Farming and -ga spells

[Chveya]

Today I was farming mobs in Konschat Highlands; my method was to train 10-15 bees and/or saplings and then fire off a -ga spell or two to wipe them all out. At one point, a couple people ran by me, and one of them targeted one of my "unclaimed" mobs, cast one of their own -ga spells, and wiped out my entire chain. Then, the person they were with did an emote /laugh at me. I asked them why they did that, and they basically said "Stupid, don't you know that -ga spells kill drop rates?"

Besides from being pissed that they stole my entire chain, I was surprised to hear this bit of information. I haven't noticed any difference in drop rate between when I use regular spells or AoE spells, but maybe I am stupid. ^^ I asked my LS and they said they had heard SE nerfed AoE spells like that, but they didn't know for sure. Does anyone here know if this is true? If so, I'll just have to lvl a melee job for farming I guess. ><

Thanks in advance!

[Kyiera]

I don't know of any "hard evidence" about -ga spells nerfing drop rates per-sey, but I have noticed that I tend to get less drops when AoE farming than killing mobs one by one. I've recently been doing the Yagudo Bead Necklace gtind for Norg fame, and I noticed that when I train 10-15 yagudo I only get about 2 necklaces dropping if i kill them with AoE spells. If I kill 15 yagudo in a row without AoE training, I get about 10-13 necklaces (granted, I'm /thf with TH so i get a few extras :))

That being said, I've found it's faster to melee-farm in the long run ... hope that helps :D

[Feba]

-ga farming is both inefficient, rude, and there is a high probability that AoEs lower drop rate in some way.

[Chveya]

Thank you for your replies. As far as being rude goes, I make sure that I never farm in areas that are used for exp camps, and if I see anyone else soloing or farming near me, I move. Since it is rather inefficient (compared to using a melee job), it's not like I'm clearing the area of mobs or anything. There's plenty left after one of my runs, and in the time it takes to complete a run (5 min or so), a good number of the mobs have popped again anyway. I don't have any melee jobs leveled past 11, so right now farming is my best option for making money.

After the incident at Konschtat, I decided to test the theory, and moved to Tahrongi Canyon and farmed using regular spells, taking mobs one at a time. Now that is inefficent. I have to rest much more often when I'm using that strategy. And I didn't notice any real difference in drop rate per minute.

-ga farming is not my long-term plan for making money, it's just what I have to work with at the moment.

Again, thank you both for the input. ^^

[Feba]

you really shouldn't use damage spells on single target farming, unless your life is in danger.


Get yourself a good whacking staff, (make sure your combat skill is leveled, it will help a lot), and just beat the monster to death.

also, since you're over lv30, you should have THF15 as a subjob, for TH use.

the only spells you should cast are drain/aspir, or debuffs/cures if you're really in danger.


As a black mage, i've solo'd EP mobs through stoneskin/blink/aquaveil and enfeebles, while meleeing the monster. At lv61, not many jobs can solo normally like that, and when you apply it to farming, which is on mobs far below EP, it is very easy to just melee them to death.

[supersimian]

Don't let people discourage you from farming any way that you want. Blm drops dont come that easy and the idea of runnning around with a blm farming with a staff is plain idiotic. I don't do this anymore cuz crafting is my new gil key but I used to do just what you are talking about with the AOE farming. You will get some hate everynow and then when you do that, but if you are the slightest bit ethical about it you should'nt get any justified flak from the haters, most of them complain on platforms of (what if). Most blm that AOE farm know better then to do that around parties or in areas where people are farming. There is nothing wrong with running around a lvl 10-20 zone, poisoning about 30 mobs, then dropping them all in 2 AOE spells when no one else is around using the area. When another party moved in when I would do that I would simply move on to the Maze and nuke crawlers or whatever because only a jerk would not leave for an xp party really. Also I dont thing that AOE spells decrease the drop rates at all, if you want to be crafty about it sub thf, thats what i did, and the AoE drop rates in Tahrongi where excellent, that zone is mostly only used by beechip farmers and the occasional excavator anyways. How else as a blm main can you attain the gil quick to start crafting and make gil in the way that provokes less hate?

Black Mage power is for using. If SE didn't want us to use blm spells then why did they give them to us?

I only ever AOE farmed the Tahrongi and when I was a little stronger I farmed either the Maze or tree cuttings in Zi'tah which is not AoE. But most implortantly do not AoE farm in the lowest tiered zones cuz the lvlers in those places will be justifiably pissed off. Also if there are teams of alot of lvls in the 2nd tier zones I would leave it alone and check out the other 2 lvl 2 tiered zones that AoE farming is good for at your present lvl.

If you are serious about drops then you shoud lvl up your thief to atleast to lvl 15, it makes a huge difference on all drops, including the AoE, you will watch the items scroll into your inventory and then you get your lesson in inventory management.

[Marakii]

Have to forgive me as im new. You cant switch your subjob back and forth can you? For example:

Im a BLM with a subjob as WHM. Switch it to THF for farming, and then back to WHM.

[Theyaden]

Nothing wrong with using staff or club I did that with my whitemage untill I got my thief higher to farm while looking for party. (BTW it's a good way to skillup those skills depending what level your club and staff are I brought both initially to level them up)You don't have to rest as much and since things I farm are usually much weaker than me I could kill them as quickly using club as I could training several and using banishaga. I definately noticed the difference in drop rate and didn't have to worry about people killing the trained mobs since I kill, move on kill move on. Additionally while training a bunch of mobs since they are held out of the respawn process until I finish gathering and kill them meaning adding time I need to wait for the clump to come back rather than circling back where my 1st kill has already repoped.
As for ethics if everyone who uses auga farming moved out of the way of other parties and farmers it wouldn't be noticed as a farming method. Besides a farmer should not have to leave because another farmer comes in I do move for xp parties as the exception. I don't use auga farming because it really is not as efficient. Now that my thief has flee as well as steal I use thief for farming (Steal added a little bonus, Flee added enough to put away my club in favor of thief main rather than sub)

[Raydeus]

Have to forgive me as im new. You cant switch your subjob back and forth can you? For example:

Im a BLM with a subjob as WHM. Switch it to THF for farming, and then back to WHM.

Yep, you can, but not many new players have THF leveled to 15 to do this, in fact I've even seen many lvl 75 players with the same problem.

Leveling THF to 15 after you hit 30 with your main job is one of the best ways to help yourself with gil making, and leveling THF to at least 37 really helps in the long run. :thumbsup:



Edit> About AoE farming it might have something to do with the way the game handles the amount of items at a given zone, but in my experience your chances of having bad drop rates increase drastically is you AoE.

[Taskmage]

Not that I've parsed it or anything, but drop rates withering when training or even getting links seems to be consistent with my experience.

[Icemage]

I didn't really notice a big difference between AoE vs. normal farming. What does seem to affect drop rate is level difference, though.

If I go out and kill things and earn XP for them, I seem to get good drop rates. The moment I start earning 0 XP for them, my drop rates plummet like the stock market on Black Monday.

Since you're unlikely to be -ga farming anything strong enough to score XP on, I think that more than anything else is what makes -ga farming drop rates suck.


Icemage

[Ziero]

Well as a thf, and someone who did much research on the subject of drops, the only thing I can tell you is that you can't really *prove* anything about what helps or not. -Ga farming is not excluded from this statement. Though I do hear that TH only affects the mob you target, which could be where the difference lies. My only experiance with AoE farming comes from a random cyclone I'll shoot off at 100% on 2-3 mobs that happen to be near each other at the time. I never trained more then 5-6 mobs while farming, but that has nothing to do with the lower drop rate rumor.

As a farmer myself, I feel concentrating on AoE usage only works to slow down your farming session. If you start a train and have one monster follow you for ten minutes, another for five, a third for two ect ect and then kill them all at once, that means it will be another five minutes before ANY of the monsters respawn again. Farming, just like EXP to me, is better when it comes in quick, small, continueous chains. Kill lots of monsters in little time and the rewards build up swiftly. Otherwise you end up waiting for repop timers and running all around just to find a mob.

I say get the staff, skill it up and kill quick and repeatedly, throwing in a few -gas/AoE WS when mobs are within range. It's better to kill a lot quickly them to keep them alive and wipe em all out at once.

[Icemage]

I say get the staff, skill it up and kill quick and repeatedly, throwing in a few -gas/AoE WS when mobs are within range. It's better to kill a lot quickly them to keep them alive and wipe em all out at once.

True, but for BLMs, MP = time. For melees who can turn their damage on and off just by engaging, it's a different story. For BLMs who must rest for MP, hitting many enemies simultaneously is much more efficient.


Icemage

[Crashnburn]

I've done alot of -ga Farming for Yagudo Necklaces in Gidde and I've noticed that the drop rate isn't great sometimes you do get lucky though. My Plan usually involves casting Diaga and then Running and getting alot of mobs together Attacking whichever Mobs is considered <bt> and meleeing. I unload Earth Crusher (aoe ws) whenever I have TP and my drop rates aren't too bad.

The problem with this is that you need to be able to survive and attack from alot of mobs at once.

BTW my record is killing 23 Yag's at once with Blizzaga II but I dinged 69 and got Firaga III so I'm gonna go and try to break my record on that.

[Joran Dax]

Well, IMO the person who -gaed your chain was a total ass in the sense that he pretty much stole from your work and reaped whatever benefits there were from killing those mobs. And if that -ga hadn't killed the mobs, depending on how much hate you had accumulated from them, its very likely that they would have continued attacking you and inflicting damage on you. At wich point he could have cast another -ga and wiped them out. Not very likely in lower level areas, but it DOES happen.

I remember I used to farm the Death Jackets at the beginning of Crawlers Nest because I needed the Royal Jelly to take my cooking 95-100. I would train 4 at a time and -ga them to death for the drops. It always came as a very efficient way of obtaining the Jelly, and since very few people XP on them because of Final Sting it was not getting in the way of a persons XP, which was lucky for me as it was the only mob I am aware of that I can solo that drops the Jelly. Well occasionally along would come So-and-so who was a melee or another mage, and he wanted to farm them too. So he would follow me around and when I trained and -gaed, he would pick up one and start to fight it. Now, a -ga3 delas about 50-60% damage to a set of 4 bees alone. So when he pulls it, the damn thing is STILL attacking ME because I have hate, and then he can proceede to finish it without any harm to himself and still get drops. Thats wht people who steal trained mobs like that really piss me off. They do no work at all and reap all the benefits of your work.

In any case I really have seen no difference with the drop rate of -ga mobs. I once did a 6-hour binge on those Bees, killing all 12 every either 7 or 15 minutes, depending on what their pop timer is, I'm not really sure. In total I obtained 11 stacks of beehive chips and part of a 12, and 14-15 Royal Jelly, without THF subbed. So if I were to go by this, I would have to say no it does not make any apperciable difference, or at least not enough to make me wanna care and solo each one.

[Jei]

Just a theory I heard what treasure hunter only applies to the single monster you're hitting. True or not, I don't know. But killing 1 monster at a time really gave me better drops. Might be just a feeling.

[Nukapai]

Whoever said -GA farming is rude; I'm sure it can be, if done in a rude manner and without any kind of consideration for your fellow player, but then the same could be said about any farming.

GA farming, just like any other kind of farming, can be done considerately and effectively.

I switch my farming methods according to:

a) what I am trying to farm
b) where I am farming
c) whether I have any additional goals/concerns that affect my choice of farming style

For example, GA farming for seeds in Gustaberg seems to be very effective. By the time you run from one end of the zone to the other, the mobs you caught going the other way have re-spawned. So you run around, constantly trailing mobs behind you.

Plus saplings hoppety-hopping behind you in a huge herd is a hilarious spectacle.
http://nukapai.typepad.com/photos/ffxi_general/runnuka.GIF
(Old pic; but you get the idea). :p

On the other hand, if I am farming in an area like Rolanberry fields, it's much more sensible to dig out my Earth Staff and just hit things. :)

[Ikaru]

As a farmer myself, I feel concentrating on AoE usage only works to slow down your farming session. If you start a train and have one monster follow you for ten minutes, another for five, a third for two ect ect and then kill them all at once, that means it will be another five minutes before ANY of the monsters respawn again. Farming, just like EXP to me, is better when it comes in quick, small, continueous chains. Kill lots of monsters in little time and the rewards build up swiftly. Otherwise you end up waiting for repop timers and running all around just to find a mob.

I say get the staff, skill it up and kill quick and repeatedly, throwing in a few -gas/AoE WS when mobs are within range. It's better to kill a lot quickly them to keep them alive and wipe em all out at once.That's pretty insightful, I like it. :thumbsup:

[Yuanlung]

AoE WS only go so far. I perfer using Spirit Taker for MP, and use that MP to nuke. It's much faster and you don't have much down time this way. Don't get stuck on the AoE nuke mind set either. Pretty often, single target nukes are more MP effecient than a -ga.

I either farm stuff that are a lot weaker than me and kill them in a continuous string, only AoE when a few spawns in range, or farm things that con EP to me (one by one, of course) with my fellowship NPC.

AoE in farming may be satisfying, but I just don't really find it all that efficient.

[Chocobo Knight]

Apparently there is a debate waiting to burst into flame here. On one side, we have the "drop rates blow" folk spearheaded by the omniscient(sp?) Icemage. On the other, there is the "It's all we've got as BLMs" coalition, loosely assembled. There are some people on the fence, with WS and the like. As a well-leveled BLM myself (62, not quite there yet) I must say that I never relied on AoE, instead using my staf and a few debuffs when hunting an item.

The perpetual n00b throws in two gil.

[Chveya]

Since I started this thread, I figured I'd come back and post an update. Taking the advice from someone on this board (I forget the name, please forgive me -_-; ), I purchased a scythe to use while farming. It took me about an hour to skill it up, then I headed out to my usual farming spot. It is working out really well for me. I no longer use AoE spells, unless I get accidental links or I see a number of target mobs close together. I really appreciate not having to rest so much to regain MP, and it is kinda fun to see 'big' numbers for my melee damage. ^^