How have you been making $$$ to buy the things you need since loot scaling

Treasure Chests! They reset them so why not!

Nope.

I would if I was interested in making all the different characters needed to farm all the places now. But then making characters I don't have fun playing is useless to me.

I just decided to start my Sword Collection without any elemental swords.

I vanquish, and don't buy anything but lockpicks and the occassional rune to tweak a hero. A few things happen when you vanquish:

You get Elite Tomes, which sell fairly easily.
You get Golds, which can be salvaged, merched, or heroed.
You get gold to drop. Lots of gold. Of course, the heroes and henches take their cut...
You progress on up to seven titles at one time (I think... but this is bonus)
You find the free chests and get more gold.
You get a full inventory of whites and blues which you merch for gold. If you're smart, you ID all of them first to jack up the value.

Sell things cheap. You'll get a lot, so you don't need to wait around for that perfect offer. Sell to move the item, not to break the bank.

Well, that's working for me... but everyone's different.

Wow lots of posts! Awesome ideas!

I wanna add i'm not interested in pimping out my heroes but i do like them to have decent weapons and i'm more interested in stats then the color for weapons. Sometimes that includes good inscriptions for what your goal is with them.

people make 60-100k in hours by farming? Prove that to me and I'll call you a god. If any of you can show me I promise not to divulge secrets - they get out to bots and that is how this crap started....

my screen name is Zolpidem Tartrate is you wanna have some friendly farming or wanna farm in groups. Any help would be appreciated.

After the poot scaling update, I've decided to make a Ranger runner for the missions and outposts in the Crystal Desert (Prophecies). I've got all the skills I need, and I'm in The Amnoon Oasis. So I'm all set, except...

My only problem (x2) ?

Child of Fiery Doom still has Pre-Searing armor, and is currently level 9.

So, I use method two, which actually works. Bug my lil bro to hand over some of the 395k he owes me.

No seriously. I'm being very serious.

So anyway, as soon as I get my Ranger set up, I'm gonna start running to all of those Crystal Desert places.
Oh, and I want to get my greedy little hands on an Urgoz's Longbow as well, but they cost at least 70k, so that's gonna have to wait for a long while.

P.S. I'm seen all these success stories of farming, and I would be wondering if anybody would be so kind as to share their builds and techniques for elementalist, mesmer and ranger farming via a PM, I would be eternally grateful!

I farm ectos, despite the price drop.

My experience's post Loot scaling can be summed up in the lyric's "You don't always get what you want but you get what you need". Yes I was very upset after the update and consideded drastic steps but in the end I decided the hell with it I'm not going to try and change my play style (goals) because of the update. *Playstyle is going for titles(wisdom, treasure hunter, skill hunter, drunk...any others that I come across that strike my fancy) and I wanted a set of 15K kurzick for my main character. I would buy keys and cap elites and try to get amber for my armor. I got my 15k armor mostly by selling off extra minipets and a few items...although I had to sacrifice my leather square supply to afford the last piece. Total time about two weeks but instead of pre-loot scale where I could work on multiple things at the same time. I didn't have extra money for keys or caps. Since I got my armor I'm knocking out the tyrian skillhunter and buying the keys I can but I haven't had over 5k at any one time since then. I'm limping along by buying the cap and whatever keys I can afford before I go into the zones. For an example I finished capping a skill in Mineral springs and I bought two keys before I went in(all I could afford). Cleared the whole zone and after everything was sold I had 2247g a profit of 47g for clearing the whole zone +like 37 Iron and 47 wood(Highly salvageable) and a gold bow(q9 15 -10armor). I come out slightly ahead with something I would have to spend hours trying to sell but I have to walk into to many zones for my liking without the appropriate number of keys. Yes it was in NM and I should put together a build for HM but I've Vanguished some areas in HM and IMO the drops are the same but you may get a chance of getting a tome. Whooptido I can spend twice as much time as NM and get the same grapes but for 1500 a pop instead of 600.

To be honest, I've made more gold just doing quests and not trying to make any gold before loot scaling than actually trying to farm Hard Mode for golds and tomes after loot scaling. >.>

What is this loot scaling you speak of?

Look, I don't know about everyone else, but HM more than makes up for the loot scaling, income wise, even if you just merch everything. At least, that's my experience.

I have to say that I didn't seriously start farming until after HM was released, but I have to agree that doing HM is the most profitable way. I do LB/SS farming for my derv (almost max for both of them ) and have gotten some great drops from the chests and use the other crap drops for lockpicks. I have even seen 2 elemental swords (not for me however ;( ) drop. I like it....

Since the loot scaling went in effect ive not done much really trying to farm much of anything. I had roughly 250k stocked up with nothing to buy really so I just started buying cap sigs. I went and capped all of Tyria and got quite a few done in Factions and Nightfall.

Now I have roughly 200k in the bank plus a fair amount of good drops just going out and killing my way to the cap with heros and henchies. Roughly 220 cap sigs bought with about 50k lost.

I always get far better drops in NM missions helping guildies than anywhere else. I get more 'stuff' solo farming but the 15^50 mursaat hammer I'd always wanted? NM chest from Abaddon's Mouth, and I retained my lockpick too ;P
I farm *for* tomes, but if you want cash, help guildies through missions as much as possible... get rich that way

Loot scaling has had a wonderful impact on me. That's because I never solo farmed, so my cash intake has not changed one iota. I group farm in Tombs, Sorrows Furnace etc.

The great thing is that loot scaling has caused a general deflation in all things. This makes things much more affordable to the non-solo gamer. Most places you can make 3k or so per hour, excluding the value of drops. Now that perfect weapons have dropped by half, casual gamers can buy the stuff they want much more easily.

The only people that were hurt by loot scaling were solo farmers and bots, neither of which I have much sympathy for.

I finally had my rit learn Vengeful was Khanhei. Learning skills he needed for the VwK solo farm build left him with a grand total of 1k in his inventory. In 5 nights times in HM my VwK rit farmer went from 1k to 80k just from selling stuff to merch. Additionally, I ID all gold items with my ranger, so any golds my rit found went into storage to be IDed by the ranger. The ranger made another 9k or so by merching the crap golds. And this doesn't count the golds I kept for personal use(max, req 9 inscribable spiky warhammer for instance) or sale to players, numerous perfect mods I salvaged and can use or sell(+30 bow grips, 20/20 sundering for axe, etc), the elite necro tome, 3 passage scrolls, lockpicks, the 2 black dyes, or the 3 major vigor runes all of which are worth a fair amount.

So yeah, solo farming isn't dead.

I haven't been buying much and I haven't been farming a lot since the release of Hard Mode.I have just been keeping up with my Normal Monk skills but on one Monk that going to have to stop as I need new insignas.

I've been making more money, so... Yeah I'm doing fine.

I hadn't done any solo farming before the update, so loot scaling hasn't really had an effect on me.

I finally broke down and did some farming recently in Urgoz with the solo spirit farming build just to see if it was as easy as people said it was. And it was. And I was like... Hah!

VwK? Where do you engage in this particular farming, if you don't mind my asking?

I've personally been vanquishing EA's and doing missions in Hard Mode and I have more money now than I ever had before. Granted, I was never one to play the market frequently, but simply from merch-ing drops, and selling the occasional mod or tome I find, I have been making plenty of gold to buy all the lockpicks, runes, and items I have needed. I just bought myself some new armor and a couple sup runes just from vanquishing a few areas in Ascalon and Kryta!

When I was vanquishing Old Ascalon there was a single mob that dropped 2 gold items, and they were standing by a chest that gave me another gold item. Hardmode is where it's at IMO.

Outside Bergen Hot Springs in hard mode(can farm the undead and tengu groups), outside Sunspear Great Hall in hard mode(insects and fanged ibogas, plus sometimes Hassin Softskin), occasional warden groups and Craw Stonereap outside Altrumm Ruins in Hard Mode, Hard Mode insects in Marga Coast outside Yohlon Haven...works on tusked hunters/howlers too, but don't know a good place to farm them. There's a variation of the build that can farm Slave Spirits for dead swords too, but my rit hasn't made it that far along.

Just an example of some of the drops in hard mode, outside Bergen Hot Springs, 1 group of 5 skeletal rangers dropped me 2 gold dead bows, the second group dropped 1 gold dead bow, the third group of 5 dropped me a gold bow and a gold sword. Another example, killing Craw Stonereap 2 times netted me an elite necro tome, a lockpick, The Stonereaper, a gold wicked blade, a FoW passage scroll, a gold XP scroll, and a junky white item. Sometimes you get nothing but merchant junk, but sometimes you get drops like that...and that more than makes up for it.