Farming?

I'm really sorry if this has already been posted. I did a search for it and didn't get what I needed. I've been seeing a lot of people talking about 'farming'. What exactly is farming?|||Killing some boss or group of enemies over and over and over to get a specific reward, like an item the enemies drop. The analogy should be apparent now.|||Oh ok I get it now. Thank you!|||An example might be just going out with whatever chara you have, finding specific monsters that drop an item you want, say iron or cloth, or perhaps the trophy item that nick wants, killing all those of that type in a zone, leaving the zone and coming back again.

Or killing a larger group of random mobs in a short period of time (raptor farming).

Or killing all the mobs in a given area in hardmode to get the points rewarded for killing all of said mobs in said area. (vanquishing) It's still farming of a sort.

Whatever item that people want, or is in demand, other people will come up with ways to get that item, and then find ways of doing it fast and efficently, and then doing it over and over again so they can get said items, get people to pay for them, and reap the rewards.



THAT... is farming.

(bugger, shoulda refreshed this before posting)|||Anyone can go farming. The fewer people you have in your party, the better you'll do, and some things are better farmed in Hard Mode. So, solo farming in HM tends to be what people talk about, but this often requires specific skill sets for specific locations. You'll run into much discussion of what skills work where.

Last week, Nicholas was looking for frosted griffin wings, which drop from the griffins north of Camp Rankor. I didn't have a character I thought capable of solo farming, so I went out with my Dervish and three Heroes. By the time we'd killed every griffin we found, we'd gotten no wings, so I went back with my Elementalist. He has a solo farming skill set that was barely adequate. Note that for farming "trophy" items like these, Hard Mode doesn't help.

I came back with my Mesmer, who can double as a Ritualist "spirit spammer." This worked better but was still fragile. A friend in our Alliance sent me a different spirit spam skill set, which I put on my Monk as the Mesmer couldn't reach the place to capture the elite skill. That set-up worked much better, and he made two runs and obtained 11 wings.

So... farming can be interesting. For me, it's too much like work so if something takes more than a couple of runs to get, I'll pass. Or if I can combine farming with something else, such as chest opening (feels like an ongoing birthday party) I do better. Music helps too.