This week I played SotA for the first time in a pretty long time, and I messed around with a lot of things that weren't exactly new, but were new to me. The other day I came across some posts here about non-combat gathering, which is something that some people have always aspired to. I can't say I really understand that, since at this point you can just instantly flatten anything outside of high-level zones, but I thought it would be a fun challenge to try my hand at non-combat gathering. This was my best attempt. I'm not sure if this will actually be helpful to anyone, but it was pretty fun to make, and mildly entertaining. It's a short video and I placed a little bit of commentary throughout. Not a single combat skill was used.
You actually can gather peaceful in overland Stag encounters. And also in the Dog encounter, except the dogs are hostile, but they have only like 4 hit points.
The problem is once the dogs are killed the herders come attacking and suddenly I realized that I qualify as a rustler...
One other thing that's worth mentioning, the first hit on each ore node gives you more materials than the meticulous chances. Gold and silver both have a chance at 2 or 3 ore on the first attempt. Iron and Copper also work that way, and have an additional chance for granite, tin, tungsten and nickel. All meticulous attempts only give 1 additional ore, no matter the node type. So if you're after granite, tin, nickel, or tungsten the method in the video is actually more effective at gathering those.
I was pretty surprised at how profitable it ended up being, especially considering that you can easily just do the same thing but kill stuff or use meticulous when worth it. The biggest trick is putting together a good route that keeps you busy with minimal dead time. Elysium/Twins worked pretty well.
I bet Tanglemire/Tarturus would be good for a speed setup too. You get double the xp, but would need a higher mining skill to make it work I think.
I had to - there was no way to use a rope to create a lasso, catch them and drive the whole herd to Abilene or Dodge City for auction.
This is really starting to grow on me. One hidden advantage of non-lethal gathering is that you finish with a completely clean inventory. It's kinda nice being able to just dump everything into 1 box instead of sorting through a bunch of random pots and pans nonsense.
don't stop me now by queen Irene Cara - What A Feeling the theme song of mighty mouse Michael Jackson - Beat It Joe Tex - I Gotcha Comfort Eagle - Cake Beck - Loser I'm certian there's others to increase efficiency or add to the player's desired ambient sota zen level. Lazlo the SOTA Zen Master ~TL~
Fun video When I talked with some people about none combat gathering both here and in other games they usually wanted to play peaceful characters who don't fight at all expect of emergencies - like most people in real life. I'm a bit unsure if a Tier 5 mine which you may only enter in the middle of a Tier 5 area is a good demonstration for that since their adventure level would be not far above 1 with very low hp. Either the encounter maps or some of the Tier 1 maps might be much better for that kind of player, if something attacks there they may most often run away from it - again, like most people would do in real life. If we are talking about adv level 100+ players just train your taming skill and buy one of the highest tier pets. It's still faster when you help them in fights but it's very possible to do the upper level of Etceter mine and the ground level of Elysium without fighting yourself.
this was an interesting topic so wanted to mess with it a bit. i think an alternative here is use of mesmerizing skills. dazzling rays, moon beams, & mesmerizing melody. my dazzling rays skill is 110 and i was able to mine a full elysium loop without as much as flicking a mob. just dazzled em and mined. i also had air shield on in case an arrow flew my way but in general i was grazed only a couple of times. moon beams is less convenient due to having to target and mez melody takes resinging. the nice thing about mez melody is that it stays on and any new mobs walking into it will get mezzed, though it has a much lower chance to mez. keep in mind if any damage comes to a mezzed mob it will remove the mez. of course, this takes adventure XP to reach this so there is a bit of a chicken/egg issue here. so if the goal is to be able to mine with zero adventure XP then this wont work. but if you want to get some adventure XP and build up to a skill that will then allow you to mine without issue, dazzling rays may be your solution here is what my dazzling rays looks like (it was very effective):
followed up Elysium with a trip to Etceter Crag Mines. first two levels were easy to mine with dazzling rays. level 3 was a bit of a challenge due to the mob concentration.