Farming for Credits

Even space ninjas need money. Okay, they’re not using their money to buy groceries and things like that. They’re most likely throwing it away buying and leveling up weapons they don’t really need in order to reach their next mastery rank, but still. They use money. They need it. Vast amounts of it. I mean, come on, a single forma costs like 20k credits to build.

But where can a space ninja get all this money? Most normal missions only reward up to about 7k credits at a time, and unless you’re a Nekros with Desecrate and a Secura Lecta, you ain’t going to find much more than a few thousand from looting lockers and breaking all those handy storage containers. Your best bet is a nice little credit farming spot – an easily repeated mission with a good payout. Here’s just a handful of them.

A little note, Draco isn’t on this list. Because I’ve never been there. It disappeared a long time ago, before I joined at the start of the Specters of the Rail update. Apparently it was THE BEST place to farm, but now it’s just another survival mission.

Romula

Romula isn’t that great. Its payout is a measly 11k per 5 waves of defense. But brand new players don’t have the luxury of the entirety of the star chart yet, so if you’re new and need credits hard and fast, don’t get mowed down by level 40 enemies, go to Romula. It’s three missions into Venus, and really easily accessible to a lot of players. Its low level, melee-only enemies mean even someone with a bow can do 5 waves solo.

Why? Because it’s a Dark Sector defense mission, meaning all the Infested come to you. Romula’s infested Corpus map is also pretty small, meaning you’re not running around too much. Your best strategy is to do 5 waves and extract, then repeat the mission, since you get 11,000 credits no matter how many waves you complete.

Seimeni

Seimeni what I consider the next step up. Like Romula, it’s a Dark Sector defense mission, this time situated on the rainy Grineer Shipyard tileset that is Ceres. Unlike Romula, Seimeni’s payout is about 22,000 credits, plus whatever you pick up. It also has quite a few Grineer lockers, many of which contain yellow Affinity orbs.

The only downside to Seimeni is that sometimes the Cryopod you need to defend will move, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that much of a slow down. Oh and sometimes the last enemy will get stuck under the stairs, but that’s not a problem. With level 15-20 enemies, it’s a piss-easy mission even for people leveling up new frames, and it’s often pretty populated.

Hieracon

Hieracon is the odd one out here, being that it’s an excavation mission. Normally, excavation missions are super annoying defense missions, and the excavator devices have stupidly small amounts of health, but a good Frost or Vauban can make this Dark Sector mission a breeze. The strategy here is actually somewhat similar to the defense missions – do the bare minimum then extract. In Hieracon’s case though, you do one excavator then get out, netting yourself 20k credits minimum, as well as the chance of bagging 400 endo. There’s also a chance at Mesa, Neo and Axi relics. Hieracon is great if you need multiple things at once.

Raids/Sorties

Raids and Sorties aren’t ideal at all for new players, but experienced Tenno can use these to make some quick bucks with ease.

Sorties depend on the mission. If it’s an Eximus Stronghold, then great, you’re not only going to get a fistful of credits, but you’ll also get a TON of experience as well. But Sorties are easy to fuck up, especially if you’ve got the wrong loadout or underpowered weapons.

The downside to Raids is that you need to know exactly what you’re doing to do them quick and efficiently, but they’re also buggy as heck. While you might find a few annoying bugs on the Law of Retribution, the Jordas Verdict is often completely unplayable. And it requires Archwing. If you’ve got a team capable of speedrunning these, it’s a credit goldmine, and also a good chance at getting things worth trading for platinum. But by the time you’ve found a team, you could probably do Hieracon a few times.

Akkad

Located on Eris, Akkad is one of the later farming spots in the solar system, and funnily enough brings in less money than Seimeni does. But Akkad is an insanely simple, small map, with enemies funneled through narrow corridors to get to you. The reason why Akkad is so popular is that you can almost mindlessly play and complete it. With the right setup, you can find almost as many credits as you get for completing the mission, and Chromas, Nekroi and Speed Novas are all common. This is the one defense mission you don’t want a Frost or Vauban.

Unlike other areas though, you can also do well to stay until 20 waves on Akkad, as it’s often enough to get 10 or more levels on your weapons and frames, due to the extra experience granted on this map.

The Index

The Index was introduced in an event – The Index Preview – then properly released in the Glast Gambit update as part of Nidus’s shitty quest. But even though it was awful in the quest, it turns out the Index is a really good farming spot, capable of being finished in about 5-7 minutes if you bring along a Tigris shotgun or something.

The only catch with the Index is that you need to put money in first. To enter, you have to bet a certain amount and you have to score a certain number of points. The lowest level costs 45,000 credits, but if you win and score your target number of points (in this case, 25), you get 120,000 credits back. The harder difficulties offer rewards of 195,000 and 275,000 credits, but you have to score 75 and 100 points respectively and have added ‘negatives’, so it’s often quicker just to do the ‘bronze investment’ and go from there unless you’re kitted out for it.

The enemies are all various Corpus minibosses – a super-powered Osprey or two, a Hyena, a Bursa and some interesting Corpus humans, including one who disguises as friendly players. But electricity and magnetic damage are handy here and they’re not that hard to kill at low levels.

Anyway, that’s all for now. There’s probably better farming spots, but these are the popular ones from what I’ve seen.

I’m off to Seimeni. It’s nice there. Atmospheric.