Strip farming: What It Is and How To Use It

Intro

Did someone call you a cotton-headed ninny-muggins in pub chat? Some fly boi hitting on your main squeeze? Are you just looking to cause some havoc? Then a good ol’ fashion strip farm war is what you’re looking for.

For a quick review of PvP, see Here.
In this type of PvP, tutors are hired in order to increase the amount of money a player has out causing the target to lose more money when hit. This is called a strip, and when done correctly, can cause significant damage to an unprepared opponent.

Note: this guide is not a guide to farming or how to deal with being farmed. That can be found Here. There is also a guide for new to mid level players Here.

As SFW is an unofficial fight, you can be drawn into one at any moment. Knowing not only how to carry out damaging strips, but also how to defend yourself from them, is crucial to avoiding long rebuilds post-SFW. These are the concepts that will be touched on in this guide. Starting with..



The idea behind strips

When attacked, the amount of money lost is proportional to the amount of money lying out. That is to say, if you have 1T out, you would lose significantly more money when attacked versus if you only had 1B out. As mentioned previously, the idea is to hire the opponent’s tutors, thus causing them to have large amounts of money just waiting to be lost. Note: the amount of money you MAKE from a hit is unaffected by the amount of money the target has out. The point of this attack is not to make money, but rather cause the target to lose money.



Implications

Not only does the target lose an increased amount of money when hit, they also lose their tuts. As we know, having tutors increases the amount of money you make when you hit something, up to a cap, often referred to as Max Plunder (MP). A target who has lost their tuts, and the ability to hire enough back to get themselves back to max plunder, will then make less on their hits, either PVP or in parties. As an SFW can last days, weeks, months, and so on, disrupting a target’s money making ability over a long time can help earn you a win. For review on MP, see Here



On the attack

Wrong. Why? If a player is active and paying even a sliver of attention, they will see you hiring their tuts and will self pin (SP), meaning lowering their energy to the point where they cannot be hit. In doing so, they will protect all the money you just opened up for them (and when your tuts are hired, you actually make back more than you spent on them, so a failed strip can result in a target making a profit!) and you will look silly.

Well, we should make sure the target is inactive and not waiting for us. In other words, we need to track their sleep/away habits. Most commonly this is done by finding out their time zone and monitoring for routine. Again, SFWs can last months or even years, so this doesn’t have to be done in one day. Here’s some common ways to gather clues:

1. Did you know there are multiple campus/pub chats? One is commonly referred to as NA/UK because of it containing players from those servers (this is, obviously, not an all-inclusive list). The other is referred to as Asian chat, for similar reasons (again, not all inclusive. Many parts of Europe are in this same chat). Now, what does this mean for us? Seeing the target in the NA/UK chat helps eliminate possible time zones. For example, someone seen in the NA/UK pub is likely not in Singapore. In addition, looking at HOW they talk. Realize or realise? Do they add xx to the end of messages (Hi there xx)? There may be subtle hints which can be used as clues.
   
2. Looking at their wall! Are they replying to posts? Are they having active conversations at 2am your time or does their wall go silent? Are they in Pub or Campus, chatting, selling items, or posting ads for their club or do things kind of go quiet at 5pm your time? Mark those times and use them as clues.
   
3. Are they active in the party? From the club members page, you can actually see if a player has actively hit the current party. This is exceptionally useful for short parties, where they would have had to have been recently awake and playing to have hit it. Do not be fooled if there is a very long party on-going and it says they’re active. They may have hit the party 2 hours ago and gone to bed, but it will still say active next to their name.
   
   Currently active in party:
   
   
   
4. Party tracking. You can look at the party history of a club without being in the club. This means, if you can look at the past parties, you can see if the target was involved in them. You can see how long the party took and the active participants. All clues as to whether your target was active over a period of time.
   
   Example of recently active:
   
   
   
5. One of my personal favorites, battle stats. On a player’s page, if you scroll down, you can see how many times a player has won and lost fights, pranks, dances, and Eds. You can even see how many jobs they’ve completed. If you were to screenshot these numbers over a couple days at random intervals (including overnight your time!), you can see when a player has been hitting something (either another player, job, or a party). The convenience of a screenshot is that it also tells you what time you took the screenshot for better organization.

Example of battle stats:



Of course, there are many others ways to find out when your opponent is sleeping, these are just some of the most common ones. You may know them, know someone who knows them, sneak a mole into their club, and other creative ways to find out when your target will be most vulnerable.

The strip:

Sometimes I like to do a test. If they’re particularly prone to SP when being hit, throw a couple hits at them. Do they immediately SP? If so, they were awake. Hire a small tut and see how they react. An important thing to consider is who will hire the tuts. Do you or your clan have an alt account they use solely to make money for stripping? You may not want to reveal that to your opponent, otherwise they’re likely to attack your precious bank. Instead, hire the tuts of one of your club mates who is already involved.



So, the target is asleep, you’ve hired their tuts, now what?

Now it’s time to fight.

Within PIMDs current known mechanics, fighting is the most efficient way to remove a target’s money. This is because the amount of money lost to a successfully landed fight is larger than that of a landed dance. (sorry intel builds). This is (sort of) off-set by the fact that landing dances will do significantly less damage to the opponents energy, that you could technically land many, many more hits before a target is pinned (low energy), and with each regen of their energy. However, this would require an abysmal amount of Doctor’s Notes (DNs) to the point to keep up the constant barrage of dances. Even then, you’d still likely have done more damage with fight (that is to say, there is a lack of research in how many dances could hypothetically be done by a team of people willing to burn a Black Friday’s worth of notes each, however it would almost certainly not be worth it).

In addition to having more money out, being hit by a much bigger player will also increase the amount of money lost per hit. So, it’s best to have the biggest members of your club doing the most hits, if possible. That is to say, having club mates who are at the top end of the Hit Range of the target,
in addition to having the highest other Bonuses.
However with the regen timers, smaller member hits will do more damage than zero hits. It becomes a race against the clock to land as many hits as possible until the target returns. From the current known mechanics, the most amount of money able to be taken is approximately 1% of money available (the scenarios and min-maxing requires much more research. As a basis, the bigger you are than the opponent, the bigger % they lose.) This, however, requires a much stronger player to be hitting a much weaker player to achieve.

Your job(s) now, are to land as many fights on the target until they become active again. Keep in mind that we regenerate 9% of our energy on a 5 minute timer, but you cannot hit a player when they are at <20% energy. This means that between defender too weak messages (DTW), you will have to wait 5 minutes for dance and 10 minutes for fights, due to the amount of energy the opponent loses.



Tip: Screenshot the battle stats of the target before the strip. This way you can see how many fights were landed upon them waking up. Using ChatGPT, going from 1T to 10,000 dollars (essentially 0), would take 1800 fights assuming 1% lost per hit. Of course, this is an optimal set-up with 1% lost per hit, which will not be possible for most scenarios. Your milage may vary.



Defending against strips

Well, let’s look at what hurts the most: Long periods of inactivity, i.e. when you are asleep. I mean, it’s not like we can stay up 24hr/day for potentially months at a time! Here are some options:

1. Avoid making your time zone obvious! Speaking in pub/campus can make it easier for an opponent to guess your time zone, however with the range of zones possible, it doesn’t give THAT much information. However, what you say in public chats can definitely give it away. For the love of Strange, do NOT say “Going to bed, night y’all!” in pub chat if you want to keep your tuts (however this could be used as a deceit if you know you’re being tracked!).
   
2. Set alarms for random times, hit a party or an opponent to let them know you’re up. 11:37pm, 1:10am, etc. Make it harder for them to identify long pauses in your play time.
   
3. Be cautious of who is in your club. Did 5 accounts join in 30 minutes before your club was attacked? You might have moles. They are alt accounts sitting in your club, reporting back everything said in your club chat. Also be cautious that a green light appears next to your name if you have been active recently if you’re friends with someone. Check those friend lists!
   
4. Keep an eye on your team! If you’re in an SFW, every once in a while, look at your club-mates tuts. Did one of them suddenly and unexpectedly go from a full set of tuts to 0? You should probably make them aware of that. Pro tip? Prank down your team-mate to pin them if you notice they’ve been stripped. Pranks do not cause your target to lose money but it does make them unable to be attacked while your team tries to get them to log back in.

The end

So, in this brief guide we covered how to track, how to strip, and things to consider when SFW to avoid being stripped. This is guide does not and cannot contain every detail or method possible as the game does change with time. It should be noted that the best method for thriving during SFW is teamwork. Use your team to help coordinate, track, and execute strips, as well as defending one another when stripped. My hope is that others will provide additional tips which can help fill out this guide to be as helpful as possible for those wading into SFW waters, perhaps for the first time. If anything should need to be added feel free to let me know in the comments.

tldr: sleep sleep, whack whack, gg no rm.

 

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