Farming!
Tiny Guide to Farming (After the Feb'12 Nerf)
So, you're ready to invest stamina into hitting monsters solely for the purpose of Favor Point drops?
This guide should give you some idea on how to start and what you may need to do somewhat effective farming.
The Nerf
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The Devs have capped fp drops to 10 per 1000 stamina used. After that, and probably reset upon gaining a level,
your drop rates go down to about zero. This won't affect most people, as it now requires about 2000 stamina to
get 10 fp on average. In addition to that, demi-slot drops have been reduced at the lower damage thresholds.
For example, 560k damage on Skaar used to net 2-4 demi-slots and after the nerf people have been typically getting
1 slot or even 0 slots for that damage. This corresponds most probably to your attack stat; the higher your stat
the more likely you will get less demi-slots for the same damage since your damage per stamina with a high attack
stat is also past a certain threshold. Lower number of demislots means less favor points.
Secondly, the Devs have nerfed favor point to demislot ratio IF you don't put enough stamina into attacking a
monster. For example, anything under 80 stamina for most players nets a fp to demislot ratio of zero. Less ratio
means less favor points of course.
Effective Farming
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The exact numbers are as of this date not known because it varies with your attack stat. Some have reported that
for them 80 stamina on a Skaar is effective, gets 2-4 demislots, and amounts to about 560k damage. My personal
results have differed on 560k damage on Skaars. I have been able to get no favor points on a few dozen Skaars
with those numbers. Here are my numbers for Ragnaroks:
Stamina per Ragnarok: 100-155, depending on crits
Damage per Ragnarok: 1 million, always, my target damage number
Demislots per Ragnarok: 2-4 (average of 3)
FP to Demislot Ratio: 38/184 or 0.2065
Total Monsters Killed: 60
FP to Monsters Killed: 38/60 or 0.6333 (about 2 every 3 rags killed)
Attack Stat: 1146
Effective Attack (Dolomar, elite guard): 1466
FP/1000 stamina (assuming 130 average stamina per monster): 4.87
As you can see, and if you have read my Tiny Guide to Tagging, the FP to demislot ratio is pre-nerf level so I am
doing enough stamina to get past the nerf. However, my minimum damage for getting 2-4 demislots has been raised from
628k to 1000k because of the nerf.
What to Do
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Using my numbers as a starting guide, do some experimenting to find out how much damage you need to do on a monster to
get maximum demislots, typically 2-4 for Skaar or Ragnarok. 3-5 on Cronus. A helpful tool is Tim Nyota's Monster/Loot
Spreadsheet on th forums.
Then experiment to find out if you are getting ANY drops at certain stamina levels.
Find a mix of stamina and damage that should get you good results, You can find a monster's pre-nerf FP to demislot
ratio in my Tiny Guide to Tagging on the forums. Skaars was 0.185 for example.
Hit your stamina/damage targets for 100 monsters and keep the results. You may have to adjust your targets for optimal
results.