Niami DenMother
10-27-2004, 05:40 PM
Mass-produced vendor sold refined and interim components may be good for those who have a large pocketbook, and aren't interested in quality, but for the serious craftsman, learning a bit about harvesting is a really good idea.
When you arrive on the Isle of Refuge, you're given several skills automagically, that drop into your Knowledge book ('K'). Among these are abilities such as mining, trapping, foresting, fishing and gathering. Ignore all the pretty little hotkey buttons that you can make from those abilities as unneccessary. The Hand knows what to do. ;)
Basic Terms
Before we get too deeply into how and where to harvest, let's establish a few basic terms. A "node" means a harvestable clump of resources. When a "Tier" is mentioned, it's referring to the level range of the resources and/or zone. (Tier 1 is level 3-9, Tier 2 is level 10-19, Tier 3 is level 20-29, Tier 4 is level 30-39, Tier 5 is level 40-49.) "Ore" means weapon/armor grade metal, while "stone" nodes generally carry the jewelcraft metals and stones. A "den" holds animal products (hides and meats), "wood" holds organic structural materials, while "roots" hold all non-wood plant materials.
The Hand - let your fingers do the walking
So, you're on the Isle of Refuge and you find this clump of "roots" on the ground. When your mouse cursor floats over it, you find that your cursor turns into a hand icon. This is an in-game sign that there's something you can do to this inanimate object. Mind you, The Hand also wakes up if there's a quest ground spawn (shows as a "?" on the ground) as well as other items that can be right-clicked, such as quest triggers, but if it's on the ground, the name above it sounds tradeskill-ish, and The Hand appears, it's generally a good bet that it's a tradeskill harvest.
Edge up close to it (there's only so far those arms of yours can reach when grabbing stuff, after all), and take a quick look around for people staring at the node and for critters wandering past. If you see someone appear to be staring directly down at the node, it's likely that they are already harvesting that node, and a courteous harvester like yourself would just move on to another node and leave them to it. The critter check is two-fold: checking for agros (creatures with their names outlined in red attack once in-range) and checking for unsuspecting beasties peacefully meandering in front of you just as you let fly those harvesting tools of destruction. Whoops! Your hatchet slipped while you were going for that wood and boy is that bear angry! (Translation: double-clicking just as a creature walks between your cursor and the node makes you attack the creature instead of harvest the node. This generally tends to be painful to either you, or the creature.)
Once you're sure the coast is clear, put The Hand to work. Generally, a double click on the resource node will get you trying to harvest a resource from the node, with a progress bar at the bottom of your screen quickly filling before it tells you what you managed to harvest. (You can also right-click and select Harvest if you so desire, especially if you're worried about a nearby roaming Bambi straying into your path.) Sometimes you'll come up with a whole lot of nothing, other times you'll manage to snag a useful tradeskill resource. If you're extremely lucky, you might even stumble upon a rare harvest. (More on that below.)
Clean Up After Yourself!
Most nodes give from 2 to 4 harvesting chances, depending on the node type, and the tier. Sometimes, however, you might find yourself with only one harvesting attempt because someone got lazy and didn't fully harvest the node.
It's really, really, really a "good thing" to not just skim a single harvest off a node, but to continue harvesting until the node disappears. Once a node hass been fully harvested, in a certain amount of time a fresh node of random type will spawn in a random spot in the zone. If you leave behind anything in the node, not only does the person who next finds the node not get a full harvest, but it can't respawn until someone does. Besides, there's a slim chance that the piece you're leaving behind could be a rare, so if you're going to scrounge anyway, you might as well increase your chances of getting something more valuable/exotic.
What Is This Rare Stuff, Anyway?
Rares are rare. That should go without saying, but folks tend to get antsy when they've done what seems like hundreds of harvests and not seen one, so it bears repeating a time or five.
Rare components, along with rare dropped books that contain the recipes detailing how to process them allow you to make uncommon single-user (except furniture) items. While the best-known of these are the adept III scrolls, there are also armor, weapon, jewelry and furniture sets that can be made from the rares. In the case of all but the furniture (that anyone can use) and the scrolls (which are single-user by their very nature), the items made are attuneable. This means that they must be worn and attuned before you gain the benefits from them. Of course, once the item is attuned to you, it responds only to you and becomes no-trade.
Rares are not the be-all and end-all of your crafting career. They are not meant to be something that everyone has, or even a majority of people have, but rather something infrequently seen and highly prized. (That having been said, even Mum's been heard to grumble on more than one occasion about how extremely rare the rares are, so don't feel you're alone in your frustration).
Coming Soon: Harvestable normal and rare items by tier, including visual aids
When you arrive on the Isle of Refuge, you're given several skills automagically, that drop into your Knowledge book ('K'). Among these are abilities such as mining, trapping, foresting, fishing and gathering. Ignore all the pretty little hotkey buttons that you can make from those abilities as unneccessary. The Hand knows what to do. ;)
Basic Terms
Before we get too deeply into how and where to harvest, let's establish a few basic terms. A "node" means a harvestable clump of resources. When a "Tier" is mentioned, it's referring to the level range of the resources and/or zone. (Tier 1 is level 3-9, Tier 2 is level 10-19, Tier 3 is level 20-29, Tier 4 is level 30-39, Tier 5 is level 40-49.) "Ore" means weapon/armor grade metal, while "stone" nodes generally carry the jewelcraft metals and stones. A "den" holds animal products (hides and meats), "wood" holds organic structural materials, while "roots" hold all non-wood plant materials.
The Hand - let your fingers do the walking
So, you're on the Isle of Refuge and you find this clump of "roots" on the ground. When your mouse cursor floats over it, you find that your cursor turns into a hand icon. This is an in-game sign that there's something you can do to this inanimate object. Mind you, The Hand also wakes up if there's a quest ground spawn (shows as a "?" on the ground) as well as other items that can be right-clicked, such as quest triggers, but if it's on the ground, the name above it sounds tradeskill-ish, and The Hand appears, it's generally a good bet that it's a tradeskill harvest.
Edge up close to it (there's only so far those arms of yours can reach when grabbing stuff, after all), and take a quick look around for people staring at the node and for critters wandering past. If you see someone appear to be staring directly down at the node, it's likely that they are already harvesting that node, and a courteous harvester like yourself would just move on to another node and leave them to it. The critter check is two-fold: checking for agros (creatures with their names outlined in red attack once in-range) and checking for unsuspecting beasties peacefully meandering in front of you just as you let fly those harvesting tools of destruction. Whoops! Your hatchet slipped while you were going for that wood and boy is that bear angry! (Translation: double-clicking just as a creature walks between your cursor and the node makes you attack the creature instead of harvest the node. This generally tends to be painful to either you, or the creature.)
Once you're sure the coast is clear, put The Hand to work. Generally, a double click on the resource node will get you trying to harvest a resource from the node, with a progress bar at the bottom of your screen quickly filling before it tells you what you managed to harvest. (You can also right-click and select Harvest if you so desire, especially if you're worried about a nearby roaming Bambi straying into your path.) Sometimes you'll come up with a whole lot of nothing, other times you'll manage to snag a useful tradeskill resource. If you're extremely lucky, you might even stumble upon a rare harvest. (More on that below.)
Clean Up After Yourself!
Most nodes give from 2 to 4 harvesting chances, depending on the node type, and the tier. Sometimes, however, you might find yourself with only one harvesting attempt because someone got lazy and didn't fully harvest the node.
It's really, really, really a "good thing" to not just skim a single harvest off a node, but to continue harvesting until the node disappears. Once a node hass been fully harvested, in a certain amount of time a fresh node of random type will spawn in a random spot in the zone. If you leave behind anything in the node, not only does the person who next finds the node not get a full harvest, but it can't respawn until someone does. Besides, there's a slim chance that the piece you're leaving behind could be a rare, so if you're going to scrounge anyway, you might as well increase your chances of getting something more valuable/exotic.
What Is This Rare Stuff, Anyway?
Rares are rare. That should go without saying, but folks tend to get antsy when they've done what seems like hundreds of harvests and not seen one, so it bears repeating a time or five.
Rare components, along with rare dropped books that contain the recipes detailing how to process them allow you to make uncommon single-user (except furniture) items. While the best-known of these are the adept III scrolls, there are also armor, weapon, jewelry and furniture sets that can be made from the rares. In the case of all but the furniture (that anyone can use) and the scrolls (which are single-user by their very nature), the items made are attuneable. This means that they must be worn and attuned before you gain the benefits from them. Of course, once the item is attuned to you, it responds only to you and becomes no-trade.
Rares are not the be-all and end-all of your crafting career. They are not meant to be something that everyone has, or even a majority of people have, but rather something infrequently seen and highly prized. (That having been said, even Mum's been heard to grumble on more than one occasion about how extremely rare the rares are, so don't feel you're alone in your frustration).
Coming Soon: Harvestable normal and rare items by tier, including visual aids