Note: More farming methods if any
Read at your own risk!
There are various ways to automate or semi-automate the gathering of resources, and even more ways to efficiently and quickly find specific gear. Farming is the process of gathering the resources through the use of repetition and exploiting game mechanics.
Speedrun Farms[]
Skipping past mobs to get the completion reward, or reliably opening chests is often the fastest way to farm for gear. Using speed boosting items it's possible to speed through mobs and get the loot without fighting. Items and enchantments that work the best for this are:
- Boots of Swiftness for the speed boost
- Ghost Cloak to skip most of the enemies
- Shock Powder to use if your speed boosting artifacts are still on cooldown
- Light Feather to roll and stun nearby enemies
- Evocation Robe (or its uniques: ember robe or verdant robe) gives you a +15% speed boost and makes artifact cooldowns 40% faster
- Cool Down makes your artifacts cooldown faster making them more usable
- Swiftfooted lets you speed up by rolling
- Speed Synergy gives you a bonus speed boost whenever you use your artifacts
Soggy Cave has various skips with rolling and jumping over terrain. It used to be faster where it could be done in less than 30 seconds using an exploit to skip the puzzles. Mouse-clicking on the door to the chest room while pressing the gamepad's "activate" button ignores the wall normally opened by the puzzles. The exploit was patched by making the mouse cursor disappear when moving with the controller. With cross-platform out, this makes the game more fair for everyone playing together. The quickest way of obtaining the obsidian chest at the end of the mission is that players quickly go into the cave and enter the ambush room where the player can roll and skip through the iron fence. So he just need to complete the puzzle. However, there's one of the four maps doesn't have the bug to roll over the fence and the player has to survive the ambush.
Desert Temple has a secret obsidian chest near a gold chests and a Piggy Bank. Run to the key golem, past the locked door there is a sub-section containing the chests, but there is a bug where the obsidian chest room often cannot be entered, because of the incorrect camera angle. A bit further into the level after the sub-section there is a piggy bank and a mini-boss (usually an enderman).
AFK farms[]
Various Locations have an unlimited supply of enemies spawning and attacking you. Pumpkin Pastures has a section after the ambush at the bridge where two switches must be flipped to lower the drawbridge and continue. There are also various places where mob spawners appear, like the Redstone Mines.
Scripted[]
Auto-clickers and macro programs such as Auto Hot Key make it easy to run a script to fight and use abilities while away.
A simple experience and emerald farming loadout discovered in beta uses tasty bone in conjunction with the armor enchant Health Synergy.[1]
This can be expanded to be any Summons and the use of Health Synergy armor and optionally a totem of regeneration. Since Summons does not provide souls, it is not possible to utilize Soul Healer.
Prospector increases the emeralds quite a bit, so if automation is the method, holding attack while in a corner allows a player to attack enemies as they come, giving the prospector bonus.
Non-scripted[]
Health Synergy armor and Final Shout can create an infinite loop, which heals you and activates your artifacts whenever you take enough damage. Of course this loadout still needs ways of killing mobs, so a Summon or two can be great. Note: It is suicide to try this with powerful mobs, mini-bosses, or bosses!
Mooshroom monstrosity[]
On the ??? level, there is a fair share of mooshrooms to find. But even if it may not seem like it there is a limited amount that is on the island. It doesn't mean that there is a source of near infinite Mooshrooms to find. The mooshroom monstrosity spawns mooshrooms while attacking (amount may change on different difficulties). In the arena where you fight the mooshroom monstrosity, go to the left as soon as you enter and hide behind the large boulder there. The mooshroom monstrosity tries to take the shortest path towards you, even if it means walking into a rock. It ends up stuck on the rock slowly inching right or left. You must stay far away from the mooshroom monstrosity even behind the boulder, since it has multiple splash attacks. Mooshrooms spawn every 20 seconds. Mooshrooms are smarter and smaller than the mooshroom monstrosity, meaning that they can find the way around the boulder. Simply keep a safe distance behind the boulder and away from the mooshroom monstrosity. This farm may be a little slower compared to other farms but it does work if done properly.