Best Farming Routes for Gold, XP & Materials

Why Farming Routes Matter

Arms of God has permanent meta-progression through the Cathedral system: you spend gold, souls, and rare materials to unlock permanent stat upgrades, new blessings, and weapon variants. The faster you farm, the faster your baseline power increases — and the easier subsequent runs become.

This guide ranks every farming method by resource per minute, not per run. Per-run metrics are misleading because Act 1 takes 3 minutes and Act 4 takes 15.

Gold Farming: Rankings

S-Tier: Act 3 Speedrun (2,400-3,200 gold/min)

Method: Speedrun Act 3 with a high-mobility build (Twin Fangs + Shadow Step recommended). Clear only mandatory rooms, skip all optional fights. Reset after Act 3 boss.

Requirements: Act 3 unlocked, at least one S-tier weapon merge. Average clear time: 4-6 minutes. Average gold: 12,000-16,000 per clear.

Why Act 3 over Act 4: Act 4 takes 2.5x longer but only gives 1.5x the gold. Act 3 is the efficiency sweet spot.

Build optimization tip: Take the Golden Touch blessing (unlocked after spending 50,000 total gold in the Cathedral). It increases all gold drops by 40% for the first 3 rooms of each floor. This bumps Act 3 speedruns from 2,400 to roughly 3,000 gold/min. The blessing doesn't scale past floor 3, so speed running (not full clearing) is essential to keep the bonus active.

A-Tier: Act 2 with Blood Harvest (1,800-2,400 gold/min)

Method: Act 2, pick Blood Harvest blessing immediately. Clear every room — Blood Harvest doubles gold and the health orb drops mean you never spend gold on healing.

Requirements: Act 2 unlocked, Blood Harvest blessing unlocked. Best for: Newer players who haven't unlocked Act 3 yet.

B-Tier: Act 4 Full Clear (1,200-1,600 gold/min)

Only worth doing if you. need Act 4 boss materials (Divine Essence). Otherwise Act 3 is strictly better for gold.

C-Tier: Act 1 Breakable Farming (600-800 gold/min)

Act 1 is the worst gold farm but the best for Ancient Coins (see below). Only do this if you have a specific Ancient Coin target.

XP Farming: Rankings

Best: Act 4 Gauntlet Rooms (3,500-5,000 XP/min)

The gauntlet between the Act 4 mid-boss and final boss has the highest XP density in the game. Each room spawns 15-20 enemies. With AOE weapon merges (Void Reaper + Phoenix Wing), you clear each room in 15-20 seconds.

The actual mechanism: XP in Arms of God scales with enemy density per room, not enemy level. The Act 4 gauntlet is tuned for 15-20 enemies per room because the game expects you to have a full build. If you enter it with a half-finished build, you'll die before you see the XP benefit. Only run this route once you have at least two AOE weapon merges and the Cathedral 'XP Gain +15%' upgrade.

Alternative: Act 3 Challenge Rooms

Look for the challenge room modifier (skull icon on the room preview). Challenge rooms spawn 50% more enemies and give 30% bonus XP. Act 3 has the best challenge room ratio (roughly 1 in 4 rooms).

Rare Material Farming

Divine Essence (Legendary Upgrades)

Source: Act 4 boss kill — guaranteed 1 drop. Small chance (5%) from Act 3 boss. Farm method: Speedrun Act 4 with Divine Intervention blessing. Skip optional rooms. Target: 2-3 Essence per hour.

Drop rate nuance: The 5% from Act 3 boss only applies on your first Act 3 clear of the day. Subsequent kills drop to 1%. The Act 4 guarantee always applies, but you can only get one per run. Stacking multiple Act 4 boss kills per hour requires a speedrun build optimized for boss DPS, not survivability.

Soul Shards (Blessing Unlocks)

Source: Elite enemies (glowing red aura). Guaranteed 1-3 shards per elite kill. Best route: Act 2 has the highest elite density (3-5 elites per clear). Act 3 elites are tankier for only slightly more shards.

Optimization: Equip the 'Shard Seeker' Cathedral upgrade (unlocked after spending 30 Soul Shards total). It highlights elite spawns on the mini-map, saving you the time of checking every room manually. Without this upgrade, you'll miss roughly 30% of elites per run.

Ancient Coins (Cathedral Upgrades)

Source: Breakable objects in rooms (pots, crates, barrels). Farm method: Heavy weapon (Hammer or Greatsword) clears breakables in one hit. Act 1 has the highest breakable density per room. Clear Act 1 fully, reset, repeat. 30-50 coins per 3-minute clear.

Advanced technique: The Paladin character's passive 'Shatter Aura' breaks nearby breakables automatically when you take damage. Run Paladin with low HP and let minor enemies trigger the aura. This converts enemy hits into farming efficiency. Not recommended for hardcore runs.

Cathedral Upgrade Priority

Spend your resources in this order for maximum run efficiency:

1. Gold Gain +20% (500 Ancient Coins): Pays for itself in 3 runs. This is the foundation of every efficient farming account.

2. Starting Weapon Choice (1,000 Ancient Coins): Removes RNG from first weapon. Knowing your starting weapon means you can plan merges from minute one.

3. Health Flask Capacity +1 (2,000 Gold + 10 Soul Shards): One extra heal per act. This saves you from resetting on unlucky early damage.

4. Blessing Reroll (5,000 Gold + 20 Soul Shards): Lets you once per run reroll the blessing choices at the mid-floor altar. Eliminates doomed seeds where no useful blessings appear.

5. Damage +10% (1 Divine Essence): Scales all builds equally. The most universally useful Essence upgrade.

6. Attack Speed +10% (1 Divine Essence): More hits equals more procs. Second-best DPS upgrade in the game.

7. Max HP +15% (1 Divine Essence): Survivability for Act 4. Only take this after Damage and Attack Speed.

Do not buy: Armor upgrades until you have at least 3 damage upgrades. Dead enemies don't deal damage. Armor reduces incoming damage by a flat amount (not percentage), and the flat reduction becomes negligible past Act 2.

Daily Reset Checklist

If you're farming efficiently, here's the daily loop:

1. 3 Act 3 speedruns — roughly 15 minutes, approximately 40,000 gold

2. 1 Act 4 full clear — for Divine Essence and challenge completion

3. 2 Act 1 breakable clears — roughly 5 minutes, approximately 80 Ancient Coins

4. Spend resources on Cathedral upgrades in the priority order above

5. Rinse and repeat

Total daily time investment: roughly 35 minutes. Weekly return: approximately 300,000 gold, 14-21 Divine Essence, 500+ Ancient Coins, and 2-3 Cathedral upgrades. At this pace, you can max all Cathedral branches in about 6-8 weeks of casual play.