Exploits: Discuss, Reveal, Share.

Well it's doomsday, gents.

It was all bad and wrong talking about abusing exploits and whatnot when we were worried about the long-term health of the game (level 50 in one play session does not make for a game you can play for years.) Now, obviously, that point is moot. Further, many people might like to get characters to 50 at a more accelerated rate, now that they have a strict deadline in which to do so. Thus, I'll ask: can we talk about exploits now? I've got a farm map on the AE that I kept secret for a long time (it's various exploits were never fixed) but now that maybe nobody cares somebody else might be able to benefit from it. And hey, if somebody official sees this post and still feels a need to delete exploits? Well, who cares, the servers go down in a few weeks anyway.

So here goes: Arc #444905, The Forbidden Plant Cave
Warning: The writing is intentionally bad. This was to keep people from playing it, and thus discovering it's a farm.

1. Who: The farm is designed for a Plant/Thorns Dominator: invest heavily in AoE attacks preferably ones with -DEF. I use Roots, Fling Thorns, Thorntrops, and Carrion Creepers. I also use Ice Storm and Sleet from my Ancillary Power Pool. Most of the damage is dealt by the enemies to themselves due to Seeds of Confusion. However, anybody with flight (jetpacks should work) and AoE ranged attacks can effectively farm this mission.

2. Set your effective players# to 8. If you have an AoE confuse, crank your difficulty up to max. Otherwise set it to whatever you think you can kill quickly with your AoEs.

3. Begin the arc, speak with the contact, and enter the mission. The map is extremely small: head all the way to the back, flying past the enemies (they cannot attack you unless you are on the ground or in melee range of them). Invisibility can be helpful.

4. Towards the end of the map, there are three "rescuable" NPCs with no guards. They will fly after you and speed boost you, and will help keep the enemies near you by adding to your effective aggro cap. They won't attack, and so never "steal" exp. Gather them up and move to the last room.

5. There are four glowies in this room, and no enemies (yet). Quickly click three of them leaving whichever is closest to the middle of the room for last, guide your flying NPC speed-boosters towards the ceiling, then click the last glowy without getting any closer to the ground than you have to. Once the last glowy is clicked, the room FILLS with mobs.

6. Begin to kill the mobs, staying in the center of the room. Toss in your AoEs to make sure you've dealt a little bit of damage to each of them, then toss in your confuse (preferably while Domination is active) and allow them to kill each other. You'll receive exp/inf FAR in excess of what you actually "earned" because of the way confuse effects exp/inf distribution.

7. Around the room there will likely be a spawn or two that has not aggroed you when they spawned; quickly and toss an AoE their way to get their attention. They may not immediately run towards you if you're at your aggro cap, but as soon as enemies start dying they'll remember that attack and come to die.

8. Eat inspirations as they drop, eat them all. Don't ever stop eating them. You'll get a freaking ton of them, eat them to make room. You really want the reds, yellows, and blues, but eat the others too, since they're taking up room.

9. You'll notice some the enemies have a red glow, and say stupid things as you damage them ("Oh no, I'm a 3/4 life!" or "You killed me!") These enemies will spawn ambushes as they get damaged, to add the already massive pile of enemies at your feet.

10. When you only have a few enemies left, they stop being able to kill each other very quickly, and you're better off starting a new mission. (This is because their one ranged attack deals very little damage, and is an immobilize so it keeps them from getting close to each other) There should be a new glowy in the room at this point: click it and the mission will complete. Or you can just go into the AE controls and quit the arc.

Yield: For the level 50 Dominator I designed for the farm, I can make ~20 million inf in 10 minutes, and tons of tickets. That's 4 runs in rapid succession, quitting the SECOND I see that none of the enemies are in melee range of each other.

How is this an exploit?
Two main reasons: one, I've stacked mission objectives in the final room in a way I don't think you're supposed to be able to, creating a huge spawn. Second, it takes advantage of the fact that "Entangle" counts as a ranged attack (making the enemies worth full exp) but can't target you while you're in the air.