On "Farming"

My 2 cents…

Add a system that allows boss farming specifically. This could be achieved by quest chain accomplishments (i.e. one must complete the quest and sub quest attached to it in order to unlock) and flags, that such act as a must done (such as Must defeat X boss in order to unlock for this repeatable system.

Ideally (imho) one must:

  • [li]Complete Normal mode[][]Must complete Quest and sub quest objectives to unlock[*]can only participate up to the bosses they have previously encountered in current Campaign Mode

Could be something along lines in the below video on Edge of Reality

WolfOverclockedGames where you run a gauntlet and face off against the bosses

or

Once pre requirements completed unlock a special Rift (new zone) also on edge of (or altered) reality that has locked and unlocked way-points/rifts/doorways scattered around the zone. One for each Boss (and again if your in say Elite but have only killed one boss) that that has been defeated (as unlocked).

Either ideal (imho) should yield zero xp, after all this concept is about getting gear and reducing time served in its pursuit.

This is an odd game for this discussion because i feel like in GD the boss drop rates are only fractionally better than normal hero drop rates- unlike other ARPGs. Final boss runs? really? his drops are just not that impressive- i’ve only farmed him 3-4 times but zero purples and very few blues. same as anywhere else. i get much better loot running the roguelike areas than “boss runs” unless you’re talking about Nemesis hunting-

but even that is much less like classic farming because you have to explore a bit- you don’t know where they’ll pop up.

i had to farm Ellena’s necklace and that was pretty brutal, but in almost 900 hours played that’s the only time i ever felt like i was doing some genuine tedious farming.

GD is an amazing game because the line between farming and just killing and zoning in general is very blurry- i always have fun clearing dungeons or clearing zones, for no other reason than to do it. and i haven’t felt that way since Diablo 2, but i feel like in GD i get rewarded more consistently.

My favorite thing to farm in this game are still Treasure Troves if I wanted to farm anything at all. They always seem to contain something useful. Otherwise I’m quite happy killing trash and finding heroes.

I would hate if the game started trying to funnel people somewhere, which is also why I’m against most end game favoring mechanics being added.

An option to reset the server without having to close and reopen would allow better group play. It refreshes the world but keeps the players connected ready to go again.

That would need to include a teleport back to cities to prevent overfarming.

It would have to be something that requires you to be in town to reset. Something like go to town, talk to bourbon and bam, world resets.

I know it’s something we’ll likely never see but I think everybody would welcome the change if it was done right. Something that prevents you from having to reset the god damn server every run, but doesn’t allow for abuse.

we don’t have endgame content yet. until then farming works just fine for me :stuck_out_tongue:

Here is my personal idea on the subject its really simple. What farming late game should be like:

  1. A run should not take 3-5 minutes like twin fall hive. The run ideally should last longer.

2- Drop rate need to be adjusted to reward those lenghty run.

My idea would be to remove some portals on ultimate and make the act boss have better drop rate. For example Instead of starting from the hidden laboratory we could start an Act1 run at the warden cellar or something. The boss room should only unlock when you clear all the elites on the floor. I think its simple, people could run the 4 act bosses which are usually fun to run but right now not worth.

I think the first thing we should ask is why people resort to boss farming?
The most simplistic answer is to gain items that significantly improve a characters ability over normal progress.

The second question that needs to be asked is why we need to change that behavior?
Because the imbalance makes every normal drop essentially a junk drop.
(By homestead i had my shown ground items tab set to green or better; everything less than that was under powered junk that i couldn’t be bothered with even to sell).

The third question is can we change that balance?
The answer is a resounding no as more effort is meant to equal more reward and if drops gravitate towards a central viability bosses essentially become a nuisance that should only be spattered around to hamper progress occasionally.
(Much like how they seem to currently be in grim dawn with their ‘cage’ matches)
Except now we have ‘set’ area bosses that are less interesting than randomized heroic monsters to battle and simply detract from the enjoyment of the game.

Bringing us to the fourth question; can we change other aspects of the game to make a marginalized system of equilibrium more attractive?
Lets go back to the start for a second people engage in figuring out the best strategy to quickly kill a significantly harder enemy in order to ‘item up’…
If that enemy is randomized in it’s qualities it becomes more interesting keeping runs feeling fresher & more engaging.
It also makes a run more difficult because planning will only go so far.
You cannot simply reward this without fortifying the behavior, but what if instead of giving a directly obvious benefit you gave a subjective benefit.
it would still be a reward would it not?
perhaps the answer lies in allowing input into the type of ‘reward’ a normal hero would have a similar chance of a rare item, a boss would allow the player a modicum of control over the type of drop (is it a melee weapon, is it an Armour piece, or is it jewellery?).
This would achieve the aim as when farming people are usually focused on something congruent to their build, while not being so overtly favorable as to mandate it as the way forward.
What about rewarding non-farming behaviour?
Would it be to farming detriment to allow a slower more methodical process to pay dividends?
What if basic item value was increased (with higher quality being a small percentage of total worth) and increasing the level shop items can be.
In essence the same benefit ‘choice’, for the same difficulty ‘effort’ and achieving the same goal ‘item up’.
Both ends being obscured of their balance by their subjective nuances.

If people need specific items for their builds to work and by the same breath Grim Dawn requiring items due to the way skills work; do we need to stop people from chipping away at getting those items.
We can already restrict them with item level, we can already hamper their min maxing with attribute requirements.
We would like to preserve the notion of a unique treasure, but where does such an adventurous journey seeking treasure become a grudging trudge to get a necessary piece of kit?
Perhaps we shouldn’t be using items themselves as the treasure is the point I’m making.

So far I got 3 characters to Ultimate. The third character was around lv.60 when completed the final boss on Elite.

As you know, in Ultimate it is almost impossible to progress with poor resists. So I am forced to “farm” until like 70 on Elite (currently lv. 67, progressing very slowly not enjoying the farming part, rather, I feel I am wasting my life, since I have only limited time for games unless sacrificing the important real life ones), which I felt really stressed and as a result I quite once the Grim Dawn itself for days.

Then I came back to play with less focused on the game but switching together between the other 2 characters. During the process to forcefully level the 3rd character, I remembered I wanted to level some faction reputations, which distracted the stress a bit.

Actually I wanted to make a 4th character, instead of leveling the 3rd character more, but after playing 3 characters in non-HC and 3 in HC, I am already aware of that without proper gears, it does not worth making new characters. I think the rare blue set items especially can be a good drive to make a new one.

Now I turn my eyes on my stash, the most complete set item is still 4/5 (and they have poor resists Sigh), needless to say, no unique sets, and I have around 20 legendary items, (of which 1/5 were dropped as duplicated), yet I already have 3 characters, so most of them are already in use. In conclusion, instead of making a new character, to keep “farming” seemed much better idea for me.

How about my relics for motivating myself to create new characters?, I only have 2 third tire relics, of course not enough to convince me to make a new one when without matching legendaries.

And now the Nemesis runs, the only faction available is of Blood Grove, the less time consuming ones are yet far from reaching the Nemesis level.

That is why I am on the forum now instead of actually playing the game.

Sorry for my bad English, and I hope there are some hints in my post that could improve the game.

Lots of farming wouldn’t be necessary if the game would simply offer more useful trading/gambling with merchants, something that - for reasons totally beyond me - other ARPGs are doing MUCH better than GD.

Sitting on hundreds of components, scrap and epic items and dozens and dozens of legendaries (often with multiple copies of many epics and legendaries) and having absolutely no use for these - on none of my builds - is just silly. All this stuff was legitimately farmed during endless hours, so if I can’t use it, then please at least give me the opportunity to trade it for something potentially more useful. What’s wrong about this?

We need more merchants/blacksmiths like Etram Fald, accepting more stuff than just Matters/Hearts/Bloods, offering more than just legendaries - and not hidden away in some far away dungeon.

If you still need reasonably rare items (like components or other epics/legendaries) in reasonably large numbers for trading, and if the result of trading is still a random one, then even this kind of trading will take its time and may feel a bit grindy, but at least this would provide some additional opportunity to get your hands on that epic or legendary or missing set item you’ve been searching for so long - and some gambling fun instead of the 937th nemesis or hive run.

This feature is already in game… It is called dismantling… The return rate is not so good…but it is there. I’ve seen data (done with 500+ epic items) showing about a 20% chance for a rare crafting piece. So it might take you 40 epics to get enough rare mats for one legendary…and then its another gamble on which legendary you get once you turn it in…but that gambling in there.

I’m not sure if dismantling legendary items would give you a higher % chance or not for the rare crafting items. My guess would be that it would.

So there currently a way to gamble those extra items away…just the return is somewhat poor for the cost to do so…

Even the scrap can be useful because there are some nice greens you can craft with it if you’re lucky enough to get the right affixes…

It sounds like we need an option, an expensive option, to reroll stats on legendaries that we already own?

  1. Stop using ellipses, you’re doing it wrong and it makes your post awful to read.

  2. I can’t dismantle a legendary into a different legendary. I can’t even dismantle 8 legendaries into a new legendary because I might not get the same material x8 and I certainly won’t get the 75k needed either (although that’s less of an issue).

I don’t mind farming as long as there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. If I know that I might need to kill a boss 500 times, but I’ll have to kill him 500 time at most to get what I want, okay! Sure, why not; 500 beatings, coming right up. If I have to kill a given boss a dozen times to have an opportunity to get his special drop which probably won’t have the stats I need it to have so I have to beat the pinata until the end of time because there’s so damn many prefixes and suffixes including nothing at all, that’s some bullshit. I have yet to see an MI that is worth my time to use; there’s plenty I’ve wanted to use, but it’s always “here’s a caster offhand with a soldier prefix and a melee suffix” or “here’s cronley’s ring, but it’s got no prefix at all” or what-have-you.

I’ve suggested this before, but what I’d really like to see is a Cobble option, wherein Darlet rips the prefix or suffix from one item (consuming it) and applies it to another item. Make it eat some scrap and some money and suddenly the vendors are worth talking to outside of being a trash can. Plus it gives people more things to reasonably trade for, and another outlet for scrap beyond repairing bridges.

Of course I know about dismantling, an overly complicated (and dynamite and iron consuming) process for turning things you don’t need in other things you mostly don’t need, too.

Just give me a merchant, where I can trade five or ten legendary items for one random legendary, and five or ten epics (or 25 or 50 components) for one random epic. Is that really too much to ask for, to get rid of all the stuff I don’t need?

Man, sometimes I really hate it how such really basic stuff is made unnecessarily complicated and tiresome by devs …

After recently starting to farm more seriously while levelling up new chars, in order to diverse my playstyle, I’d like to add my thoughts on the matter as well.

My typical game session is: log in, do a Salazar/Hive/Undercity/rotting croplands and sometimes BOC run on my farming char, then log on one of my alts, do a farm run with him where he can go, then go on with the story for a bit.

It helps switching things up while still getting a few extra legendaries.

However, as everyone already pointed out, getting a specific legendary is just awful.
Crafting legs tend to help as we can narrow down in a few categories but doesn’t feel as rewarding as dropping it from a powerful mob/boss.

What I would suggest is adjusting bosses loot tables so that they drop more frequently certain types of items - e.g Loggorhean would have more chance to drop a caster related legendary than others items - without removing diversity in the table.
Then, make them more difficult to reach and beat - could be by adding powerful elites that do not drop or buffing-traps mechanisms or increasing their power levels once the game is complete, but make their drops more rewarding and reliable.

Overall, it should not make it easier to get legendaries but easier to get specific ones for those really dedicated.

Additionally, a legendary-trading NPC would be really great as well, trading 3-5 legendaries would give you a legendary coming from one of the categories of the original items - e.g I trade 3legendary gloves and 2 caster off-hands - and I have 66%chance dropping a glove and 33%chance dropping an off-hand.

With those types of mechanisms, you can improve the overall farming behavior while keeping diversity and not making legendaries easier to get and making sure players can also make use of their not-so-useful legs sitting in the stash.

Probably lots of things I am not taking into considerations but it seems a good way to shift things up a little bit, towards a more rewarding and enjoyable gameplay without compromising on diffculty and diversity.

/me drop the mic !

My bad…:rolleyes:

yes, you can’t get 8 for 1. Probably closure to 25-40 for one. Unless you’re lucky and get all rare crafting mats from the 8. You can turn in the rare mats aren’t what you need for the type that you need. But that also is another place to run to and an additional cost. Definitely not an efficient process.

This is personal preference. Definitely plus and minus to have loot specific mobs. Would make it much easier to get what you’re looking for, but also much more boring for some as it removes freedom to farm what you want. I definitely enjoyed getting my Eldritch Gaze BP from the sentinel as it was one of the easiest Legendary pieces I need for my build, but man was it boring killing him 42 times to get it.

I used to be more disappointed about the extreme difficulty of getting certain pieces until I read a post where someone basically related those pieces to carrots on a stick. If you get your piece, what is your motivation to keep going? My first two characters I traded for the gear I needed for them. since I got all their gear, I no longer had the desire to play them as there wasn’t any other gear I needed. So now I, personally, worry less about getting those specific piece. However, I still understand were you’re coming from.

The original comment was kind of tongue in cheek. Since dismantling was around long before the BS to use rare mats to craft legendary items, I would guess the original plan for dismantling was to help people gain access to rare component pieces that were difficult to obtain. This would help newer players get some of the components when crafting those end game relics and not make the gear pieces they can’t use completely worthless (as you get nothing from vendoring them, so either store or dismantle). The idea of dismantling Legendary items in order to attempt to recycle them into new legendary items was just a byproduct once the BS was added and explains the complex nature of using that path.

I agree, it would be nice if they adding a feature with recycling in mind. I’m sure if that was what they planned the feature to do, it would be much less complicated then attempting to use dismantling to obtain legendary items.

Path of Exile fixed this problem with people just trading for what they want. You got a clear goal called gather X of Y currency. Most items you find can be converted into some currency that can then be used for your goal.

Maybe it is not the solution but it is a solution.

GD needs to find one as well and find it without access to secure servers and trading.

Torchlight 2 had a so-called Transmuter, where you could trade four uniques for a new one or two set items for a new set item.

IMO every ARPG should provide such a mechanism to make finding and hording useless stuff (and searching for missing set items) less frustrating. Swap rates may be debatable (3:1, 5:1, 10:1, whatever), but GD should not go completely without something like that.

The original idea to use dismantling for a few rare mats needed for crafting relics is perfectly fine (especially as you’re usually not crafting that many relics), but what GD urgently needs is something more appropriate to trade 1000 scrap, 400 Scavenged Platings, 250 Royal Jelly, 100 legendaries or hundreds of epics for new components, epics and legendaries.