Killing multiple foes at once...

I have heard som rumors. And I think it's kinda true. Most farming builds, the focus on killing the whole lot as fast as you can, leaving nothing behind. This is in 90% of the cases done in the way that you try to kill all the foes at the same time, VwK Warrior Farmer for example. I have read that this makes you get less drops. Have no clue why, but it seems like the case. Don't get very much from killing 10 foes at once... (And yes, I know about loot-scaling and that it has a huge impact aswell) but anyway, you get the point.

Do you get less loot by killing multiple foes at once?

Edit: Sorry if a post like this already existed, signed up yesterday here so haven't checked around that much )

It varies for me. Sometimes when I take out a large group I wont get any drops at all and others I get tons. Roll of the dice I guess.

Same thing here. Sometimes a mob of them will fill up the backpack, other times the same mob will only drop 2 things.

Alright, yeah I guess it's all about luck and such, but read at the W/Me UW solo build (whom seems to be the record holder in speed for warriors in UW) that you shouldn't aggro to many smites as you wont get as much loot (ectos and such) than if you aggro just 1.

Quote: Originally Posted by Murmel

Okay, thanks for the replies everyone

i havnt tested this quite enough to call it a fact, this is speculation; but in the few days ive spent farming glacial stones in HM, ive found that by aggroing one mob of 4 or so at a time, killing them one mob at a time, does grant you greater loot than aggroing all you can at once. my guess is they want to grant the loot to regular teams doing quests. a team would aggro one grp at a time, while a farmer would aggro everything.

also, im most likely barkin up the wrong tree, and its completely chance like the others have said

I don't farm, but a couple of days back my L11 Ele was, without any henchies, slaughtering mobs of 6+ elementals in the Pockmark Flats (on the way to the Temple) with Phoenix + Lava Font causing many simultaneous kills (though only 5-6 at a time) and almost every one of them dropped something - maybe one or two items fewer than the number of elementals in the mob.

Of course, little of value (one improved sale value blue and a highly salvagable sword that gave 5 iron being the best , but ~15 scorched lodestones and slightly fewer granite slabs in the drops isn't all that bad for the path from the Eastern Frontier portal to Serenity Temple.

Personally, I think the theory that simultaneous kills cuts down on the loot has to be wrong - unless the number has to be *large* for it to kick in. (and, on a related note, I thought loot-scaling was supposed to reduce loot while having fewer party members than the max - but I get *way* more when I can solo than when I bring henchmen or go with other people)

Quote: Originally Posted by Murmel

nvm my post . . . . .

Actually, I noticed that too. When I kill Elementals 8 at a time (E/Mo) I get maybe 2-3 drops. When I do it with toucher, I get at least 4 or 5 drops. Or scythe EDA ranger farming Jade Brotherhood gets more drops than Mo/N with SS.

The short answer is; nobody in this thread has a clue. The basic answer is yes, you get less loot when you kill 10-12 enemy at the same time when compared to, for example 5-6. But not the obvious way.

Ok loot scaling is the cause, so let's say you pull 18 Smite Crawlers in the UW, and kill them using an ele or a W/Rt (takes them all down medium-fast). You will always get less drops than if you pulled 1 group, killed it, pulled another group, killed it etc.

Now I'm not sure how this holds when you farm like, 1 group somewhere then rezone and repeat.

If you check Glacial Stone farming builds, they mostly use single-target spells (example: sliver armour). This is because it is tried, tested and PROVED that you will get more glacial stones per run if you kill the enemy off one at a time. If you got the same number of drops off killing all of them at once (which, btw, you can do) then people would do that. But I tested this myself back in the trial weekend, when you could only do it in NM, and again in HM once the game was released, and sure enough, 1-2 glacial stones and 2-3 drops per run.

Check out older threads on glacial stone farming about this if you need more info.

Oh and the UW stuff comes from my runs, and those of my friends and guildies and alliance members. If you do a run as a W/Rt, round it up in 3-4 pulls and be done (thats average 10-15 smites per pull) then you get < 1k per run (from drops both cash and whites/blues/purples). If you take, example, the A/E Shadowform Build, you can't kill that many at once, or Zealots Fire will wipe you. And without fail, killing 1-2 groups per pull (that's 8-10 pulls) gives 1-2k in drops. Thus you end up with speed vs profit. It doesn't affect ectos etc though.

Anyways hope this is somewhat helpful..

My own experience is that killing all at once DOES result in less drops
I will use 2 farms to illustrate this.

On my monk I can farm the djinn in the hidden city of ahdashim by using Spoil Victor which kills only 1 foe a time and results in an amazing amount of drops, 1/2 of the djinn are dropping. (like lootscaling wasn't even there, amazing)
However, when I do the raptor farm, which kills all the raptors at once, I usually get only 3-4 drops from 24 monsters.

If you want I'll post some screeny's to "prove" this

well, this is all speculation, but this has been my experience:

killing a group of monsters all at once has decreased my drops significantly, and i've actually done a few tests with this because it used to bug me to no end. i did 20 Hard Mode Zelnehlun runs - 10 with SS, 10 with Spoil Victor (this was NOT on a weekend with event drops.) the change in drop volume was ridiculous. with SS, it would vary from 0-5 drops from the group. with SV, though it took much more time, i could quadruple the amount of drops i got, without increasing the amount of lootscale-exempt items dropped (golds, tomes, etc.)

tl;dr imo, if you kill them all at once, you miss out on some merch food.

the basic answer to this question is yes, you get less merchfood.

the long answer to this question is no.
when you kill creatures one group at a time, it takes longer then if you'd kill more then one group at a time, in the end its all the same, if you kill bigger groups the run goes faster, but gives you fewer drops, if you go one group at a time then it takes longer, but you get more whites.

so in the ends its probally better to go with bigger groups, you'll get the same amount of golds/purples but fewer whites, the run also goes quicker so if you farm with bigger groups the overal run is a lot faster, allowing you to do more runs, where as a 1 group killer gets more whites but the same amount of golds/purples in one run but takes a lot longer, then i'd take the bigger groups less time over the smaller groups more time variant

from what i've noticed when farming big mobs, i only get 1-10 things from a mob of roughly 30. If i killed them all at the same time, i will get no whites at all and 0-3golds and some other stuff. If i kill them each slowly over time, the item gain is slightly higher.

Ive already gave the correct answer. If some of you dont want to believe it that is your choice.

But heres a few screenies. BTW i can repeat the result everytime.


3 kills 3 drops killed at the same time.


another one

ANd I can show you guys at anytime.

That's an awful test. Go do a luxon assassin run, and kill all 25 at once, and kill them one at a time, THEN show your drops...I might go do that now...

Quote: Originally Posted by Amazing Stroopwafel

Ok...I just did a luxon assassin run, killing about 25.

In the first run, I ran SS and body blocked them so they all died at the exact same time.



As you can see, I got 6 drops, three being chocolate bunnies. (Note; IP and Suffering were not used...Those are used in my normal Luxon Farm build, because I kill them in groups of four at a time, and don't body block them so one will always run off. Suffering stops him from regening and IP kills him faster than SS.)

Just a minute later, I did a run with SV and Necrosis



As you can see, I got 21 drops, three being chocolate bunnies. So it would seem that Mass agro lowers drop rates of non-event items.

The drops were never touched, both pictures were in HM and within minutes of eachother. The only difference was one used SS, and one used SV/Necrosis.

Oh, and manitoba1073, my test is better in that you only kill three, while I kill 25, and you can clearly see the difference. And I also can repeat my results every time.

MLiC