How to grind Melee, Vitality and Ranged combat while afk

Hello and welcome to my exp farm guide for melee, vitality and ranged combat!

Check my other guides for farming skills while afk, the links are at the end of this guide.

Preperations

Step 1 preperations:
First you have to find the Hive Mother in the clay biome (3rd boss).

Next you must have enough mining damage to destroy the Larva Hive Wall.

Then trap the Hive Mother and all mob spawns in one room with a hallway to the south with the Larva Hive Wall (dont use other materials the mobs can destroy other wall types).



Find the spot where the Hive Mother just about can't reach you with its attacks, tile no.15 (from spawned Hive Mother) measured from the first tile the Hive Mother does not occupy (picture)



and build a bridge diagonally to the tile no. 14 & 15 (picture).



You have to do this diagonally cause the hitbox from the big larva is too far away without any melee weapon.
Edit: use a broken copper sword (or any other broken sword) you have more range than without any weapon equipped and you deal the same damage!
Make sure you are standing on a ground type that isnt affected by acid like bridge/carpet, the acid bug sometimes explodes and this would cover your spot with acid.

Sometimes the small larva glitch through the gap while they are attacking,



so I recommend using spikes around you if you are going afk,




I also recommend equipping life reg/life on hit rings/necklace and if you train ranged you can make the gap bigger than 1 tile.

If you have acces to the Scarlet Workbench -> Automation Table and can afford around 50+ conveyor belts (5 conveyor belts = 1 Iron + 1 Scarlet Bar without talent) place them to bring the mobs in the north down to you (they are not in the aggro range) this does not always function perfectly around the larva spawns, cause there is a building block around it, but its a good efficiency increase. Thanks to Sig for the suggestion.



Optional but effectively.

Fight

Step 2 fight:
First damage the Hive Mother with a ranged weapon till she goes into rage mode (higher mob spawn frequency) or you can build a bridge, hit her and then run away and destroy the bridge again.

Now find the right spot on tile 15 where you can reach the enemies but they can't hit you, without a weapon equipped if you train melee
Edit: Use a broken copper sword for more range rather than an empty hand.
(hits = exp). You can go for the starving debuff up to -25% damage dealing if you kill them too fast and they dont respawn fast enough, make sure to invest in attack speed in the melee skill tree for more hits per second.



If you want to train range combat make sure to bring enough ranged weapons with you to sustain the durability (if a ranged weapon breaks, the next range weapon will be equipped automaticly if there is one in the inventory).


For the afk grind part you either have to use keyboard with macro functions or you can somehow put something heavy on the left mouse button or you can go to the ingame settings (controls) and toggle a key for "attack" like "U" for example and jam a coin or something else that consistently presses the button down or you can open the Steam overlay while pressing the left mouse button and close it again and you should auto attack - thanks to gamerfrik for the tip.

Closing Notes

Edit: change empty hands to broken copper sword for more range.
Edit: place conveyor belts to get the north mobs down.
Edit: added the suggestion mouse clicking with steam overlay to the afk grinding part.
Thanks for reading and have fun with grinding!


Here are other Skill lvl guides while being afk:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2789915324

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2789592629

[Intangir]

You can use Tiny Task for auto macros as well.

[gamerfrik]

another method for afk clicking is holding down the left mouse button and opening the steam overlay

[Danny]

Thx for the suggestions,
@Sig I tested it with a broken copper sword, I noticed a range increase and the same damage as without a weapon equipped. I added this to the guide.

[Sig]

id recommend using a broken copper sword for grinding melee, if you use a good weapon you will kill the mobs too fast before more come to you. melee levels with hits not kills. more hits=more xp. you can also use conveyor belts to bring the mobs that are out of agro range to you

[Polaris]

I learnt a method to afk click from a stremer, bind attack key to a num pad key whild num lock is off.
Before afking, hold that key then turn num lock on.
I still finding a method that can afk while the game is background.