Farm seeds, XP and research with ease
(Requires Demon Lord)
Introduction
The demon lord has an interesting mechanic in that he summons other members of your party to fight against you. What’s neat is that defeating them gives xp, research, seeds and loot just like if you defeated them in the normal zones you found them in. With that said there are some elements to this fight that make him supremely farmable.
To start when you defeat the demon lord all other summoned creatures are instantly defeated. Unlike other encounters, the demon lord remains in the top combat slot and you can continue attacking him until he is dead. Second, even if you are unable to beat him yourself easily he casts a supernova effect with surprising regularity that will instantly defeat his own summons along with doing massive amounts of damage to your team as well. Depending on which party members you bring along your can rake in the rewards.
Summon Types
To start, there are essentially four kinds of party members.
- Unsummonable
Includes Norn, Chaotic Brain, Brutal Right Arm, etc
Basically the Summon attack that the demon lord has no effect on these characters. They won’t help you for this strategy. Though there are a few who are perfect for non-combat slots. For example Norn with her double XP. Or sludge slime for extra research drops. - Regular Summons
Any normal creature you have unlocked fits in this category. As far as I can tell they have the same drop table as their normal dungeon counter parts. So any item they can drop will drop from their summons. They also drop research and seeds as per normal. - Rare Summons
These behave largely the same as regular summons with one caveat. Most rare summons have exaggerated drop tables. Which makes farming those items a lot easier. - Boss Summons
Boss summons have a unique distinction, they will never drop research or items. But they DO have a unique advantage that more than makes up for this. Bosses have both a guaranteed seed drop rate and the highest XP drop per kill of any creatures. The stronger the boss, the more XP & Seeds you get.
The Basic
For the purposes of this guide I am going to assume that you can kill the demon lord. Best is if you can kill him within two strikes. Having just completed my 4th reincarnation I can easily 1 shot the Demon King with [You]. The trick is to just finish your attack just after he casts summon assuming he starts by immediately casting it. Since I’ve been running this as Warrior and getting a ~12.7% attack speed boost that means a total casting time of over 3.8 seconds. Double check my math here. But essentially you want your total attack time to be over the cast time of summons.
Next up you want to fill all combat party slots with the creatures to be summoned. At different times you’ll want different setups. I’ve listed three common ones below. Keep in mind that the Demon Lord is restricted to a party size of 5. So if you remove [You] from active combat, you will not get a 5th summons. I didn’t spend any time figuring out if it is a random selection or a top / bottom gets dropped. But you lose at least 1 of the summons if you bring 5 summonable party members.
As for your non-combat party slots, choose supporting members that help you. If you need an Attack boost then grab an all status member. If you are farming research then grab either drop chance or drop amount members like Sludge Slime or Queen Bee. If you are farming seeds you’ll want drop amount from members like Wyvern and Soldier Bee (not drop chance as you’ll see later).
Again the whole goal here is to kill the demon lord right after he casts summon. And if he doesn’t cast summon, who cares. He casts it right away most of the time.
With a PAtk of 11.0K I was able to do 32.4M damage with Power Slash. Which was sufficient to 1 shot the demon lord. Technically 2 shot as I gave another minion a 2 second cast attack. Will find the break points for Power Stab and Power Swing and update them here.
Three Common Party Setups
I highly recommend nabbing the mercenary title from the warrior path. Makes farming the Demon Lord a lot easier a lot quicker.
Farming Anchovy Sandwiches
I find that there are essentially three setups. Though you can mix and match at your leisure.
Setup 1: Research
Any creature besides the unsummonables & bosses can be farmed for their research. Any +research drop amount and +research drop chance (e.g. will / summons / actions / routines) can help you farm research faster. Tamer for example has great routines that boost this. Use your non-combat party slots to boost either drop chance or drop amount.
Setup 2: Items
Use the Bestiary to track down what creatures drop the items that you want to farm. Load them into the party and walla. Anything goes. Need Runes? Include the Silver Scale Dragon. Want fast Dung, Stones & Pelts? Add the Phantom Whale.
Setup 3: Seeds & xp
Now you might be wondering why I listed Seeds AND xp in the same setup. That’s because they are one and the same. By using Boss creatures you will have guaranteed seed drops that can be boosted by anything that raises drop amount. Using a Scarlet Dragon, Elder Treant, Rock Golem, Purification Slime & Norn I was getting about 4M xp / hour. I measured roughly around 5 hours and had gained 20M xp.
Setup 4: Mix & Match
No one ever said you had to stick to just one thing, right? You’ve got 4 available party slots. Make use of them.
Tips & Tricks
Couple of things to wrap this up.
This is a fabulous way to grind some early sin when you are in your first reincarnation or soon after. This isn’t my first play through (played on the web a long time ago). But I had to start from scratch. I chose to spend an extra couple days to get my gluttony capacity to 1K for the 3rd eat slot. Well worth it in my opinion. While doing so I simply used the demon lord to grind research to max all of my available summons. And while doing so I was able to get quite a few of my summons capped out with seeds. And this is before I realized how powerful the bosses were for gaining seeds. It gave me a huge boost for my second reincarnation. I was just barely able to get 2 sins for my first reincarnation by the time I hit 1k gluttony and unlocked the third slot. And I’m pretty sure that the majority of my research came from Supernova party wipes. This does require fairly active play and frequent 1 hour dark rituals to make work for the gluttony. You may want to stop at the 500 gluttony level and call it good. One other advantage to this is you’ll get lots of Inspiration this way.
XP Persists through Reincarnation
Grinding xp up front will pay dividends in future reincarnations. I just barely got 2 sins my first reincarnation after pushing Gluttony up to 1k and getting around 30 million XP. Having played once before I knew I wanted to unlock both Greed and Sloth. My second reincarnation which saw nowhere near as many dark rituals / gluttony levels I was still able to get enough farming the demon lord overnight to get 3. I’ve just finished two reincarnations today (much of which was grinding anchoveys as I was at work) and I’ve gotten up to 4 sins for this reincarnation. Each reincarnation is taking less time than the last and giving me more sins than before.
Easy attack boost
After your first reincarnation you have the option to stay in the Village and farm anchovy sandwiches + pork. With 2 eat slots just farm & pork away.
Sloth
If you slot your current dungeon (Demon Lord, Dim Cave, etc) into your sloth loop your will get a much faster restart. Roughly 2-3x faster by my observation.
HotKeys
Alternatively you “can” hotkey two dungeons and then hit the two numbers in rapid succession to near instantly restart the fight. So say I hotkey Dim Cave to 1 and Demon Kingdom Fort to 2. As soon as you defeat the Demon King hit 1 –> 2 as fast as you can. The fight will start over. This is also a great way to get the Norn wolf kills in the beginning.
Evil Eye
I… severely underestimated how powerful this one is. At 5k levels I was at 550% dark ritual bonus. Get this quickly and sink some seeds into it.
Spending Sins
Best time to spend your sins is right before you reincarnate. You get a +10% boost to Dark Ritual & Sacred Ritual per unspent sin. Obviously spend them where they are useful. On my second reincarnation I snapped up the 50% multiplier to Instant, Loop & Dungeon rewards. They are just too powerful. And I grabbed the 50% to greed after my 3rd reincarnation once I was done farming anchovy sandwiches.
Power Boost
Defeating “The Destroyer” guardian gave a huge boost to [You]’s level. Makes farming the Demon Lord that much easier. Was weirdly way easier than the Vast Dessert too. Which I won’t claim to understand.
Dark Ritual Often
Come up with some easy party setups for doing a dark ritual. I have a party for the dark ritual itself and then my current dark lord party. Queue up the highest boss dungeon you can 1 shot with Sharp Spike for a minute for some easy levels in Miracle Stone & Lucky Rabbit’s Foot. I usually update the routines after about 15 minutes to setup will & warrior routines. This will yield a constant flow of Inspiration while you grind the demon lord.
