Iron/Farming Food with Raids

Raid Cup Level Update -

The method listed here works at the cost of being at your best cup level. With my current heroes, I can make around 1850-1900 cups. In order to make good use of this method, I need to be below 1400 cups. So with the update, this method comes at the cost of getting the best raid chest loot. For instance, I can easily stay in tier Platinum, but in order to work this method, I need to drop to tier Gold.

Don't Pay for Food... here is a better way!

Raid Food Farming Method

Here is the Raid Wars Food Farming Method that I use… When I logged on today, I found that I needed 273,000 food and I didn’t have it, but I had 6 Raid Flags/Energies. Here is how i got 213k food with 6 flags in about 10 minutes (with not particularly good luck). In order for this to work, you have to be pretty low on cups. Skip this if you want to maximum your cups. I set up a pretty crappy defense team such that my cups lower while i sleep (too low is bad as noobs don’t have leveled up watchtowers).

It Works for Iron Too

While I focus on food in this post, the same methods can be used to get iron. Prior to the release of the double builder, I (nor any of my alliance members) had any shortages of iron, now with two builders, I can't get enough iron.

My guidelines for food farming…

Never take a battle that isn’t (-40) or worse if you lose, this minimized cup gains.
Never take a battle with less than ~40k of food, sometimes are better for this method than others.
If you roll, roll and roll, and can’t find a battle that meets both rules, take a -45+ battle and drop cups significantly and try again.
If you are working on a Hero Chest and need to lose, you can kill 4 out of 5 of the heroes and then run away from the fight. Thus the sequence below netted me 29 heroes killed (out of a maximum of 30).
You need enough food to roll a good battle to start (sometimes as much as 20k hams).
AS you do this more, the cost of re-rolling increases at the time i wrote this it was 1,500 hams per roll, a month later it is 1,700 hams per roll.

Battle #1- Starting Point

The following screenshot is my starting point. I have ~85k food and six flags.

Battle #2

Anyway I did the battle in the screenshot above, won and was presented with the following battle. Which while it did not meet my rules, I fought it versus rolling.

Battle #3

The battle that i was presented with so I rerolled until I got one that did. The rerolls cost me ~6,000 ham.

Battle #4

After battle #2, I repeated the process being given the battle on the right and rerolling until my rules were met. I rolled for ~8,000 gold and didn’t get anything, so I took the battle to lose Cups.

Battle #5

After battle #3, I am down hams, but my Cups are back around 1400. This cup count seems to be the sweet spot for my team. Repeat the process, first battle did not meet the rules. So I rolled till I got the one battle below. Note I am down ~12,000 hams from the end of battle #2 (but up from the starting poi.

Battle #6

After the last battle, I still need ~30,000 ham. The one that showed up first would have worked, but I am holding out for more hams. So I rerolled till I hit the picture on the below. In this case, my risk paid off, cause one reroll netted nearly 25k more in ham.

My ending cups are about 30 higher than my starting point.

Success

I took some low ham battles (one can win as much as 100k ham per raid) but I met my goal and can now ascend Natalya. The other thing to note is that I got 213k food in about ten minutes (well if I wasn’t writing this at the same time). If I would have paid gems for it, that would have cost me ~3.5x that amount in gems (odd that the fill food was the same as my gains).