Best Way to Develop a Diamond Farm?

[DeletedUser37082]

I want to start developing a diamond farm in a second city, but searching the forums does not show me any discussion on the optimal approach to do this. As the end goal is a large city with lots of wishing wells, is it correct to infer that you don't want to camp in any particular age, just keep working up the tech tree? On the continent map do I want to advance steadily or stay one era behind so the fights are easier? Is it easiest to build goods buildings or just use recurring quests for goods?

I know a lot of people have worked through this, would like to hear what works best!

 

[Emberguard]

The most efficient way to get Wishing Wells is from events Daily Specials. The most efficient way to complete event quests is through being in the earliest age that's feasible for the quests.

If you're looking to only log in, collect, log out then you only need whatever's necessary to complete event quests. Make sure your tavern is either fully fitted out or close to it. When a event is nearing start working on your friends list so have decent tavern and motivation options. Get a Zeus, Lighthouse of Alexandrea and enough of the tech tree to reasonably be able to complete GE/Map quests during the event.

If you want to also complete GE lvl 4 then I'd look at getting advanced GBs. Specially something that gives happiness, something for population and the CDM. Fill up your city with all the space saved by the advanced happy+pop GBs with either lots of troops or goods production. This should do reasonably well to begin with and once Zeus/CDM are lvl 10 you can get the CoA as well. As you get more and more WW's you can start to swap out goods/unit buildings with WWs.

If your happiness GB is the Alcatraz then you can put down a Rogue hideout and utilise the GE troops to get you through GE and use goods for anything you can't fight

 

[Emberguard]

Ironically I find the easiest way to develop a farm is by originally playing it the way I would a normal city. When I try to make it a diamond farm I end up having a rather weak city. If the goal is simply to produce a strong healthy normal city first it's a lot easier to then convert it into a WW city

 

[DeletedUser29726]

You won't need a ton of space for wishing wells for a while anyways so most of your city to start is in fact just a city. If you're looking to do WW diamond farming usually the advice would be to not start one, but several. And focus on them during events when you can win wishing wells. You can just login daily and collect your wells the rest of the time. Over many events your well stock will increase.

You can also try to run expedition for fountains of youth and direct diamonds. This will entail a lot more effort into getting the city setup either to be strong enough to fight or to produce enough goods to negotiate semi-regularly. If you're running expedition for diamond farming other than event quests you should be targetting difficulty 4. Difficulty 1 and 2 provide little chance to get fountains and not many diamonds. They're just the time sink to get to the good stuff (but at least they're also cheap)

Alternatively many of my more workable diamond mines did, as with ember, come from starting side worlds when they were new to play because i enjoy it. Usually those worlds advanced a number of ages and got a decent amount of space and ability to expedition which gave flexibility to convert them to diamond mines.

 

[UBERhelp1]

What I would do is sta in IA, GE is easy in that age, and follow the advice above that @Emberguard gave:

If you're looking to only log in, collect, log out then you only need whatever's necessary to complete event quests. Make sure your tavern is either fully fitted out or close to it. When a event is nearing start working on your friends list so have decent tavern and motivation options. Get a Zeus, Lighthouse of Alexandrea and enough of the tech tree to reasonably be able to complete GE/Map quests during the event.

If you want to also complete GE lvl 4 then I'd look at getting advanced GBs. Specially something that gives happiness, something for population and the CDM. Fill up your city with all the space saved by the advanced happy+pop GBs with either lots of troops or goods production. This should do reasonably well to begin with and once Zeus/CDM are lvl 10 you can get the CoA as well. As you get more and more WW's you can start to swap out goods/unit buildings with WWs.

If your happiness GB is the Alcatraz then you can put down a Rogue hideout and utilise the GE troops to get you through GE and use goods for anything you can't fight

Also, I'd advance far on the cMap to get as many expansions as possible, and also buy medal expansions whenever possible. After you have a functional GE 64 city, just keep expanding to place down WW. Honestly, I don't like WW. I feel they don't give diamonds enough to be the main focus of a city, so I'd recommend them being supplementary to GE. For example, I got 200 diamonds from GE this past week and have only gotten 50 diamonds from a WW once in 6 months. If you can complete GE 64, consistently, diamonds will rain down

 

[Woody*]

There are 2 main strategies as I see it: #1 set up for max diamonds per week (which means doing GE and getting GBs to help), and #2 going for max diamonds for the min effort. I have both kinds of diamond farms, and recommend the max diamonds for min effort approach. Here are my recommendations for that:

1. In my experience, it is far easier and more efficient to get wells during the big 4 seasonal events than any other means (DCs, fountains from GE, etc). But these steps will prepare you for either/both. If you do DCs, I recommend only do the one that offers wells and WW shrink kits, or their fragments....the 5 or 10% options are a waste of time
2. Start your diamond farm and get it close to the end of Iron Age. Plant at least 12 blacksmiths (can be used for event production quests and DCs)
3. Don't advance past blacksmiths on the tech tree, and don't advance farther on the map if necessary (leave 1 province with 1 sector remaining for easy "acquire 1 province" quests, and another province with all sectors unconquered, and un-infiltrated.
4. Build up an inventory of coin, supply, medals and goods (and FP-packs if possible) for the event quests.
5. Advance during events if necessary to complete quests, grow for expansions, etc (but plan ahead for the next age goods, etc so you don't get behind on quests)
6. Advance ages between events but with enough time to prep for the next big one. If you do this long-term, you will need the expansions that come from the tech tree.
7. In between events, DON'T WASTE TIME on your diamond farms. Don't aid/drink, do DCs or GE, check messages, retaliate for getting plundered, etc. Just login, collect, spend FPs, accept Friend Request and log-off. Your goal should be on each farm for less than 1-minute per day including log on and off time. (It takes me < 40 seconds to collect from my farms)
8. You will want at least 1 GB for an FP-dump for the "Spend X FP" quests. Zeus is best for space and ease of BPs. ToB is also great because prints are easy and the goods will help during quests, and the population will help eliminate the need for houses early on.
9. Join the right kind of guild for this (no requirements, like minded people who will help fill trade requests, at least 3 people for GE during events, etc). Dune Diamond Farms on D-world is an option

There are a lot more things to consider and YMMV depending on playstyle. I find that on the worlds that I complete GE4, I can't get expansions fast enough to place all the wells I have, so I'm leveling them as fast as I can.

 

[Woody*]

200 diamonds from GE this past week

I would expect an average of 148 diamonds per week from GE. Very reliable means to get diamonds (and fountains), and boost maximum diamonds earned per week. If you have the time to spend, and prefer a limited number of farms, it's great. I think that over time you will get more diamonds by spending that time on multiple farms (I full auto attack through GE 55/64 then negotiate with the extra turn).

 

[DeletedUser31440]

I go with GE fighting option for diamond farms. Pretty easy and simple to setup and get going, usually can start finishing GE 4 within about 3 months of starting, from there it's just making the fights easier and accumulating WW's and FoY's.

1. Start on an older world. (Cheaper goods, guild's have more established treasuries so less need for an Obs)
2. Stay in BA until you've gotten a Zeus down and up to 10, tavern fully upgraded and about 500 fp's in inventory. You can either get aggressive with guild hopping to get the Zeus down fast or put down an OoD to put fp's into until you get a Zeus without much guild hopping. City should just be blacksmiths running the 24 hour production, houses to support, happy buildings to enthusiastic, and Zeus.
3. Move up to Iron Age and hunt Traz, CDM, and CoA bp's. CoA will be the next GB to go down. Build 2 Legionnaire Barracks, 4 Archer Ranges, and 4 Ballista Camps, 2 Butchers, 6 Blacksmiths, population and happy to support. Fight as far into GE as possible, some encounters will be too tough to beat but the subsequent battles will be beatable, negotiate the especially difficult fighting ones but do not negotiate through GE 4, you won't be able to support the goods required with this build. Focus DC's and events on getting two Rogue Hideouts, once you have some focus on WW's.
4. CoA down and up to 8 and you should be able to fight through GE 4 now. Buy Traz and CDM goods and finish up bp's for them.
5. Traz down and up to 3. Delete Archer's Ranges and Legionnaire Barracks's, if you have 1 RH go 1 RH & 1 Ballista Camp, if you have 2 RH's go 2 RH and 2 Ballista Camp. Delete butchers, OoD, and any extra housing.
6. CDM down and up to 8. Alternate CDM and CoA to 10, go with cheaper to level option. Traz to 10. Hunt Traz bp's to 12, Traz to 12. Zeus, CoA then CDM to 11 hunting bp's as necessary.
7. Hunt Chateau bp's and buy goods, CF down and up to 10.
8. Work on CF, if out of bp's find someone in guild or friend's list with a CF level 30 or higher and dump all daily into that CF for bp's. When you get to the point that the contribution reward is greater than cost to lock position, lock the position and move onto another CF.
9. GE is easy to fight through at this point and you can make the decision if you want to continue DC's for WW's or start another farm time permitting.

Edit: Look for a guild with a 1.8 or higher locking thread that is open to everyone in the guild. Self level and use the locking thread, don't waste time on swap threads or setting up 1-on-1 swaps.

Edit 2: You don't need to take Traz to 12 or Zeus/CoA/CDM to 11, but that's just my preference to do.

 

[DeletedUser32824]

Here is a guide I wrote about my method for a diamond farm. Completing GE64 every week along with my 16 wishing wells has netted me like 2.5k-3k diamonds in about 5-6 months since I established it.

 

[Emberguard]

@Ozyman Tremble Weaklings during the last year they changed GB contributions so you have to be in Iron Age to do FP swaps. Staying in Bronze until Zeus lvl 10 or using a OoD to do swaps in Bronze isn't possible anymore outside of self lvl'ing

 

[DeletedUser31440]

@Ozyman Tremble Weaklings during the last year they changed GB contributions so you have to be in Iron Age to do FP swaps. Staying in Bronze until Zeus lvl 10 or using a OoD to do swaps in Bronze isn't possible anymore outside of self lvl'ing

Yes, that's why I recommend finding a guild with a 1.8 or better thread.

 

[DeletedUser29726]

@Ozyman Tremble Weaklings during the last year they changed GB contributions so you have to be in Iron Age to do FP swaps. Staying in Bronze until Zeus lvl 10 or using a OoD to do swaps in Bronze isn't possible anymore outside of self lvl'ing

That's not within the last year - that's been the case for at least 4-5 years.

What he's talking about is getting them down to self-donate to so that your FPs aren't 'wasted'. You can still advertise the spots for others to take.

 

[Emberguard]

Was it? My bad then. I thought it was more recent with all the Bronze Age campers that's been around with high lvl'd GBs.

 

[MKPapa]

There are 2 main strategies as I see it: #1 set up for max diamonds per week (which means doing GE and getting GBs to help), and #2 going for max diamonds for the min effort. I have both kinds of diamond farms, and recommend the max diamonds for min effort approach. Here are my recommendations for that:

1. In my experience, it is far easier and more efficient to get wells during the big 4 seasonal events than any other means (DCs, fountains from GE, etc). But these steps will prepare you for either/both. If you do DCs, I recommend only do the one that offers wells and WW shrink kits, or their fragments....the 5 or 10% options are a waste of time
2. Start your diamond farm and get it close to the end of Iron Age. Plant at least 12 blacksmiths (can be used for event production quests and DCs)
3. Don't advance past blacksmiths on the tech tree, and don't advance farther on the map if necessary (leave 1 province with 1 sector remaining for easy "acquire 1 province" quests, and another province with all sectors unconquered, and un-infiltrated.
4. Build up an inventory of coin, supply, medals and goods (and FP-packs if possible) for the event quests.
5. Advance during events if necessary to complete quests, grow for expansions, etc (but plan ahead for the next age goods, etc so you don't get behind on quests)
6. Advance ages between events but with enough time to prep for the next big one. If you do this long-term, you will need the expansions that come from the tech tree.
7. In between events, DON'T WASTE TIME on your diamond farms. Don't aid/drink, do DCs or GE, check messages, retaliate for getting plundered, etc. Just login, collect, spend FPs, accept Friend Request and log-off. Your goal should be on each farm for less than 1-minute per day including log on and off time. (It takes me < 40 seconds to collect from my farms)
8. You will want at least 1 GB for an FP-dump for the "Spend X FP" quests. Zeus is best for space and ease of BPs. ToB is also great because prints are easy and the goods will help during quests, and the population will help eliminate the need for houses early on.
9. Join the right kind of guild for this (no requirements, like minded people who will help fill trade requests, at least 3 people for GE during events, etc). Dune Diamond Farms on D-world is an option

There are a lot more things to consider and YMMV depending on playstyle. I find that on the worlds that I complete GE4, I can't get expansions fast enough to place all the wells I have, so I'm leveling them as fast as I can.

Well, obviously points 2 and 3 contradict each other. You cannot get to the end of IA if you do not advance past balcksmiths on the tech tree.

 

[Johnny B. Goode]

Well, obviously points 2 and 3 contradict each other. You cannot get to the end of IA if you do not advance past balcksmiths on the tech tree.

You do realize that this thread is 4 1/2 years old, right? And game changes since then mean that almost all the advice here is obsolete anyway.

 

[MKPapa]

You do realize that this thread is 4 1/2 years old, right? And game changes since then mean that almost all the advice here is obsolete anyway.

Yes, I understand that, but the tech tree have not changed

 

[Darkest.Knight]

Need more patience now than when I started playing, 5 years ago. I've developed 2 playable miners and both r almost in SAJM, have 1 last quest to complete SAV that's worth 848 diamonds. Get descent quest rewards after lvling up CF.

Better to use the old post than to start a duplicate, can read the old posts to get an idea if thinking has changed.

 

[xivarmy]

Sort of related question. How hard is it to stay in diamond in PVP Arena ? Does anyone have what they do for this now ? I don't want Platinum or Crystal nor gold , I want the wishing well frags in diamond but it keeps try to shift you out of it.

It'll vary from server to server for weekly reward - but by now you can guesstimate on your server by taking 10% of the spot you want to be (i.e. 500th for a chance at a wishing well each week) - that's how many points they lose each week and thus must regain. You'll need to do significantly more than that to get there in the first place, but that's how much it'll take you to maintain it.

The points required should not change from week to week much (at least not rapidly as people aren't massively increasing their activity or mass quitting the feature with no changes). But you'll always have to do your "maintenance" amount to get back to where you were.

As for the individual leagues, you don't "stay" there - you reearn them from scratch each month.

 

[Ironrooster]

I find it pretty easy to do diamond in PVP if you can do it every day. If your A/D is high enough to fight the higher level it's even easier.

Of course you only get 2 fragments every month so it's a slow process to get a well.

 

[xivarmy]

PVP is more of just a distraction and not much effort to do though. It's easy to get into diamond , it's stopping moving up to Crystal and getting useless SoK frags that I don't want

There's no reason to stop. You reset to zero on the first of every month no matter how far you get. And I don't think you can get diamond twice in a month by quitting and rejoining (anymore)