I'm trying to work on my weapon and armor crafting in GW2, but I find myself running short on crafting supplies like totems and venom sacks. I know that supply bags (e.g., "small supply bags", "light bag of booty") contain a random assortment of supplies but it seems like the anti-farming logic limits how often they drop.
What's the most effective strategy for gathering supplies from mob drops while avoiding the anti-farming logic that GW has in place?
Best Answer
If you are trying to get material to learn crafting recipes, the tradepost is really your best friend.
For example, here's a mighty bronze dagger recipe. As of this writing, if you wanted to get the inscription so you can learn this recipe, you could go gather 3 silver worth of monster materials + 2 silver of other raw materials, or you could buy a mighty bronze plated inscription (right now) for 2.5 silver.
Think of your pool of materials as all having a value, and try to maximize the value. In this case that is done by selling raw, buying middle, and learning final products.
ArenaNet is deliberately silent on the boundaries of the anti-farming code. They may be tweaking the parameters of the whole system, or any given area at any time. By not revealing details, it's very difficult for botters to compensate.
In the name of science, I solo killed the Jotuns at the potato spawn in Wayfarer Foothills for 1 hour. I did not notice a reduction in drops over the hour (~50 tiny totems and ~35 bone chips). I was able to completely clear the camp and keep it clear with constant fighting, so I was killing them as fast as they spawn, but that is admittedly slow.
A google search shows many people claiming that anti-farming kicked in after "20 minutes". My theory is that the anti-farming logic may be based on number of loots in a given time, instead of just strictly time in zone. With event-based spawns and other players helping, one could easily get 10 times the kill-rate that I did in my test.
To maximize drops/hour, I recommend locating high-spawn-rate events that other players frequent, do them once or twice and move on.
To maximize avoiding the anti-farming logic, I recommend staying away from other players, and don't stay in the same spot (or zone?) for more than an hour.