I guess i sprung up some confusion here,  i think i should have been more clear. some clarification:

1. i am talking about bitcoin's testnet, no altcoins, there is no coin called testnet to my knowledge. its a network to emulate what its like on the bitcoin blockchain without having to use $10k in btc to debug. and bitcoin testnet is currently under a LOT of stress so coins are scarce as no automated services are operating that i have found as of the last month. Testnet coins dont have a name, they are not a coin, its bitcoin just using a seperate set of peers and some minor changes in pubkeys used to receive coins. Its still bitcoin, just incompatible with the main bitcoin network. similar to regression testing, its still bitcoin-core nodes, just different parameters.

2. mining is possible and WAY easier than mainnet, but its still not guaranteed to get coins as there are no pools, luck is involved and from what i have been told, it can take up to a month to get a block on testnet with a gtx 1080 because currently only a few people hold huge hashrates on the network (like what happened to testnet 2). I planned to buy the required hardware and set up only if i had no other routes, but anycoin (and somebody else who hasnt made it public) helped here and i dont need much to worry about investing in a gpu for this. Difficulty is still too high to make it extremely easy IMO, but low enough to be viable.

3. as ETFBitcoin said, i will not buy testnet coins, i am in no way cheap or afraid to spend money, i am however not going to contribute to breaking a system that is put in place to help the community. If you understand testnet, buying/selling the coins completely destroys the network, its what got testnet2 shut down. Buying these coins is like having to pay money to post on twitter, twitter is popular because its free, charging to post would destroy the service inevitably. if we had to pay for testnet coins, might as well just use mainnet.


Victorycoin:

thank you so much! but i cant accept, i have no plans to test anything on a network other than bitcoin's testnet. im sure somebody would love those coins though! you are very generous.

Testnet3 is being flooded by 1 or a handful of individuals, probably not even for malicious purposes but to stress test the network. somebody with a few thousand coins can tie up testnet for a long time. its been happening for about a month, a lot of testnet services shut down, primarily the faucets.

looks like it will end eventually, or a new testnet will be released. in the mean time, use high fees and WAIT. ive been having a hell of a time finding coins and being able to get transactions to be accepted in a block, but not much anybody can do aside from using super high tx fees so you can get accepted in a block .

Anycoin, thank you so much! .5 is great, it enables me to do something atleast as its enough to cover fees. I really appreciate the help. Ill send back as soon as im done, i imagine about .3 will be left after TX fees.

also i did email one faucet owner before, and i got .02 (they are usually .001) out of it, but with the tx fees on the network its not enough, although still appreciated ofcourse. i got like 2 transactions out of it. I should be ok with the .5 from anycoin and with what little i already have, and hope the tx flood stops soon.

looks like were on a path to testnet4 pretty soon, this is unfortunate how a few people can ruin it for everybody.

I am in need of testnet coins, about 1-2 coins, i cant find any since testnet is flooded with txs now, all the faucets are down. Well i found one but i cant get enough through just a single faucet.

if anybody knows where to get some or is willing to share some of their own testnet coins, any amount will do, i have 0.005 right now and i need a fee of atleast 0.01 per tx to get a confirmation and would like to test a few hundred TXs of various amounts. Sad i cant buy these as it would defeat the purpose of testnet, but difficulty is too high to mine without an asic it seems. So any ideas on how to move forward here would be appreciated.

testnet address if you have some to spare:
mo84K13VNwzYvysHGjxRnepHyN4fqYXkxd