1 character so you can have a build more tailored to farming if you want)

The main thing I never really understood about the whole theme of the character limiting what they can do (From what I have seen) seems to only apply to farming? If you join a MSR you are killing around a thousand Rikti as a league, if you join most TFs you are fighting an Arch Villain/Hero, so when it comes to Artificial battles (Fire Farms) would your character in lore not be able to do it 💛

I can't speak for anyone else, but in my casing it's more like "Well I already resolved this plotline, why would I do it again (as it's the exact same) if it's already been solved?" While in Farming AE missions there's not even plot so there's not much point (other then obviously farming, that's what they're made for after all). So like, doing MSR once (potentially multiple times since I doubt the Rikti only have a single mothership), Hamidon once, Fog Labyrinth is doable multiple times because narratively it makes sense that you can.

This changes once 50 is hit because that's when, in my casing anyway, my character would naturally gain access to Ouroboros and thus time shenanigans, so repeat missions are just alternate timelines (narratively for my characters that is). Another adjustment happens if I'm playing a character that has Time powers themselves, in which they can do repeats and the like right from the get go.

It's a bit challenging sure, but it's fun and it makes sense for my characters RPly and the like for me, so it gives me immense enjoyment. Even more so since I like to read all the mission text and dialogue (which is why I mainly solo, as the people I'm grouping with from LFG channels typically just want to rush through, which is understandable, especially if they've already played through it multiple times). All of it's part of the fun for me!

Edited 6 hours ago by TheMultiVitamin

[Without_Pause]

7 hours ago, TheMultiVitamin said:

if there's any way to farm Inf. or Salvage without needing to dedicate a whole character to it?

The salvage bit is just a character who can solo at x8. There are many characters who can do it. You can make a regular build for them and not even worry about a farming build. You were doing on Brute. That would work. 

[KC4800]

It hasn't been said yet, but with the winter event coming up soon, it is particularly well suited to an Ice tank. You can really farm some of those Father Time, Baby New Year and Lord and Lady Winter missions and make good coin.

[lemming]

1 hour ago, Without_Pause said:

The salvage bit is just a character who can solo at x8. There are many characters who can do it. You can make a regular build for them and not even worry about a farming build. You were doing on Brute. That would work. 

Pretty much any build that's decent can start taking on higher difficulty.  You use that to fund more specialized builds, or characters.    Once you get to a certain point, you'll wind up just throwing stuff together.  (granted, this is from five years of playing now, but it doesn't take that long)

 

I don't have near the influence that I see others tossing around, but I tried out hundreds of alts and retired most of them.   That wound up generating a lot of inf since I tend to dump a lot of stuff into auction.  Enhancements and recipes tend to go to one of the keeper alts that I'm still building up.

 

I used to play mostly on Excelsior, and thru different means wound up on Everlasting.   With the name release, I got a few of the names on Everlasting that were from Excelsior and moved a dozen over.   Those were from back in the day of mostly basic IOs, so been building them up.   From what I have stocked,  etc... I have finally been running out of stock, but even then, I redid a tanker for about 80 million.   If I didn't have stock, it would be much more.  (only one VR needed to be bought out of 18)

[Laucianna]

3 hours ago, TheMultiVitamin said:

I can't speak for anyone else, but in my casing it's more like "Well I already resolved this plotline, why would I do it again (as it's the exact same) if it's already been solved?" While in Farming AE missions there's not even plot so there's not much point (other then obviously farming, that's what they're made for after all). So like, doing MSR once (potentially multiple times since I doubt the Rikti only have a single mothership), Hamidon once, Fog Labyrinth is doable multiple times because narratively it makes sense that you can.

This changes once 50 is hit because that's when, in my casing anyway, my character would naturally gain access to Ouroboros and thus time shenanigans, so repeat missions are just alternate timelines (narratively for my characters that is). Another adjustment happens if I'm playing a character that has Time powers themselves, in which they can do repeats and the like right from the get go.

It's a bit challenging sure, but it's fun and it makes sense for my characters RPly and the like for me, so it gives me immense enjoyment. Even more so since I like to read all the mission text and dialogue (which is why I mainly solo, as the people I'm grouping with from LFG channels typically just want to rush through, which is understandable, especially if they've already played through it multiple times). All of it's part of the fun for me!

But the AE Farming missions are training sessions? You don't just train once and never again, you do it again and again 💛

Part of the enjoyment of RP for me at least is finding reasons for my character to get involved, it gives me the chance to both develop that character story wise and be able to do the content with a good reason 😄

Edited 2 hours ago by Laucianna

[Frunobulax]

You could also just design your own farm. The entire point of farming in AE is to gain the most money/xp as you can in the easiest and most efficient way possible.  So you could tailor the fights to your character strengths and weaknesses, and even tactics.

 

Alternatively, you can mostly patch whatever holes your character has to hang in whatever farm you find and like by simply using insp.

 

The important thing for farming is obviously surviving, and killing. It doesn't matter how you accomplish that, you could use insp and incarnates as crutches the entire time and if you crush everything to your satisfaction, your alts are still leveled, and your pockets are still full of loot. You won't be quite as quick as somebody who achieves the same dmg/def/res caps and has also sorted their procs and recharge, but you'll gain the resources to change that if you so choose.

 

You can stuff your mail with inspirations to retrieve at will, and you can use macros to combine incoming insp drops to what you want. You can search inspiration combination macros to achieve this. Here is an example of syntax used: /macro smallR "inspcombine Sturdy Enrage$$inspcombine Insight Enrage$$inspcombine Respite Enrage$$inspcombine Catch_A_Breath Enrage$$inspcombine Break_Free Enrage$$inspcombine Luck Enrage" that will turn insp to reds. You can of course do this with any size and colour of insp, and shore your toons up that way.

 

If you box you can stuff your alts mail with insp too, and then just window over and hit return when your own supply is running low. You probably won't have to do anything like that once you get used to the macros, but the option is there. 

 

 

[TheMultiVitamin]

2 hours ago, Laucianna said:

But the AE Farming missions are training sessions? You don't just train once and never again, you do it again and again 💛

Part of the enjoyment of RP for me at least is finding reasons for my character to get involved, it gives me the chance to both develop that character story wise and be able to do the content with a good reason 😄

That's a good idea, I didn't think to frame AE as Training sessions! Especially since Inf. isn't literal money game narrative wise, it's like resources, connections, etc that you spend to get what you need, so training in AE and getting Inf. from it absolutely could be narratively worded as just your training getting better and able to help others, thus garnering more support and connections to utilize.

 

43 minutes ago, Frunobulax said:

You could also just design your own farm. The entire point of farming in AE is to gain the most money/xp as you can in the easiest and most efficient way possible.  So you could tailor the fights to your character strengths and weaknesses, and even tactics.

 

Alternatively, you can mostly patch whatever holes your character has to hang in whatever farm you find and like by simply using insp.

 

The important thing for farming is obviously surviving, and killing. It doesn't matter how you accomplish that, you could use insp and incarnates as crutches the entire time and if you crush everything to your satisfaction, your alts are still leveled, and your pockets are still full of loot. You won't be quite as quick as somebody who achieves the same dmg/def/res caps and has also sorted their procs and recharge, but you'll gain the resources to change that if you so choose.

 

You can stuff your mail with inspirations to retrieve at will, and you can use macros to combine incoming insp drops to what you want. You can search inspiration combination macros to achieve this. Here is an example of syntax used: /macro smallR "inspcombine Sturdy Enrage$$inspcombine Insight Enrage$$inspcombine Respite Enrage$$inspcombine Catch_A_Breath Enrage$$inspcombine Break_Free Enrage$$inspcombine Luck Enrage" that will turn insp to reds. You can of course do this with any size and colour of insp, and shore your toons up that way.

 

If you box you can stuff your alts mail with insp too, and then just window over and hit return when your own supply is running low. You probably won't have to do anything like that once you get used to the macros, but the option is there. 

 

 

Fair enough! I had been avoiding AE subconsciously due to a previous CoH Homecoming endeavor I had attempted called the Writers Guild so I glimpsed over just, making my own farm if needed.

Luckily Converter Roulette has been paying dividends now that I know how to do it so It's likely I won't even need AE either way (unless I want to level and farm that way, but I generally want to level organically via story content and the like.)