First stop was a look at his guide on Magic Find consumables. I always forget to have some food on hand and as I'm going to be testing out his farming guides I thought it'd be a good idea to invest in some consumables to help along the way with drops and XP. Unfortunately his guide was a little too general for my liking, he listed the foods he thought were 'best' rather than giving an overview of Magic Find foods. A cursory look at the market showed I could get more Magic Find for cheaper on different foods. I realise the market often shifts and changes but for longevity on a guide like this I'd have been happier with a list of more Magic Find foods.
Next I decided to look at the farming guides. I don't actually have a level 80 character yet (I'm such an alt addict!) so I grabbed Cefrey, my level 57 Warrior and picked three guides at random that she'd be able to do at her level:
1) Bandithaunt Caverns. Almar's low level farming area. I have to admit that I have run through these caves a couple of times in the past when my low level character's been a little shy of a level for their personal story but I've never bothered to stop and see how much XP & money I could squeeze out of the area.
Almar's guide is straight forward and less than 5 minutes long, he goes into a few basics that would be handy if you were new to the game though he does miss out on a couple of things I'd point out. Off of two of the three exits of the caverns are spots where you may run into a lot of enemies thanks to events. Off of one is a farmhouse which is in the area events linking to Queensdale's water supply go off and off another is a little camp where a lot of bandits spawn when there's an attack on the nearby ranch. These spawns can be pretty tricky going, especially if you are of lower level so I'd advise caution. Another thing to keep in mind is the level of the area, in the caverns themselves you'll be lowered to level 6 whereas at the camp mentioned above you can be up to level 11, this becomes a problem if you attack a bandit at the camp and back up towards the cavern, if you're unlucky your level will drop to 6 and you'll have a level 11 bandit hitting you, I saw a couple of people struggle in this transitional area.
Other than that it's a useful little overview. Almar believes that farming in this spot for an hour would net about 25 silver, which while not huge is quite notable for a lowbie. When I ran through I got the following results:
I deposited all of my money before starting so from an hour in the caves I earned 6s 79c and 48 different kinds of items including a mighty 88 Bags of Pinched Goods. I ran back to town and got to selling. After opening all of those bags (and drowning in the ensuing waves of jute scraps and sticks of butter) I got to work either listing on the Trading Post or just selling right to the vendor.
In the end I netted a total of 86s 20c, not too shabby. Of course some of my drops were at my level so sold for a little more but I don't think the gap between this run and one on a lower level character would be huge.
2) Ruins of Demetra. Level 40+ farming area. I'd never been to Harathi Hinterlands as Cefrey before so I got a little lost at first, the guide said Demetra was in the north-western area whereas I'd say it was more western. The guide does repeat itself on occasion on what drops to expect but gives a decent overview of the area.
The mobs were fairly consistant and I found an event I could trigger that spawned a veteran ghost to fight. I'm not sure of the conditions for repeating it, whether it's time elapsed since he last spawned or number of ghosts killed but I did the event 4 times in the hour I was in the area.
In the end I earned 66s 69c, which isn't an inconsiderable amount of money, it just feels lessened by my luck on my trip through Bandithaunt. In hindsight I could have been more efficient in my approach to Demetra place as well, but we live and we learn.
3) Dredghaunt Cliffs. This time a gathering guide over a farming mobs guide. Unfortunately a glance tells me that this guide is a little outdated. There may have been a time where level 40 materials sold for similar amounts to higher level ones but a quick search of the trading post showed me this was no longer the case so I decided against going on a gathering run and picked another guide instead.
Venom Sacs in Blazeridge. Another place I'd never visited so it took a little running around. I'm not sure if this guide needed a full video, a written guide would have gotten the information across just as well a little quicker. This was however, as promised, a good spot to pick up venom sacs. In roughly an hour in the area I picked up 33 sacs as well as other drops and harvesting nodes. I sold the sacs at 2s 48c each, those along with other trading post worthy items got me this:
Along with the junk items and other vendor sales I netted a total of 1g 18s 11c from this area I wasn't aware of until now.
Overall Impressions of the site is that some of the guides are a little outdated, but that will always happen in evolving games, there's a decent amount of content but the layout is a pain at times (the dropdown menus at the top kept closing on me). Almar's Guides is a useful resource but is definitely not things to be followed blindly and a lot of his information is video based so you'll need to make the time to watch it rather than having a written guide to read in chunks if need be.
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