General Farming

This page is a User Guide It represents one editor's approach to a subject. It is not in any way "official", nor is it necessarily maintained by Wiki editors Take this information with a grain of salt.

Warning

Up to date as of November 6th, 2011. Use with caution.

Introduction

This guide IS for:

• Players who have been playing for a while and are interested in getting into farming
• Players have been farming for a little while, and want to improve their income
• Players who have the supernatural ability to bear my writing style

So let's get started then.

Locations

Golden Wooden Nickel Casino

• Good for low level players, Jackpot! gives a good sum of chips, at least at first. But that's not what we're here for, now is it?

Cube Theater

• Good for mid-level players, high droprate of autosell-able items, good chip drops, non-combat encounter can either net you good chips or XP.

Yang Boulevard

• The chips, items, items drops and fight difficulty are comparable to Cube, though the non-combats are generally not as nice. What you're really looking for is green tea, a caffeine item dropped from the Black-market herbalist that can give up to 360 minutes of +50% chips a day!

Vincile Building

• Considerably tougher than the theater, a wide variety of autosellable items and useful consumables, and better chips drops.

Castle Hundenswein

• Now THIS is true farming. High chip drops, items autosell for crazy amounts of chips, and a couple items have great recipes for farming. This is however a very hard area to survive- spending hundreds of turns here isn't realistic unless you're at least level 20 or optimize your equipment for combat (and thus not farming!).

Choice Encounters

Cube Theater

• For intermission, take the right most path for chips, or the center for XP. Simple choice. Sometimes, an ultra-rare fourth option appears. If so, take it. The item can be sold to collectors for a lot!

Yang Boulevard

• Maximize combats to get your hands on as much green tea as possible, as mentioned earlier.
• The encounters Rain on Your Parade and San Amigos aren't particularly useful. You might as well pick up some rainwater for the free PP and beat up one of the Amigos for their items. Try to avoid non-combats.

Vincile Building

• You'll sometimes be presented with a choice to take a trilowatt computer or not. Either is fine.
• Try to minimize non-combat encounters here, as they don't pay quite as well in items and chips as combats do.

Castle Hundenswein

• There are two noncombats here. One of them doesn't really give anything interesting. The last option is to skip it, not costing a turn. Do that one.
• The other is Forgot to Mention the Crystal Skulls, in which the second choice yields some delicious lustrous liquid. You'll want that for one of the recipes.

Item/Skill Enchantments to get

Fairly straightforward. Consult these links in order to optimize your equipment. In order of greater to lesser utility:

• +Item drop, +chip find are obviously the most important enchantments for farming. As a starting suggestion, one percent of +items is as good as two percent of +chips. Your experience with this will vary, so experiment with mixtures.
• -Time is useful, for getting more fights and thus more items out of each day
• +Sidekick Effectiveness gives you boost to either chips or items. This can be quite powerful if you a powerful enough +chips sidekick!
• +PP/turn, +PP/damage allows you to keep more buffs on yourself, which translates to more chips or ability to cope with a difficult farming area.
• -Skill cost can be worn outside of combat when casting buffs to increase the number of buffs you can cast. Just don't forget to switch back to your farming equipment!
• And pretty much all enchantments not mentioned above might help you to cope with a difficult farming area, but secondary to actually getting more chips and items!

Equipment

Neither +%chips or +%items are optimal alone - the best is a combination of the two. That being said, in most equipment slots there is an obvious superior for either one. Bolded items are the most recommended.

Pick and match from these sets:

Chips Drop

• Helmets
  • (IotM) foxy sombrero mask: +10% chips.
  • imperial diadem: +7% chips, +6 FT
  • royal crown: +5% chips
• Weapons
  • (Special) Fortune: +25% chips
  • (IotM) Atmos Spear (shortened): +7% chips
  • long arm of the law: +5% chips
  • longbow of the law: +5% chips
• Gloves
  • goldfinger gloves: +8% chips
• Boots
  • (IotM) Roderick's Boots: +10% chips
  • paint-splattered jellies: +5% chips
  • chip loafers: +3% chips
• Offhand
  • plastiscanner: +10% chips
• Accessories
  • Xam's pouch of generosity: +12% chips
  • jade ion stone: +10% chips
  • insanely super XL bowl: +10% chips, +10% items
• Note there are currently no shirts, pants, or transportation that increase chips drops (as of October 23, 2011).

See the Chips Drop Summary Table for a more extensive list.

Item Drops

• Weapons
  • short end of the stick: +3% items
  • shortbow of the stick: +3% items
• Shirt
  • buckskin coat: +4% items
• Gloves
  • sticky gloves: +3% items
  • gnat gloves: +2% items, -2% weapon fumbles, +super jumping ability
• Pants
  • barrel full of monkeys (monkeys not included): +5% items
  • discount pants: +3% items
• Boots
  • (IotM) Hobbes' nail boots: +5% items, +combat
• Offhand
  • isotope meter: +10% items
  • flashlight: +5% items
• Accessories
  • (IotM) Cupid's quiver: +20% items, +3% HP
  • (IotM) Hero's Cape: +20% items, +PP/turn
  • (IotM) Wolley's Index: +20% items
  • binoculars: +10% items
  • the Recycler's bin: +8% items
  • {Event} phial of Samuels: +5% items, +5 PP
• Transportation
  • light cycle: +4% items
• Note there are currently no helmets that increase item drops (as of October 23, 2011).

See the Items Drop Summary Table for a more extensive list.

Specialized Item Drops

• base metals only - very useful if you are farming metal for whatever reason.
  • (Offhand) cutting torch: +50%
  • (IotM Full-body Suit) Vortex suit: +25%
  • (Helmet) foyal crown: +20%
• SQUID and CTHULHU Discs - these give decent XP when used and may sell well in the Mall.
  • (Offhand) attache case: +50%
• sugar - more sugar = more turns
  • (IotM Shirt) insanely super bowl breastplate: +20%

Time Modifiers

• Helmet
  • xentrium helm: -10 sec/turn
  • (IotM) Seppia's cephalopod skullcap: -5 sec/turn, +PP/turn
• Weapon
  • (Special) Hammer: -10 sec/turn
• Shirt
  • (IotM)Letter shirt: -15 sec/turn
  • xentrium breastplate: -10 sec/turn
• Pants
  • (IotM) three-speed bicycle shorts (high gear): -15 sec/turn, +PP/turn
  • (IotM) three-speed bicycle shorts (second gear): -10 sec/turn, +HP/turn
  • xentrium breeches: -10 sec/turn
• Boots
  • Prefontane's shoes: -10 sec/turn
  • Treader of the Dust's Sandals: -5 sec/turn, +10 PP/turn
• Offhand
  • xentrium shield: -10 sec/turn
• Transportation
  • armored pegasus: -10 sec/turn

Improved Sidekick Effectiveness

This can be quite powerful in conjunction with a high-level accountant or noble. With these sidekicks at level 20, +sidekick effectiveness is essentially equivalent to +chips drop. Hint hint.

• Weapon
  • shepherd's crook +5%
• Full-body suit
  • (Event) Ursula's teddy: +20%
• Accessories
  • (IotM) Judo kid gloves: +50%
  • Lil' Jerk Disguise Kit: +20%
• Transportation
  • Model T-1000: +25%

Other Effects

• (IotM Helmet) Virtual Reality helmet: +computer interaction (possibly more time through Prepunctuality), bonus stats, +XP
• (Offhand) black box: IOUs = sugar cereal/pre-coffee = more turns
• (IotM Transportation) VHF-1 Fighter: +2 to 4 PP/turn

Talismans

• The dice keychain gives +20% chips at the cost of only -1 PP/turn. Incredibly useful.
• The Ultimate Aviator Goggles have a +10% chip drops buff, but also a -5% items drop. Also gives +2 PP/turn.
• The cat's eye amulet gives both +5% items and chips, but you're going to need to find something to offset the fumbles. The Upgrade Weapons skill's "self-balancing" option works nicely.
• If you don't have any of the above, anything that increases your PP regeneration or decreases your PP cost is better than nothing.

Sidekicks

These are assumed to be at max effective level.

• (IotM) Majestic noble: +100% chips, +PP
• Accountant: +100% chips
• (IotM) Grumpy old smuggler: +50% items
• (temporary) Clockwork kangaroo: +30% items
• (temporary) Clockwork ant: +50% chips
• Hoarder: +20% items
• Race car driver: -15 seconds/turn
• (Event) Extortionist: +30% chips
• (temporary) Publicist: +30% chips

Class

With the advent of Retcon, selecting your class matters less than having the right permed skills on hand. Generally, given that you have all the skills you want, Naturalists and Gadgeteers have a slight advantage over the other classes, due to slightly better HP and hit chances. Again, however, this is only a minor difference, and you're free to use whatever class you like once you have enough permed skills.

Software

• Destitute Dick's Penny-Pincher Program gives A few chips every now and then
• GigantoFirm LookOut Calendar gives an few seconds every now and then
• MacRuff's Mercantile Monitor software gives +combat
• Garcia's Traffic Avoider software‎ gives -combat

Software isn't particularly important unless you really want to increase combat or noncombat encounters.

Caffeine and Sugar

Here's some good news. Because you're buying food to make chips, not spend them, you can stick with vendor stuff and drops and still be optimal. Yup, Misters Tea and stroopwafelen. Misters Tea should be bought en masse when they're at the Black Market, and stroopwafelen drop at the Castle. If you're not at the Castle, use eyeball gumballs, search for some cheap sugar at the Mall or get some frosted cocoa-fruity marshmallow blasts from the Criminology Lab. If you manage to get your hands on some green tea, they give an impressive +50% chips boost. Whether this is worth one less caffeine-hour than Mister Tea is up to you.

Skills to have

• Aura: Keen Observation, Snout of the Swine, Metal Detector, and Echolocation - The obvious culprits. +% chips/items is vital.
• Nurture vs. Nature - For further boosting your sidekick.
• Heroic Efficiency, Meditation, and Sugar Purifier. More turns can't hurt.
• Stealth and/or Aura: Mental Magnetism. Also als- wait, what? Yup. When you're in the Castle, half of your noncombats won't cost a turn. The other half should be split between getting lustrous liquids and fighting Chemists. The general rule of thumb is take the lustrous liquid until you've got more than you need for a day or so of Feeling Lucky, then switch to fighing chemists for their high chip and item drops. You want to get lustrous liquids so you can fight Chemists, and you want to fight Chemists to get the most chips. Both of these will be increased by increasing your noncombat rate.
• Aerodynamic Vehicle is great if you want to ride your light cycle or armored pegasus to the Castle, but you'll of course, need 10 skill points in it to ward off its drawbacks.

Consumables

There are two recipes that will come in handy for farming in the Castle. The first is the clockwork kangaroo, which increases item drops, and is created by combining a clockwork core and a xentrium crossbow. The other is the philtre of fortune, created by combining lustrous liquid and golden powder.

More coming soon...

Miscellaneous advice

• Remember that some items are worth a surprising amount on player Mall, especially uncommon items or useful consumables. Look up items if you are curious- you may be able to get away with selling them for much more than their auto-sell value!
• If you choose to farm somewhere other than the above listed areas, remember that not all areas have chips drops, and equip yourself accordingly.