So yesterday I was running powder and farming the ants as I tend to always do. A couple of non ant friends run into the queen chamber I am farming and about 40 warriors spit acid on them and their pets all at one time and melt the two players a GD and a Turtle to slimy little goo piles instantly. So I pop a random solen with a e bolt breaking friend and then drop 2 EVs and summon 5 liches from the queen corpses and kill off all the warriors, Rez the two intruders (No point in Rezzing them when the chamber is full of warriors) and get asked why I can kill the queens and not lose friend status to the hive. I explain it to them and that it is a perfectly legal tactic as no less than 8 GMs have been paged on me in the hive over the years, all concluding that I am well within the rules and not using a exploit.
So what is the tactic. A pro solen hunter is a legendary Necro/Spirit speaker and Mage for hunting Reds under ground you use the necro, for hunting blacks on the surface you use the mage side. Simply drop a vengful spirit on the queen and at legendary they kill the queens fast and the queens lay a egg or two in the process that pops a warrior or a worker. It takes forever for the queens to respawn if you kill the initial workers, if you don't the queen pretty much insta respawns. I usually fill the chamber 70-80 warriors and about as many workers from the queen eggs and then animate dead to wipe them out, collect the ZOOGIES, Gold, Gems and any decent splintering weapons and repeat the process doing the BOS quest along the way. I can pull about 150k-200k worth of gold and gems per hour in the hive and my best zoogie collecting hour was 3000 or there abouts that average varies depending on how many queens drop 25, warriors drop 13 and workers drop 6 have bad runs where everything drops minimums
I do occasionally lose friend status from being to close to one of my undead when a queen or warrior spits and getting a acid burn breaking friends. You can do this with a mage and flame strikes if you have legendary Eval, Mage, GM inscription and max SDI and one hit kill the queen but just 1 hp from death and the whole chamber goes hostile.
I have been farming the hive as a necro since I discovered this shortly after the release of AOS and passed the tactics on to every ZOOG in ZOOG basic training I can't remember which DEV it was that popped into the hive many years ago to observe and said very creative use of the game mechanics and not a cheat since there is still risk as a queen spit on my skeletal warrior and melted me. The first time I discovered this I actually paged a GM on myself to make sure it was legal and within the rules.
So now everyone knows how I farm all those hundreds of thousands of ZOOGIE FUNGUS
So what is the tactic. A pro solen hunter is a legendary Necro/Spirit speaker and Mage for hunting Reds under ground you use the necro, for hunting blacks on the surface you use the mage side. Simply drop a vengful spirit on the queen and at legendary they kill the queens fast and the queens lay a egg or two in the process that pops a warrior or a worker. It takes forever for the queens to respawn if you kill the initial workers, if you don't the queen pretty much insta respawns. I usually fill the chamber 70-80 warriors and about as many workers from the queen eggs and then animate dead to wipe them out, collect the ZOOGIES, Gold, Gems and any decent splintering weapons and repeat the process doing the BOS quest along the way. I can pull about 150k-200k worth of gold and gems per hour in the hive and my best zoogie collecting hour was 3000 or there abouts that average varies depending on how many queens drop 25, warriors drop 13 and workers drop 6 have bad runs where everything drops minimums
I do occasionally lose friend status from being to close to one of my undead when a queen or warrior spits and getting a acid burn breaking friends. You can do this with a mage and flame strikes if you have legendary Eval, Mage, GM inscription and max SDI and one hit kill the queen but just 1 hp from death and the whole chamber goes hostile. I have been farming the hive as a necro since I discovered this shortly after the release of AOS and passed the tactics on to every ZOOG in ZOOG basic training
I can't remember which DEV it was that popped into the hive many years ago to observe and said very creative use of the game mechanics and not a cheat since there is still risk as a queen spit on my skeletal warrior and melted me. The first time I discovered this I actually paged a GM on myself to make sure it was legal and within the rules. So now everyone knows how I farm all those hundreds of thousands of ZOOGIE FUNGUS
