Farming Guide

Note: This guide is outdated and only gives an opinion about farming from a Lann's perspective, so it is being flagged as incomplete. As the title is "Farming Guide", it should include information about the different characters and the obstacles they face when farming.

Aha! You recently reached a level where, wait. You can't do the next quest because you aren't high enough level (Blood Prince), you need some material to craft armor (Proof Of Courage), or you just need some gold.



So What Do You Do?
If you need to reach a certain level, you are EXP Grinding.

If you need to get materials for armor, you are Material Farming (aka Mat Farming).

If you need to get gold to buy stuff or whatever reason, you are Gold Farming.

EXP
This may be the most popular of all Vindictus grinding. EXP grinding can both be tiring, boring, and potentially depressive.

What do you do in EXP grinding?

Well, you basically pick a battle, and run it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Each time you get about the same amount of EXP (if you run with the same people), and you do this until you level up.

EXP Grinding Points

You'll have to grind from level 29-31 for you to be able to do Blood Prince.

You'll have to grind from 33-41 to unlock all those battles there (including The Fleeing Gnoll King, etc.).

You'll have to grind from 44-52-ish to unlock all the Hoarfrost Depths battles.

You'll have to grind pretty much every level from there on :). This includes all the Hilder Forest Ruins quests, Fomorian Base quests, and so on.

However, you can easily avoid the grind by completely quests for your level. Sadly the 50-60 level range does include lots of hidden soloing if you would like a faster time leveling up.

Well, pretty much every MMO includes grinding for something, and EXP Grinding is going to be your most tedious in some cases.

Tips

For grinding from 29-31, choose Being From The Other World. This can get long, but you should try to make it as quick as possible in order to level up. This will probably be your first grinding experience, I know it was mine, so you'll learn the boring-ish-ness, repetitive-ness, and lack of enthusiasm from this.

For grinding from 33-41, do Blood Prince, then The Fleeing Gnoll King when you can. Although both are pretty long to run through, it's necessary, or you'll go nowhere in life.

For grinding from 44-57, choose Hidden. Hidden is probably the quest you'll use for grinding for an unfortunately long, long time. You could do Nightmare At The Ruins, but Hidden takes the least time and has a reasonable Time-to-EXP ratio. If you pair up with a guildie, you can get 55,000-ish EXP each run, which you can round to 60k, and only takes about 5 minutes each run (my record is like 1 minute 30 seconds).

For grinding from there on, you'll level up naturally as you grind for materials. You get natural EXP from party play in quests like Herb Lands (in which Kanjel is entirely too stupid), which is about 59,000 for party grinding.

I would find a good party. Especially for Hidden, don't stay with people who die often for a long time. Instead, choose who enters your boat. Put LEVELS 50+ ONLY, or whatever level you are, in this case, you'd be around 50. You may also find that having a wide range of party members of different levels is easier. If you are a level 50, you might want to put LEVELS 48-52 ONLY. This can teach you what not to do from n00bs, or what to do from pwn3rs.

If you are duo-ing, I would highly suggest getting a guildie. The guild bonus may seem small, but in time, you'll see how important every last point counts.

Also, if you get to that point (and you will) when you have 0.01% EXP left, save your tokens and don't stress out. Just pick a n00b level (Decisive Battle on Hard always gives around 7,000 EXP) and run that, save tokens, and don't worry. If you need more than 7,000 to reach 0.1%, you will have to grind the n00b level a bit more. It depends on how much you need. If 0.01% is around 40,000, run Hidden again.

All in all, pick a good party, pick guildies in particular, and get going.

Materials
Mat farming can rank number two, and even number one eventually, as the most boring. Materials are needed to craft armor, which makes you look sexy and gives you a decent stat boost. But what if you don't have those materials?

Similar to EXP grinding, you pretty much go through the same dungeon, run it over and over and over and over and over again, until you get all the materials you need, hence the name farming. Sometimes you will need a trash mob drop, to mine an ore, or to get a bosses rare drop/near-impossible break-off.

Armor that Needs You To Grind

Technically all armor needs you to grind for materials, but most armor up to level 40-ish can be bought incredibly cheaply from the Marketplace. (When I was a level 40, the Red Spider Shell needed for Spider Lord was about 13,000 gold. Now it's a tiny fraction of that.)

So, what's the first armor that needs you to grind? Technically, it differs per character.

For a Lann, the armor will progress as follows: Crimson Rage > Savage Leather > Elite Commander (doesn't need any materials) > Blood Prince > Spider Lord (optional) > Laghodessa Slayer > Nightmare (optional) > Royal Cadet > Sinister Half Plate (optional) > Swift Set > Black Hammer Set > Dark Crest

For Crimson Rage, you just need to run Decisive Battle a couple of times. No big deal.

For Savage Leather, you need to run Dethrone the White Tyrant for his Leather. It may be a bit challenging, but again, you can just buy it cheap from MP.

Elite Commander needs no materials. It's free.

Blood Prince might be the first material challenge. You have to run Blood Prince, a rather long quest. But, again, buying is an option.

Spider Lord is also a challenge. Giant Spider (at least, at first) is very intimidating, so getting his rare drops will be slightly annoying.

Laghodessa Slayer is another challenge.To craft that do a bunch of runs of Nightmare at the Ruins and you need to craft the Spider Lord too.

Royal Cadet, ah. You first true test, according to Riordan. You'll have to farm Proof of Courage and Revived Fear for leather, proofs, and Renos Ore. This will be a first challenge for most players.

Sadly, we get to Sinister. Sinister is a huge drop in farming since the damn trolls give you terrible drops, especially Klaus. You'll find that his Armor Fragment is the most annoying to get, and it's why Sinister is so expensive in the MP. It may seem like a one-time-challenge, but it's just training for Swift Set.

Swift is my biggest annoyance. It requires you to get drops that rarely come out, and totally ruins your experience in Vindictus. You will hate the Gray Officer Uniform in particular, as every piece needs seven of them, but each piece needs another part that is equally bothersome. Again, it' s just training for the next armor.

Black Hammer is a lot harder. Now, you need 60 Blade-Pierced Bones from him, which drop as rarely as rain in Nevada. This is also incredibly bothersome, as you will be running a minimum of SIXTY Black Hammer runs. On top of that, you again need Kanjel's stupid Hair. So Black Hammer should be another training for Dark Crest.

Dark Crest features only two pieces that can be crafted. The others are knock offs from boss (Not released in NA), but it does feature a challenge. You need to farm Titan, a hellish gigantic-ass ogre, for logs and bones and such. And you can only fight Titan once a day, which makes farming seem like crap for this set. Note: Don't sell your Fomor Insignias. You need about 40 per piece, so save at least 80.

(Add Fiona, Evie, and Karok armor progression here: I need help.)

Opinion
Despite all that OP has written, personally I think farming for sets is a lot more fun than just buying or getting it. It adds more fun into the game doing it all yourself. I've farmed and crafted myself recently just the Dark Crest and Black Hammer set. If you are having trouble completing certain battle quests that drop materials you need, you can always farm for different objects like Iron or other drops from easier dungeons, sell though and use the gold to buy the materials you need from the marketplace.

Also, Dark Crest is not better than Black Hammer, it may look cooler and be harder to get, but the stats can't keep up. If you aren't amazingly funded my suggestion to improve Damage/Armor is to use Black Hammer Helm, Black Hammer Mail, Black Hammer Greaves and to use Swift Gauntlets and Swift Boots as well.

Conclusion
Farming really just sucks. It degrades your Vindictus experience, and makes is so much more boring. But, it's necessary to give you some sort of realistic reality, since in real life you can't just pull out armor from your ass. (Well, neither can dog-men spawn from black clouds in the ground, but let's not get technical here.)

If you found this helpful at all, or if you have any suggestions, gimme a poke on my talk page.