Curse

Francis Crawford · May 31, 2006, 02:25 AM // 02:25

Since the MM farming thread in the necro forum was precipitously closed, rather than moved, let's start another one here.

Where do you solo farm with MMs, and what skills do you bring?

Alternatively, where do you team farm with henchies, and which henchies do you bring, and which non-MM skills?

Key issues on the skill selection are:

1. How do you kill things other than with minions?

2. What do you do for self-heal?
A. Vampiric Horrors
B. Heal Area
C. Not a problem, because I'm minion bombing and have Taste of Death
D. Not a problem, because I bring henchie monks
E. Other ______________

Waha · May 31, 2006, 02:59 AM // 02:59

Used to farm without the mm nerfs, but surprisingly, the nerf did not affect much anyway....it helped the build through blood of the master and of course, flesh golem

this farming build is for solo outside gates of kryta mission, not that profitable, but I earned 1.5k+ for about 20mins(with flesh golem, it can be faster) for clearing the entire area. They drop plenty of gold, but make sure you have space in your invetory as well

at this point you might be saying, OMG farming low levels? Well yeah, but it beats farming an overfarmed area where the drops are less

armour set
Get the one that gives you energy, bloodstained boots is also an alternative

I only used a sup rune for death magic, you can consider others if you wish

attributes to add into
death magic 14(sup death and vile scar, you can try for a 16 for 10 minions)
blood magic 10
soul reaping 8

*play with blood and soul, if you find youself healing your minons most of the time, put more into blood, the choice is really up to you

Skills needed

Deathly swarm
Disease
blood of the master
bone fiend
bone horror
flesh golem
blood renewal
vampiric gaze

deathly swarm and disease is to help get your first few minions up.

You need ranged as well as melee minions as mergoyle wavebreakers will cast deep freeze and can kill off all your minions. ENSURE YOU HAVE AT LEAST BONE FIENDS AND BONE HORRORS OF AN EQUAL AMOUNT.

for those who do not know what to do...
ok so exit out of gates of kryta, see those 3 mergoyles? cast blood renewal often so as not to die, cast disease and deathly swarm on them until one of them dies, and animate flesh golem or a horror or fiend...the rest should follow up naturally, kill the rest and animate more minions, ensure you have a mix of range and melee. If you still have a strong minion army, you can take on the lvl 17 skales at the swamp area, make sure to kill them quickly or you won't have any corspe to animate as they cast putrid explosion

additional notes:
-mobs lvls range from 11-17
-Mergoyle wavebreakers(lvl 12) seem to drop good gold, I found 42 on one of them
-gold drops range from 20-80
-use blood of master, blood renewal, blood of master to ensure your minions have full health, addtionally vampiric -gaze
-replace your minions often, degeneration increases as time increases
-ensure you have plenty of inventory space before farming
-cast disease first on groups of enemies
-when your minion army is up, focus more on healing as your minions will most of the time kill your targets before your spells can do any damage
-this build can be used anywhere that has low level creatures (try lvl 14 or 15) and subsequently has higher lvl mobs in the area, although it will be risky

*edited for pictures

the route

A good place to top up your minions and energy, full of lvl 11 skales

awww...failed to reach 1.7k... but on the plus side, I found 3 golds on the way to gates of kryta 250gold =D

those that are still in the inventory after selling were not gained from the farm, except 1 krytan key, 1.416k farmed

Francis Crawford · May 31, 2006, 03:59 AM // 03:59

Yeah, Gates of Kryta. I took my MM up a couple of levels in the low teens solo farming there.

Anything higher level?

Waha · May 31, 2006, 04:29 AM // 04:29

looking for other areas, you could try Jaya buffs, I recieved plenty of rune drops, but they drop too many useless items as well, and it is hard to kick start your minion army (I got chased by a lvl 15 yeti while casting disease on him and taking on 7 lvl 12 tengus can be suicide)

also Zen Daijun mission seems like a good candidate for mm farming, have to test it out first though

you could also try sanctum cay mission,they have low level fire imps and the monsters lvl increases as you move on, but you have to focus alot on healing your minions, replace bone fiend with vereta's sacrifice. my thoughts

Francis Crawford · May 31, 2006, 08:07 AM // 08:07

I've done the Beetletun part of the ettin run with my MM. There are mergoyles to start with, which is always a good thing, and usually a lynx as well.

Another possibility is Hero's Audience. There's usually a dune lizard outside. It might be possible to get rolling and avoid the sand elementals.

Of course, if you get into marrow scarab land you're competing for corpses; still it's a thought.

There also are some bears outside Iron Mines, but right after them in either direction are medium-sized mobs, so I doubt that works.

Francis Crawford · Jun 02, 2006, 07:52 PM // 19:52

I just did Beetletun with a very suboptimal build (too lazy to profession-change back to monk <g>), and still took out the ettins and a bunch of tengu before my luck ran out. I'm sure with a little care one could clear all of Nebo Terrace.

I'm less sure that one would get anything too good doing so ...

To do North Kryta from there, I think it would be necessary to run through Ascalon Settlement and start picking on either lynxes or mergoyles.

WildmouseX · Jun 03, 2006, 05:09 AM // 05:09

well, since this is my first actual post here, i'll give a super breif background on how i wound up decideing to post.

by the time i had got to the Nahpui Quarter with my first character (a N/R20 tyran), i had determined that buying keys at 450g netted nothing but worthless purple crud. but in there, i found group upon group yelling for chest runs. did some research and found out why, the celestial weapons.

out of 5 characters, i don't really have any top of the line stuff (nvr farmed for personal weps, and don't buy from strangers), and figured that i'd run through a few times and try to find better stuff, so joined an all war team, and found out that they literally run through it. -oops. so i rushed my W/N there, and joined in the fun.

but found out pretty quick that my sup runes kept getting me killed, so off i went with my MM for a few kryta trips (1.5 K in 20 min- everytime. for a year now), and bought some armor, but got a different kind of armor then my other set, so while the extra health was good, i forgot to get armor that was +armor when enchanted like the rest of my set was, and ended up dyeing a little faster.

instead of farming kryta again, i decided to take my kryta farming set-up and find a way to farm the Quarter with as few henchies as i needed - might as well put a chance to get the weps i want while i was makeing the money to go get them.

after a few tries i came up with a 4 bot team that does pretty well. 2 war's, and 2 healers..

durring my 12 runs with the war, i got a sheild (3rd run) which i traded un-id'd for an awsome shadow sheild and some money, and the daggers(10th run)..... the first trip i took in with the MM and this bot team, the first star blade dropped another sheild, and i found the longbow in a chest - and fully explored the area. but my next three trips through i didn't last long, cuz of trying some varriations on the team, trying to streamline it.

i came looking in here for good MM farming builds to see if i could tweak what i have, came across this thread, and that's about it. so i decided to share what i had, and went back in to take screenies, but only remembered to hit the button, twice....

again, as you can see i got another chest drop, and another drop off a star birdie. - this trip through, i made a tatical error that got us killed at the turtle.
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the skills i bring:
blood of the master
taste of death (bring for stragity, not health - explained later)
serpants quickness
minnions
feind (- will probly replace, hardly use on this farm)
flesh golum
comfort animal
tame

i'm pretty sure every MM has the same runes, the attrib points might get some tweeking, but they've been working good as is.

go through the right portal, and use the might of your party to drop the patrol that cross's the bridge to get your golum. if the second guy is there, then you can also get some minnions. - when you cross the bridge ( and all through out the area, when you aproach a new group) - don't attack the same guy that your golum does... if you do, all of your wars and pet will crowd around 1 guy, and the rest will run past and take out your monks and then you. on the other hand, if your whole team takes on one guy, and your golum take on another you have a wall of melee fighters that the rest can't get past.

the golum should drop his right around the time your's is ready to go, so anticipate it and fire off serpants quickness. as the first two bodies drop, fire off minnions as fast as you can, once you get momentum going, you almost can fire it off as fast as it recharges. - even when i have 10 beasties, i keep fireing it off, you keep the ones you have refreshed - and the old ones that drop give you 5 more energy then it cost to cast em(with soul reaping at 10 that is).

when you get too the boss's, pull out the bird guys as far as you can, and while you are fighting and turning them into minnions, manuver yourself around the boss without attacking him. when the last bird guy drops, all your bots will come to you, and all the minnions will attack the boss. - at this point, use taste of death to drop all your minnions and golum b4 they kill it. - the boss's stay in their areas, so they wont chase you.

as long as you don't kill the boss's, you are in a manigible position. just turn away, and start another fight with a small group of birdies, get your golum and start all over again.
-----------

this isn't exactly a dominateing build, i went three more times after i took screenies, and only cleared out all the birds one more time (but got to the last boss the other two times) - the two biggest mistakes that get me killed are attacking the same guy my golum does, and not killing the golum first when trying to save the boss'. - when i can keep those two things streight, it's almost a walk in the park.

alot of people might complain about haveing a pet, and aside from being an extra front line guy to make your wall of defense, there realy isn't much point to him being there. troll urgent for self healing and healing springs to keep your minnions alive longer; would be good replacements as their both use the same attrib as serpants.., and if your concerned about healing, i haven't realy needed it ( except when both healer bots go down)...... i got mine in pre-searing (Moa-bird) and i just love my Lil Pecker. if you bring low level pets, they die fast and can give you your golum early on, this experienced one takes alot of damage that might otherwise go to my war bots who are dealing out the real dmg (aside from fleshy that is). - i've played MM's with pets both ways (suicide minnions and dmg decoys), and like them both about the same. (suicides are good for PvP, (if the other team doesn't have a necro))

i'd imagine a ME/N fastcasting necro, with fast skill recharges would work as good, if not a little better. actually any profession that has a increase skill recharge would probly work good like this, giveing this alot of flexibility for everyone to find an optimal build.

i am considering replaceing minnions and feind with vamp. horror and regular horror's.. and try to see if giveing up numbers for lvl might work a little better.

overall, considering that i got 2 celestials dropped from the star birds; i proclaim my days of chest running over, and my days of MM farming for celestials has begun (till they nerf it like they did my UW solo monk). - anyone finding good tweeks to this build and stragidy, i'd love to hear it.

WildmouseX · Jun 03, 2006, 06:50 AM // 06:50

quick update: tried out vamp horrors and reg horrors- and cleaerd all the bird guys. had to kill the monk boss cuz he was guarding the last chest, but otherwise worked right to plan. i found myself not needing to use serpants quickness with this set-up, because they recharge as fast as the other casts - so you can just alternate between them - going to replace it tomarrow with healing springs to keep the beasties alive longer.

only managed to have 4-5 minnions at a time, but their added health and dmg made up the difference.

it was a grape run, that netted the same 1.5k that i could have gotten in kryta for half the time. figureing the cost of keys, this trip was a loss - but overall, the finds i previously had today are more then enough to justify the expense.

Francis Crawford · Jun 04, 2006, 03:19 AM // 03:19

The birdies can be soloed, if I recall correctly, but it was pretty slow.

I did it with some version of my standard Ether Renewal build. But it is slow at killing rangers, and there are a lot of ranger birdies ...

2ndName · Jun 04, 2006, 04:06 AM // 04:06

Man, I did 3 trips with my MM (55 build). Not a single gold item. I might try it again, but I dunno. I was running without any henchies, just soloing it and cleared up about 75% of the map until I ran into the Turtle boss by accident, ooops.

WildmouseX · Jun 04, 2006, 05:23 AM // 05:23

i will admit that i had very lucky day, but i've done some refineing and have improved the performance results, but not so luky on the drops. first i charted 2 more paths that i was walking by, that were chaulk full of birdies.. here's everything mapped

i changed serpants quickness for feral lunge, and since this pic changed reg horrors for feind... the attrib pt's. now are death maxed, soul reaping 9, and beast mastery at 10 - with 5 left over points that don't fit anywhere usefull.

now i can get my pet to deal out near as much dmg as the flesh golum, with a +25 dmg and bleading for 15 sec's. the feinds and vamp horrors are working out good, way more trustworthy then the minnions. and feinds charge fast so you can build up an army of ten in the bigger fights.

i've been able to clear the area more often then not today, out of 6 harvests, i only died twice. but the drops only netted two celestials for the day. one of the trips i cleared out, i decided to kill the bosses and see about getting drops off the essences. - and low and behold, you can.

i dropped the monk first, and farmed with just his essence floating around, then took the turtle, at which point i lost my golum and had no other birdies to make a new one from... but that didn't matter, the bot team was able to handel it no problem... spent about 20 min farming the essences that were spawning everywhere and got enough blue and purple drops to compleately fill my invintory. then i took down the mes, figureing that was going to be the end of farming essences, but kept going for about another 20 mins, untill i got bored.

unfortunetly, i didn't get any celestial drops from the essences, but after the 40 min of just farming the endless supply of them, i did get a gold focus drop- so i am optimistic. - that run netted 3.8k in gold and merch sales; and 11 of the essences that you trade to the colector in the next town. - next time i have a lucky streak again, i'll try it again.

i don't think going solo without bots makes any difference in if the celestials drop or not, pretty sure that's all compleately random; but they do make it take a reasonible ammount of time (bout 45 min a run if you clear all birds and no boss's, around 25-30 if you just do the edges). they also greatly increase your chances in getting through it all, esp after you drop all your minnions at the boss and have to fight your way out of his range. - they do take away the number of drops you get, so i guess it's all just personal choice of getting every drop, or geting through it quickly with less hassel.

WildmouseX · Jun 08, 2006, 07:02 PM // 19:02

just a quick update,after a few days of mission and questing i decied to do another farm here, and again had a pretty lucky run - 2 bows (which seems to be my trademark, as out of 15 celestials i have gotten, 8 have been bows), a scepter and a sheild.

since it was a luckey run again, i went ahead and started farming the boss essences, spent about an hour and didn't turn up any celestial weps (still got a few purples and a couple golds) - i did however pull out 20+ colectors essences - so it's posible that the dev's foresaw this endless farming and took efforts to keep it from happening. from here on out, my farming runs will only include the birdie guys, as farmng the essences wastes alot of better spent time. even if they do drop celestial weps, it's way to few and far between to make it worth it.