On a previous eAthena server I've seen, there was a bug when you would "Rest" your homunculus and then autotrade. It would die without coming back. O_o
that doesn't happen. Occasionally it will just poof on you though. I THINK it does that when you die with it off screen (out of AI range), but that's not hard to avoid if you set up your AI properly.
Just don't leave the homunculus UP when you're autotrading.
oh well what I usually do is sit in town and watch anime on my other monitor, whenever it gets hungry I toss some food at it. if I've got a vend shop up it all works til I run out of food.
They weren't even gunna have this originally lol...
I don't know, I don't see what is so bad about the prizes, they seem similar to the prizes won by those who reached 99 first in their classes o_O