*NOTE* AS OF the November Update 2008, HFFF is no longer possible, this guide can be used merely as an archival reference now.
Hero fast faction farming, or HFFF, is the single fastest way to earn Kurzick faction in Guild Wars. It involves using a set of 3 heroes and one, or two (based on the HFFFer's preference; explained later) henchmen, to complete a repeatable quest given by Scoutmaster Arne just outside of Lutgardis Conservatory in the Factions Campaign.
The quest entails the "scouting out" of four areas in Melandru's Hope, hence three heroes, and henchmen(man). The four areas are as follows:
Stairs:
Mushrooms:
West Lake:
Bridge:
To get started you want a nice setup of your screen. A nice big "U" map, and your hero skill bars open and nicely lined up. Speaking of the hero bars, before I get into screen setup, lets take a look at the ones I use. These are by no means the definitive setups or hero choices, in fact there are faster setups then this, but this guide will get you started to an "under a minute" run for sure. Here are my three hero skill bars as they appear on my game screen when I play. Shadow Form, Dark Escape, and Dash are a given, the fourth or even fifth skill is optional, use your better judgment.
Every hero should have shadow arts to level 12 (or more in Zenmai's, or any other assassin hero's case if you happen to give them runes). It does not matter what heroes you use for this, although A/R and R/A are the primary choices because they offer the most choices for running skills. When choosing heroes just be sure they have Level 12 shadow arts for shadow form and dark escape maximum duration. The running skills will be the next attributes to fill in with attribute points.
As far as screen setup, again this is preference, but you want something that flows well for you, this is what I use.
Note about the hero skill bars. Hold shift and click all but one running skill on all hero bars, so that the little no smoking sign goes over them all. This prevents the heroes from using any skills when you don't want them to, but, in cases where they are on their own, like say hero three gets body blocked and your wresting with her/his flag to dislodge her/him so he/she can be on his/her way, the other two's running skills expired, 3 out of 4 times they will kick in this last skill on their own.
You will send one hero to each of one of the Stairs, the Mushrooms and West Lake positions. The Henchmen will take up the Bridge position. The placements are not difficult but may take a few tries to get right. My suggestion would be to work on them one at a time so you know your placement is good, but by all means dive right in to all at once if you want to. There are 3 placements to worry about, the first placement is the Initial placement of your Stairs runner, in this picture its Hero 1, along with the placement of hero 2 and hero 3. That placement looks like this.
To aid in dropping the flags quickly I STRONGLY suggest using hotkeys. You can place all the flags before any of them get halfway to the edge of the compass. As soon as you drop the last hero flag, grab the map and yank it up so you can see the bridge and drop the henchmen "all" flag. Your hero flags will override this flag, so only the henchmen will run to bridge, your heroes will continue to their respective destinations. Here is the henchie flag placement.
Everyone's preference will be different, but at this point I punch SF on all three of my heroes, and then a running skill, I usually use dark escape to start. Then position the map back to the north so I can do the final placement of the long distance runner (Hero 1 in these examples) to the stairs. By the time dark escape runs out youve had time to pop off a few more running skills on the rest of them, thats why i keep them lined up you can click straight up and down in consecutive order as they run out. After about the third running skill or so, SF should run out, hero 2 and 3 should be safely at mushrooms and west lake by this time (or at least close enough that they aren't in danger). And you should be placing if not have already placed your long distance runner to stairs... here:
After that all thats left to do is wait for Zen, or Pyre, or whoever your stairs runner is to get to stairs, I typically run to Arne to get the quest at this point, and a last click of dash and then natural stride, the green "done" exclamation point comes over Arne's head just a couple of seconds into stride's duration, and you're done, collect and repeat.
Earlier i mentioned plural or singular henchmen preference. This is based on the confidence level and style of play by the farmer. As you may or may not know, HFFFing is a magnificent way to make money, as well as faction, because A LOT of people either dont know how to do it themselves, have the capacity and skills to but dont care, or dont have Nightfall or EotN to be able to get the heroes needed, and will PAY YOU to do this. Usually 100g for 55 second or less runs. This is where the henchmen come in to play, with yourself, 3 heroes and 2 henchmen in the party, youve only got room for 2 leechers. Which, after the quest is completed, will net you 350g per run. If you can run it without 2 henchmen, and use 1, you can make 450g per run. The trick is geting NON antsy people to leech. They cant move around at all if your running 1 henchman, simply because of the fact that as valiant and dedicated to you as the henchmen are, when one of your party members moves, they, just for a second, try to run back to you, and then remembering thier task at hand, continue back again to the flag. This slight deviation in path will almost always pull aggro wrong and get them killed. So in short, 1 hench = more cash per run and looks more elite, but you need reliable leechers that will listen to your request to not move until you do. 2 henchies = less cash but will net you VERY reliable runs, and in the long run, possibly more runs because you wont have to make up for dead henchies.
Hope this was helpful to you, contact me in game if you have any questions or need additional help. Thanks for reading!
