Updated E7 Farming Guide - The End of Dog Walking?

In November of 2019 I made a post about the basics of gold farming in Epic 7. Here's an update in anticipation of some major changes coming next week.

Summary of Changes

In my gold guide, my final conclusion was,

"In absolute terms, your better off farming hunts. It takes a lot to get good gear, so you'll need to keep at it a long time. The chance to get mystic medals in particular is extremely important, as there are few other ways to get them without spending real money. Any unwanted gear you get can be used to enhance other gear, used weekly in the Alchemist Steeple to make charms, or just sold for more gold. Furthermore, a stable and predictable rate of return from farming is better than the unpredictability of adventure where one or two really good runs can be offset easily by several poor ones. 

However, you will always need more gold. Everything you need gold to do has a form of battle that also lets you farm gold. And everything that you get from those battles is something you need to improve your heroes. Your best option most times is going to be to figure out what you need other than gold and focus on farming that. You'll see your gold supplies increase naturally that way. But, if you're looking for how to get a lot in as short amount of time as possible, hunts are usually your best bet. "

Next week, when the possibly largest update to date in the game takes place, there is one change that has received a little attention, the other has received a good deal more, but still not very much.

The first update is that when you are farming now, excess exp from max-limit units will be accumulated and turned into Penguins. As a result, the assumption being supported right now is that there's little reason to include non max-leveled heroes in your team. Instead, just farm faster, accumulate that exp into Penguins, and use those penguins to level up whatever you want.

In addition to this, Penguins will no longer be part of the hero inventory. They will instead be treated like items, therefore having unlimited inventory. 

What does this have to do with gold farming?

Assuming a tidbit that must be figured out works as hoped - does the exp>Penguin function work in hunts or just adventure - regardless of whether you're doing hunts or adventure you will get two things of importance other than gold; exp penguins and Stigma. The penguins you'll be getting from the exp buildup will mostly be used to level up fodder, dogs, and eventually the target hero. But assuming they turn into penguins that function the exact same way as current 3* penguins, this would mean a potential windfall that can be converted into lots of gold and Silver Transmit Stones. 

But in addition to that, as there is now no inventory limitation to gum up the works, you can spend single (lengthy) sessions dumping Stigma to summon penguins. Assuming you've got a maxed out hatchery, you will end up getting a decent number of 3* penguins. If you then transmit them, every 12 gets you 12 Silver Transmit Stones, and 624,000 gold. 

This is such a substantial change that I wouldn't be surprised to find out they eliminate Silver Transmits from the award for selling 3* penguins. By uncapping the ability to accumulate Penguins, and also creating an additional means by which to gather more of them, if all the new penguins do is replace the want to use them for leveling a hero, that potentially translates into 52K gold per 3* penguin you can claim.  

A Lengthy Conclusion

So here's the final conclusion - gold farming is even less important now than it was in late 2019.

The devs have increased the amount of gold given out for free, and decreased the gold cost of various elements of the game. And it has always been the case that the gold-crunch is more often a reflection of the choices of the player and not a defect of the game mechanics.

The fact is the two biggest gold-sinks in the game are gear upgrades and Secret Shop purchases. 

Gear upgrades will naturally decrease over the long run as a player accumulates gear for the units they want to use, and become more selective of what they will upgrade and use. Even now I see folks who have played this game for as long, if not longer, than I have who waste a lot of gold upgrading gear they never should have spent resources on - rolling gear to +15 hoping to get high speed when it's purple gear that started with a 2 roll on speed, or where the first roll went somewhere else, and the second roll was a min roll. That sort of thing is more common w/ new players who are not privy to guides similar to this one, who are impatient to get rolling in the game, perhaps underestimating the crunch from the mid-game. 

The fact is, the longer you go in the game, the less gear you'll actually want to bother upgrading because it will lack the stat mix or starting rolls you want. Further, if you are just a touch more methodical about how you upgrade gear - taking it to +3, +6, +9, and evaluating where each roll goes and the likelihood of a good end result, not just seeing base 4 speed and dumping everything into it to see if it max rolls all the way into speed - you save a ton of gold. The devs actually addressed this recently - the fact that the cost of upgrading gear spikes after +9 due to how much exp it needs, gold cost tied to exp cost. Therefore, if you take your purple (or lower) gear and evaluate it at +9, you will know if it's worth the added investment. Cutting off gear at this level saves you from wasting resources that will then start to accumulate appreciably for you. 

And overall, the mentioned exp and penguin changes simply mean that no matter what  you do in the game now, this isn't something to be overly conscious of. Easier collection of penguins means easier collection of Silver Transmits and gold in the long run. 

Fusing about getting together a 3-hero team for hunts so you can toss in a dog, or having just the sole AVildred farming in adventure isn't completely dead however. 

As some may know, my own exp farm team that I recommended for a while now has been to use AVil, one black dog holding the exp artifact, and then whatever other dogs or fodder or heroes to level up that you want. Now, the ideal farm team is likely to be AVil (or your farmer) and three max level dogs. Max level dogs get the most exp due to their passives. That will obviously get you more penguins quicker. And, as suggested before, you'll either be able to sell some or all of these accumulated penguins, or use them to level up other stuff while using the Stigma to buy hatch more Penguins in the Sanctuary, aiming to get as many 3*s as possible to sell. 

That means that, rather than ending dog walking, this update will likely just make dog-walking the literal function of catalyst farming and anything else done in adventure. Obviously in harder adventure modes - Ep 3, the upcoming Ep 4 later this year - running with 3 dogs isn't viable unless you are using a super geared out AVildred, and even then I'm not so sure that's feasible either. You will likely need at least one other hero alongside him. 

But I've also argued there's little point in farming Ep 3 right now anyway (can't be sure about Ep 4 since we clearly don't have any details on it yet). The drop rates in Ep 3 are not markedly better, the bump in gold is marginal at best, but it is significantly more difficult and longer. In other words your expending more effort for not nearly as commensurate a gain. Which is fine. It's not like the earlier farmable maps are any worse to work with, and natural evolution over time means that Rubicon will be crossed at some point. As a player seeking efficiency, however, it is irrelevant. Farming Ep 1.5 or 2 is perfectly fine, and faster, so there's no reason to worry about farming anything harder. By the time you're at the point of wanting to worry about farming Ep 3, you'll likely be already far enough in the game with gear and units that you won't care about where you farm anyway. 

In reality, the Normal difficulty of the side story is likely the best farming location for gold. Even if you ignore whatever is in the shop, the shop always has gold as a purchase option for the event currency. It is never a bad idea to farm up whatever the event drop catalysts are, as there is bound to be a hero that needs them at some point (until the likely event of new catalysts being added in later chapters), and the epics have higher drop rates. Just overflowing with that particular catalyst, well then you can convert the "excess" into other catalysts. 

The Normal difficulty has the best exp:energy ratio. In addition, it is a very easy battle for most anyone out of the early game. Therefore, your farming runs are much faster, a third to half the time of a high-level hunt run even with 3x dogs on your team. Even at the Hell difficulty you can likely run with 2x dogs and 2x DPS and still have faster clears than your fastest hunt teams. 

Obviously some testing will take place to check on all of this and tease out how it all works. But for now, if you're someone looking to amass a horde of gold, you might want to plan on spending a lot of time in the next side story.