Talk:Farming

I'm not so sure all of the behaviors in this article (like kraken farming) are really scumming. As I see it, the two kinds of scumming are startscumming and savescumming. Other ignoble behaviors are abuse of game mechanics (pudding farming), exploitation of bugs (astral call trick), just plain cheating (savescumming), and so on. I suggest we move the information on all the farming to its own article, and use scumming as a disambiguation for startscumming and savescumming. --Eidolos 04:38, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed... farming may be scummy, but it needs its own page. --Intx13 20:24, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Dubious about the "undead farming". Wouldn't Rodney be something of a concern? I can't see how this is a real strategy so maybe it should be removed... EkiM 17:59, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

If you steal the Book of the Dead without killing Rodney, he won't start appearing until you have the Amulet. You can use this to summon as many wraiths as you want, and eat their corpses to gain levels. If you're at level 30 already, you'll still get some HP and Pw. Since there's no upper limit, this is probably one of the quickest ways to gain lots of HP (if not the quickest, after the polyself bug is fixed). I know itsblah has used the undead farming trick in a "real" game. Even if nobody uses it, undead farming is still useful to include. --Eidolos 18:24, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I changed the undead farming part of the article to just include wraith farming, seeing as how that's far more effective than just killing zombies.. --Eidolos 18:37, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

foocubi

It seems to me that using foocubi to maximize constitution, wisdom, power, and level should be included here. They can be summoned so easily with sinks and a starting wizard can so easily abuse it. -Neopergoss

In my experience, by the time my wizard has a unihorn for ill effects and high charisma to make favorable outcomes more likely, foocubi usually don't cut it anymore. So, if you will, in include it, but there are way more potent ways to farm. -Tjr 18:26, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Well with a wizard that has starting charisma around 10 and 20 intelligence the odds of a negative effect are only 4/35, so even without a unicorn horn the positive effects will more than offset the negative ones. I suppose there is the issue of having enough food and hit points to wait out the headaches, but it seems pretty easy to maximize constitution, wisdom, power, and level this way. I'm still somewhat of a newb, so I will have to ask you if maxing those is somehow not as cheap as I initially thought. Maybe the increased difficulty monsters from the level gains eventually offset all advantages?

The level gains will be compensated for in this way, but the rest of the advantages have no drawback. -Tjr 08:13, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I suppose the real question is whether this really counts as farming, given that each foocubus is only good for a limited number of, well, interactions, and that each sink is only good for one foocubus. The rest of the farming methods currently on this page are things that one can, in principle at least, keep doing forever.

(Mind you, I suspect chaotic human characters may indeed have access to a fairly large, if not quite infinite, number of foocubi by stealing from shops to summon Kops, killing and sacrificing the Kops to summon demons — some of which will be foocubi — and repaying the shopkeeper before repeating the process. The number of foocubi generated this way should only be limited by extinction. Minetown would seem the most convenient place for this, although any level with a shop and an altar should do.) --Ilmari Karonen 10:21, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Ok, altar farming for foocubi with Kops is indeed farming in my book. The same thing goes for sacrificing vault gaurds. -Tjr 19:40, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I forgot about the 1 in 25 chance of the foocubus becoming cancelled.

You can generate an infinite amount of foocubi by two methods only:

• demon summoning, preferrably on low dungeon levels. Try water demons.
• cursed Book of the Dead in Gehennom

The other methods listed above will not create more than 120 foocubi. Speaking out of experience, both methods are quite unpalatable. (I was leveling up to enter the quest in a 10-conduct game without any sinks.) Tjr 17:21, July 1, 2010 (UTC)

Bonescumming

I think bonescumming should be mentioned somewhere; the process of copypasting bones files to give oneself an unfair advantage. It's almost as bad as savescumming, so why shouldn't it be mentioned? Archmage84 06:02, April 25, 2010 (UTC)

Throne farming for illiterates

If you wanted to use a cursed unicorn horn for confusion, couldn't you just polyself into a ghoul, which is sickness resistant? You would need a ring of polymorph control, an amulet of unchanging and a source of polymorph, all of which can be gotten by an illiterate character and ID'd with a wand of enlightenment. Admittedly they're statistically weak, but with a burned Elbereth square that shouldn't be a problem. Speed boots/speed monster can bring their speed up, and the other negative effects of a cursed unicorn horn shouldn't be a problem, at least until you were done generating monsters. -Ion frigate 01:47, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

Good point. I was thinking "multiconduct illiterate", and I enjoyed writing routines to handle abstract operations on probability measures ;-) Tjr 01:56, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I should try illiterate someday, as then I'd realize that a burned Elbereth square isn't exactly very useful for someone wanting to do illiterate conduct. Of course you'd need a scroll of scare monster... Personally, although it's quite subjective, perhaps conduct should comment on their relative difficulties. -Ion frigate 10:58, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

In my opinion, conducts start getting really difficult once you combine them. For example, you can get holy water if you are literate (confused remove curse), theist (water prayer), wishing (wish directly), or non-pacifist (pudding farm for it), but I can't imagine how to go about it without any of these options. Multiconduct aspects don't fit nicely into the Wikihack's structure, though they are the most interesting to play and to write about. I've had long debates with Djao on this. Tjr 13:59, July 8, 2010 (UTC)