Guild Wars 2

Like someone up top said, all depends on if you enjoy it! If you like it, keep going! I park about 10 characters at flax farm but I just do 1, I don’t hit both patches :P Takes less than 10 minutes to do for me.

mtpelion.4562:

Time spent moving is time spent NOT EARNING.

Park your characters, hit the immediate nodes, do something else.

If your options are:
1. 10 Flax in 40 seconds (.25 Flax Per Second) or
2. 10 Flax in 40 seconds at first farm + 10 minutes of walking + 10 Flax in 40 seconds at second farm (.0147 Flax Per Second)

The decision is pretty obvious, right?

That’s pretty much my reason for leaving all of mine parked at one spot only. If I want any other resource I take one character and do a full run of rich nodes and farms across the entire map, but this only happens if I feel up to it, and after I’ve done the flax farm.

I used to have them parked at a rich iron or rich platinum node, but the xp and income for flax is so much better than what I was getting for plat or iron.

do you have issues with your eyes? are you sitting correctly? all could be why your feeling pain and pain is why your grumpy. ive gone through it also . that or your eyes are getting tired. happens randomly.

(long post)

While reading through this thread, I feel like a tiny mouse which just entered skrittburgh for the first time. Personally I hate farming. When I left my grinder mmorpg ages ago I promised myself not to waste more than a few minutes a day with it. I’m only using about 4 characters. What makes me a tiny stupid infidel, compared to all other flax-farmers ^^.

The others have already told you, that walking to the TD spot is not worth the time – if you go for efficiency. Here is an alternative way:
1.) Place all your characters at the VB flax spot and do that daily, only. 24 Characters are quite a lot, but this gets done quickly.
2.) Now you pick one of your characters and move with it to the TD farm spot. That is another 10 minutes. Farm the flax there and let it be.
3.) The next day you repeat this, but leave the one in TD. Send a second character to TD after he is done in VB.
4.) To see a good outcome, I would get 7-12 of your characters to TD, one per day.
5.) At the last day, you first log the VB chars and get the flax. Then you log the TD chars, farm the flax. Then you port to the VB spot and farm the flax there.
NOTE: Taking your 24 characters, lets say you use 12 for the TD moving. So it would be 13 days for one cycle.
=> You farm 24 spots per day. (24×12 = 288)
=> You farm 12 extra spots during the locating phase.
=> You farm 36 spots during the final day.
=> So in the end you farm 288+12+36= 336 spots in 13 days. The traditional one spot method gives you only 288 spots. That is an increase of ~ 16-17 %. And you only waste about 10 minutes a day for relocating characters. (Note: Some guy above said the way to the TD spot takes 10 minutes, I don’t know how long it takes, because I have never been there yet)

Boosters/Buffs
I use the boosters as well, but only on characters which do not move or only move 5 mins a day. I would not give a booster to a character which is about to move to the TD spot. If you insist in giving all characters boosters, with the above mentioned method your outcome should be better, your loss should be lower.

A strategy you could try, when your characters are in position at TD to give them the boosters when they are there. And after the final day, use them as permanent static farmers at VB only. Until the timer runs out. If you want to do more cycles, I’d recommend you to set a bunch of characters for the moving part who never get a booster. And giving only the static characters the boosters.

The ones which are only at the same spot should also get the buff of a gathering+swiftness banner before you deploy them. The gathering only banner gives a lower bonus than the combination-banner – for what reason ever. You can also join a guild with a gathering guild buff, those cost 0 and last 24 hours. So can be used on all characters. If the guild is good developed, you have a merchant in the guildhall to buy gathering tools and an access to your bank/storage (via the scribing station). You can enter it with your characters, without leaving your current spot.

Health
Farming is not relaxing. You actually are under a lot of tension and pressure while farming a certain thing in a game over and over for hours. Even if it looks like your brain is afk, it is not. Your eyes need to focus the relevant objects quickly. The hands become stiff over the time, the fingers move fast but not in every direction. That are just a few of the countless side-effects.

There are reasons people in some countries get paid for farming in mmorpgs. They work for goldsellers mostly (I do not blame you to be one). But it is taken as some kind of ‘work’. Depending on the laws and rules, some work with third-party-programms instead. Which is luckyly prohibited in GW2.

However, I beleive (personal opinion) that farming and actual play-for-fun gameplay are two separate things. Several people told me that farming is fun, what I totally beleive. The difference comes with the tension and the pressure. That makes the difference between joy and work.

I can easily play for 4-8 hours straight (if I get the time, which is rarely so :S) and enjoy myself in GW2. But if I have to work on the computer, I can do that max 2 hours straight, then I get eye-strain and headache.

Different people have different limits. You can expand them and make your body more sustainable. Or you can stop at a certain point. It is totally up to you.