Forum:Farming for Dummies...

READ THIS FIRST!
This guide is intended for people who have already gone through the normal channels (playing the game as it was intended to be, beating Crawmerax, farming the Armory, etc.) and have yet to come up with satisfactory gear. If you jump straight into something like what this guide is explaining, you're doing yourself a great disservice by taking the fun out of actually scavenging and coming up with great loot, as well as severely shortening the lifespan of the game for yourself.

I. Intro
Greets, everyone. I've been lurking the wiki and forums for a good amount of time now. Given all the great info I've gotten, not to mention the user-created maps, I figured it was time I give something back, hence this guide. I've seen quite a few posts from people claiming to have done *hundreds* of Armory and/or Crawmerax runs, and continuously coming up with the same crappy gear (i.e: no Pearlescents, repetitive Legendaries). Considering there are *TWO* seperate loading screens that say Craw' drops the best gear ever, and the intro video for the Knoxx DLC makes the Armory out to be the holding cell for tons of actually good gear, this is unacceptable. The answer, however, is *not* to WillowTree up your own "rare" weapons, nor is it to partake of any of those lifeless loot maps. There are two (that I know of) really good, challenging, and most importantly *fun* user-created maps that yield great loot more often than not (both of which require the Knoxx DLC). I won't go into how to get them installed, as there's plenty of info on that elsewhere. You can get started here.

II. The Farms
(Note: Having a mod with the +2 Find Rare Items attribute has been shown to impact the rarity of loot you find.)

The Crow's Nest
This map is fully farmable without any type of cheating; you'll just have to kill all the bad guys each time. This is by far the most rewarding place to farm, and arguably the most difficult. You'll be fighting through hordes of Level 60-65 enemies, including five bosses. Fortunately, nothing respawns, even if you die. I've found almost all of my Pearlescents here (I now have all 12, just need better quality ones :D )-- you'll *usually* get at least one per trip here, although I've seen as many as six come out of one chest. I don't want to suck all the fun out of it by walking you through each step, so I'll just say this: My cousin and I have scrubbed this place pretty thoroughly, and here's what we've found: 8 individual chests (2 you have to die to get [unless you're Lilith], 1 behind a fake wall), 1 room with 10 (I think) chests (keep an eye out for a loose vent), and 1 fountain chest containing well over 100 items (Pearlescents abound). By the way, how's your grenade-jumping? ;)

The Fifth Column
This map has a good payoff at the end, as well as decent drops from the bosses you fight throughout. If you want to farm the room with all the chests in it at the end though, you'll have to get your hands dirty with WillowTree. While the loot from here isn't as good as what you'll find at The Crow's Nest, it's extremely easy to get to the payoff once you've beaten it the first time. After you've completed the "Field of Dreams" and "Rinse and Repeat" missions at the end, you'll find that the vault is no longer accessible. To "fix" this, open your save in WillowTree (WT backs up your profile before saving any changes to it, but it's a good idea to make a backup yourself anyway), go to the Quests tab, and under "Current Quests", delete the two "Unknown Quest" entries with the following in their Quest String field: wp_enemies.Missions.Storm.agift and wp_enemies.Missions.Storm.freeforall (pro tip: quickly typing "UN" [no quotes] when the list is selected will go to the next "Unknown Quest" entry, although this isn't always reliable). The wiki says there's also hidden loot here; if anyone cares to divulge that information, by all means... :D

Contrast83 23:57, October 16, 2010 (UTC)