Some feedback on Gathering

I'm not really sure that this is the case anymore. If you contrast the elf fighters/mages/archers in high vale to those in greymark forest you will notice a major difference in difficulty(though none in loot afaik). Similarly, i was walking through a harder map recently and saw myself getting what i thought was unusually high xp from easy monsters within it (wolf spiders).

 

@Noric

Hail Noric and well done.... You have discovered the only known case of two identically named mobs having different difficulties. The "Elf"s in Highvale (Tier 1) are your basic entry level Elf, just like the entry level skeleton's with 88 hp's.
The "Elf"'s in Greymark Forest (and other areas like Savrenoc Stronghold ) are a much higher difficulty (over 4x more hp's, 398 vs 88). I believe that they are currently "mis-named" and at some point will inherit a name worth their difficulty... Like "Hardened", etc...



Beyond the special case of Greymark "Elf"'s, the pic below shows an example of the same critter (Timber Wolves) in 4 locations and all have the exact same stats.
*** Btw, if you wish to see numbers in Health Bars, go down to the bottom of Game Options and check "Show Health and Focus Stats" ***

I keep a database of critters for our guild and would always be grateful for a pm if you find any other critters with the exact same name that have different stats - like the case of the Elves in Highvale.

 

@Noric

Do you, by any chance, remember the harder map area's name? I'd love to go there and check their difficulty and xp's.

 

Frost - Thank you very much for the followup!

I went back and checked the spiders xp roughly myself and did not find them unusually high. On the top of elves in greymark, I thought the highvale ones were easier than those in another map near it (some timerland), though ,not having the hp bars on at the time, i am not sure.

I appreciate you pointing out the health bar option that i had not been aware of previously.

 

Yw.. I like being able to toggle the numbers on/off.

 

Remember Highvale is a "Special" starter area might be different??

 

A whole tree gives me 1 bit of wood.

One does not have time for that either.

 

Ok, the way this all works is that you go out and build your harvesting skills like any other skills.
Once your harvesting skills are high (especially Meticulous Collection) you will get much more out of any given tree and the harvest time, %chance to harvest all are higher and better.

It's just a matter of time spent harvesting.... More time spent raising your harvesting skills, more stuff is harvested per node.

Isn't that the way it should be?

 

I do like the salvage mechanic in this game

 

I just made a suggestion thread about this specific issue HERE. There is no way the Dev's haven't already thought of this and plan to rename nodes based on tier, but it seemed like a good time to mention it, since we are getting ever closer to Alpha.

 

While I completely understand the desire for a different "look" for each of the 5 different levels of "difficulty" of nodes, which would of course be a welcome addition, I personally hope the devs use their precious time for things that (to me) would be more important.
We now have the "Skull Totem indicators" that tell us what Tier level the nodes will be in any given area instance. We can use those "indicators" to know exactly what to expect from any given node in that area.
While having different "looking" Copper would be cool, I don't see it as being especially worthy of dev effort - right now..

 

While I agree, that would be nice, I did not suggest changing anything but the name of the nodes. Which is, hopefully, a simple database entry.

 

I understand.... But we already know what "level" or "Tier" each node is in any given area instance before we begin harvesting said area.
So why would they need to name a node "Rich Cotton" when we already know what level it is - because of where we are?

Every Cotton node in any given area is always the exact same "level", ie %chance and possible harvest.
If you know what Tier the area is that you're in, then you already know what to expect from every node in that area instance........

 

Aside from past experience with any given zone, how do you know the difficulty of the gathering nodes? Is there an indicator somewhere that I'm not aware of?

 

The dev's have begun putting Tier "Skull Totems" at the entry gate to scenes, see pic below for examples of what to look for. The number of SKULLS on the Totem represents the Tier Level (1-5) for EVERY resource node in that scene (area). One skull for Tier 1, five skulls for Tier 5.
As you can see by the pic, South Valeway is a Tier 1 and South Ravenswood is a Tier 4. If you're new (read that as a weak fighter) then you will want to begin fighting and harvesting in Tier 1 areas. (Hint: Beyond South Valeway the Tier 1 areas in Hidden Vale are North Valeway and Kingsroad).

They are not all in yet, and if you DO find an area that does NOT have a Tier Skull Totem - please take the time to add it to the list I just started in the R23 Bug Forum here.

 

Btw, there is some logic to which scenes are more difficult. Scenes that are along a road, as shown in the above screenshot of South Valeway, tend to have easier enemies. Scenes deeper in the wilderness, as shown in the screenshot of South Ravenswood, tend to have harder enemies.

 

Sorry redfish, but you can't use that as a reliable indicator of the level of enemies in an area.
Deep Ravenswood is a Tier 5 area (always has been) and there are lots of roads in Deep Ravenswood.
EVERY node in there is Tier 5 node guarded by Tier 5 level mobs.
Go by what the Skull Totems that I mentioned tell you.
It's really all pretty straight forward.

 

No, I meant scenes that are placed on roads on the overworld map. South Valeway for instance is on a road on the map -- that's why its called "Valeway". Deep Ravenswood is out in the forest on the map, and its a forest scene, as suggested by the name "Ravenswood". So it wouldn't count towards what I'm saying.

I haven't checked every scene to see whether what I pointed out holds true in all cases, but I've found it relatively reliable. All I'm saying, in the end, is that this might help guide people towards the difficulty they want.. for example, if they're specifically looking for low-tier scenes. In the end, they'd have to check the skull totems as well.

 

Ok, but you did specifically refer to

and both of those were obviously taken in the scene itself, not on the Overworld map.

I think that the Tier Totems at every entrance to a scene is all anyone needs to know exactly what to expect.
Trying to determine the difficulty of a scene by its distance from a road is not a workable solution....

 

I'm aware of the skulls. But they are new. If that was what you meant by already knowing node difficulty, it would have easier if you had just mentioned that.