Usually, if you want to farm for runes to level up in Elden Ring, you go wipe out a dozen enemies over and over until you're satisfied. It turns out, this is too much for some players who'd rather not have to press any buttons to get runes. These players are squatting in impossible-to-reach spots in the world and luring invaders in for easy runes while they're alt-tabbed or completely AFK.
It's a lousy rune farm compared to ones that don't waste other people's time. AFK rune farmers use Torrent to jump to places that you can't get to on foot (usually in Limgrave), and then using the Taunter's Tongue to bring in enemy players. Nobody can use the horse in multiplayer, so the enemy invaders can't reach the AFK rune farmer by normal means. These players are betting on the PvP invader's confusion or frustration to get a reward.
If invaders don't use the Finger Severer (which also rewards a small amount of runes to the host) to escape the AFK host's world and instead jump off a cliff and die, the camper gets an amount of runes based on the enemy player's level. And they get more runes if they use the White Cipher Ring to summon in ally players to defeat invaders for them.
A seemingly growing problem in #ELDENRING is AFK rune farmers. Hopefully @fromsoftware_sp and @BandaiNamcoUS can fix the issue of using a Taunter's Tongue in areas reachable only by Torrent soon because the longer it goes on the less many will care about fairness. pic.twitter.com/PL9hrQHRLmApril 4, 2022
This ongoing exploit has rallied clever Elden Ring players to start devising ways to 'reverse farm' the AFK rune farmers. Popular methods include ranged weapons like the Jar Cannon to kill or knock the AFK players off of their perches, or stalled animations on spells like Agheel's Flame to catch them from afar. Some players are even forming a truce with the AFK players' ally hunters to locate the culprit so that the invader can try to stop them from capturing future players in their scheme.
YouTube videos that explain this method of rune farming are being flooded with comments from people about how to combat this technique and people's irritation with it being explained in the first place.
I can't help but agree with warlock's comment on one of these videos, who simply wrote, "This is the most maidenless behavior i've seen." I'm all for making the game more manageable for yourself by farming levels, but don't do it at the expense of other people's time. AFK rune farmers deserve to be farmed themselves.
