What is the point of the Harvesting Skills in the game?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Anpu, Feb 18, 2020.

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  1. Anpu

    Anpu Avatar

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    Just curious on your thought's about this. Currently, only one Harvesting skill is required to find one resource, Beetle Carapaces (which they could just change, and that is Foraging). All other resources can be found either by killing creatures, or in chests.

    Should we just remove these skills? Should something be changed?

    Perhaps it it time to re-evaluate this mechanic. What should we do moving forward?
     
  2. Barugon

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    Beetle carapace is way too hard to get. With that said, I never pass up a cotton bush.
     
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  3. Spungwa

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    Just to clarify, by Harvesting skills do you mean all the gathering skills?

    If you do. I see your point, but lets looks at each. Feel free to correct me, as i'm trying to remember this stuff of the top of head and i may forget stuff.

    So I have put in bold the things I think can only be got via gathering, so there are other things, it just that they are either not needed, or have a much more abundant supply than their demand that they don't have the supply "issue" beetle carapaces have. Not really an issue, just makes them expensive (player run economy!!).

    Mining
    Gathers = tier 1 ores, tier 2 ores, gems, gem fragments, granite, coal.
    I think only tier 1 ores, gems, gem fragments, coal can be gained other ways.

    Forestry
    Gathers = tier 1 woods, barks, borers.
    I think you can get all but the borers other ways, and the borers I believe have no use, so yes no reason for having to do forestry. But it is only higher tier content, so at low level forestry is the easiest way to get wood and bark.

    Fishing
    Gathers = Common fish, All other types of fish, ancient ring, trophies.
    I think you get some fish other ways, but not all. There are food recipes for this but i think they are hugely used.

    Field Dressing
    Gathers = Heads, Hide, Suet, Poison ingredients, Carcasses, Haunches.
    As far as i'm aware there is no other way to get this stuff, though you can buy some meats.

    Foraging (edit to add serpent scales and black pearl - thx Scof)
    Gathers = Cotton, Beetle carapace, other beetles, mandrake, garlic, nightshade, serpent scales, black pearl.
    I think all but the beetles can be farmed in agriculture and.or loot drop and only the beetle carapace has a use.

    To me the main reason to gather is to pool producer XP for use in other Crafting skills.

    Regards
    Spung
     
    Last edited: Feb 19, 2020
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  4. kaeshiva

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    Yes as Spungwa has pointed out gathering is effective for producer exp levelling. Also, before they started adding all this stuff to drop tables it was the only and most effective way to really stockpile large numbers of crafting materials and still offers a less 'combatty' alternative (although getting things from combat has, as you correctly surmise, eclipsed gathering in many ways.)

    Its definitely time for gathering to get some love, each gathering tree has one completely useless (survey) and one situationally/mostly useless (meticiulous) skill out of its 4 total skills, and as with most skills, the two skills that do have an impact (the initial skill and swift gathering) ramp up so slowly for the cost beyond a certain point that millions of producer XP results in no noticeable effect. This is why they're good for pooling, since you just turn them off. I don't think this means we should "just remove them", there's no real reason anymore to force players into arbitrary slowness - i.e., I've just killed these 3 bears, why do I need to stand here for 30 seconds skinning them.

    Harvesting anything, anywhere, is already limited by respawn rates, making it possible in almost every scene for a single harvester with grandmaster skills to completely clean it out. It would be nice to see harvesting speed bumped more significantly with xp investment, or yield upped, or special things obtained. When gathering, you'll spend half your time fighting stuff off anyway.

    As the game has grown things have changed, such as the amount of ore reasonably required to get good gear (ie, expect to mine thousands of it) as well as many nerf passes to mining scenes. There have been no new useful tools or items to boost this added since before persistence, except for the 1% drop chance artifact sort and even those are 'questionably useful' - I'm not going to rummage through my inventory to equip a forest mangler every time I approach a tree, for example. And meticiulous collection has its own problems making it questionably useful to arbitrarily buff it. (I get more yield/hour NOT drinking the metic potion, provided I don't go afk during respawns and instead go somewhere else).

    So yes, lots of problems. It would be nice if dumping xp into gathering - and becoming a true expert - actually made a bigger impact. I can see having tedious slow timers on these when you're starting out, but I've got to be on my 50,000th tree by now, (and I don't even know how many ores after all these years) you'd think I would have figured this out!
     
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  5. Scoffer

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    You can also get serpent scales and black pearl from some scenes which I'm assuming uses the gathering skill and can't be grown.
     
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  6. Vladamir Begemot

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    If it's getting love some day, look at it in a larger perspective than just increasing quantity. How can it be improved in general? Do other games have more fun methods?
     
  7. Illiaro

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    People selling resources are always in high demand as they are getting scarce after some of the combative ways to get them were nerfed (siege engineers and reapers for wood). Most crafters can't help but stop at a cotton bush/tree/ore node anytime they run by, but it's still not enough to keep up with demand.
     
  8. Vladamir Begemot

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    Using my survey skills in No Mans Sky, and hearing them talked about from Star Wars Galaxy, those were definately supposed to be for a part f the game that never got implemented, I'm sure.
     
  9. SmokerKGB

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    Why do you guys/gals want to change a system that's working fine? Don't fix what's not broken, is what I say...

    There Are potions for meticulous... Some of you feel that "survey" is worthless, well I can harvest from quite a few tiles away and I'm just at 92, so I turned it "off"... Yes, I have all the harvesting skills, Yes, I have all indestructible tools too... I started donating long before this game ever got released in any form... I think "speed" should be tweaked and not so random, I mean it should take a set amount of time to skin a wolf, any wolf, but take longer to skin a Bear, any bear....

    Maybe there should be different sizes of hides, sm from squirrels/rabbits, mid size from wolves, and lrg from bears and different sizes to make different pieces...

    I would like to see my tree 1/2 chopped when I fail with 98% chance, 3/4 chopped if I fail again, yes, it happens luck of the draw... Tree chopping should take time to do, but a set amount for each attempt... There should be uses for all the Borers I get other than selling for much more that barks...

    There used to be places to harvest serpent scales, but not anymore, I think there should be places to harvest all the reagents and no random speeds to harvest...

    Yes, beetle carapace should be more plentiful, so let us have pet spiders/corpions we can let loose in our gardens of cotton, maybe after we harvest the critter runs off back to its wild state... 1 spider should take a long time to impregnate multiple bed of cotton, so keep watering those mature plants, don't harvest too soon or you get few carapace...

    I rather see the devs working on these things, instead of fixing something that's not broken...
     
  10. Violet Ronso

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    I just want to mention, there are still spots to harvest serpent scales, first off the dragons do drop them, and technically you are skinning the dragon, so you are harvesting it's scales. Also, I found a spot earlier today with 4 or 5 serpent scale nodes on the ground! Can't remember the name of the place but a T3 adventuring zone near graff gem mines!
     
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  11. Barugon

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    Wyverns drop lots of scales too.
     
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  12. Cora Cuz'avich

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    And Daemons.
     
  13. Cora Cuz'avich

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    At least, they did last time I was able to actually fight them...
     
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  14. Violet Ronso

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    Did not kill Wyverns so I didnt want to talk about those before I knew!
     
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  15. Barugon

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    Wyverns also drop lots of obsidian chips.
     
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  16. Xiones

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    What the point of having skills when you can level them up to 200+ and see them nerf to only hurt the new players.....Keep kicking the can down the road.
     
  17. Barugon

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    Please let me know when you get any skill to 200.
     
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  18. FrostII

    FrostII Bug Hunter

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    The thread has gone off-track a bit, but I wanted to comment on @Xiones post...

    Nerfs don't only hurt the new, my friend....

    If fighting mobs is what you enjoy, then pick a skill and specialize in it. Your 2nd specialization should, of course, compliment your primary choice. Stick with them until you see others with different specs that seriously out-damage you. At that point, you'll have to choose. If you decide to change specs, then simply retrieve all the xp you've put into specialization and put it into a new spec or wherever you wish.

    All is not lost if Chris does his Chris thing......

    I have changed specializations twice, and still am powerful enough to help a lot in any fight.

    You never lose any of the xp you've earned, you just shift it around occasionally if you feel the need.

    Enjoy today, tomorrow will take care of itself..... ;)
     
  19. Xiones

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    The game is lost, every time you specialize into something else. Like I have done, started with Polearms in the very beginning boom nerf, switched to Range boom nerf, Switched to Fire Mage (Pure Fire Mage) boom nerf. Yes nerfs affects everyone, but they way I see it for them to get around the balance issues in the game is by nerfing, and kicking the scale of the mobs to hard to nearly impossible to solo or group play, stop changing the goal post. Don't be surprise when the nerf CPs again.

    I have skills in fire at the +200 range. It doesn't do squat.
     
  20. Boo Ladedada

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    There really is no need to worry about new players. It seems to me IMO only you better worry about keeping the whales fed.
     
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