The coming time of Gathering (the skill of questions)

~It sounds like we have a gathering event coming~
(assumed from our ever awesome Chris live stream)
(BTW, a big thank you to all our sota seedinvestors)

The gathering skill is still a mystery to me;

I have gathering on many of my characters spread accross all my accounts. Lately, gathering is all I've been doing in-game because my wife and I have been tag-teaming playing a chr named "Coconut". I'm currently working on getting Coconut's final gathering skill up to at least 100, which is "Survey Forestry".

I know, or I think I know that all the skills in each gathering tree are all somehow connected, but I can't say how. It's only a suspicion or superstition of mine that somehow the higher numbers over 100 are important.

Coconut will have 100 in all the gathering trees soon, but her main gathering skill, "the mining tree" has all it's skills all around 140.

We didn't have a forums thread with "Gathering" in it's title that had much information in it, so I think whatever anyone does know about it, even the suspicions or superstitions, needs to be... well... "gathered" before this gathering event ~Time Lord~

Thank you for any info on this!
, "Who" knows nothing about gathering ...
Cue the music

 

I don't think the skills are connected at all.

Survey doesn't do much, it just makes the nodes glow which is pretty useless once you learn where they are. I think higher skill makes them glow from further away?

The main skill increases your chance of success and your chance at crits, so it's very important.

Swift gathering is pretty self explanatory, it's the speed.

Meticulous adds to your chance at meticulous collection.

But they all work independently of each other from my experience.

 

The Survey skills only do one thing: It gradually increases the “glow” of related nodes. That’s it

 

~The Gathering~

Having a gathering event when we all get double what is gathered (speaking about our 100th release celebration), "what does that mean to you all ?"

When we say "double the resources", does that mean just more from each harvest, or does that mean 2x Meticulous?

The difference in those two ways this could go are very different from each other, one meaning more "stuff" collected, while the other would mean not only more stuff, but even more chances to get more producer exp.

So, which do you expect or more wish for in such a gathering event, more bountiful or more skill exp into the crafting pool? "Which do you think @Chris will choose?"

Crafting is one of the super-glue portions of our game, because it's not only difficult to build, but it's something many players (old and new) don't spend their time in, because it's such a deep thing to do. Players don't like to give up their crafting characters because it takes so much effort to get grand in it.

Such an event if "Meticulous" is what gets the boost, would cause a great increase into everyone's crafting pool and thus have the lingering effect afterword of players increasing their crafting activities in every area of sota manufacturing.

"What do you expect will happen and what should we as players be doing now to better prepare for such an event?"

If it happens ...

Whatever happens.
~Time Lord~

 

You gather more basic resources by leveling up your base harvesting skill to allow more successful chances and critical chance to allow you to collect them faster between each node.

And then you level up meticulous collection chance and equip 2 rings and necklace with meticulous collection chance jewels in them. This increases how many base resources.

The other factors are your movement speed you can run from node to node and then how fast you can kill anything that is preventing you from harvesting a node.

 

There was a single release, some years ago now, where survey glow was gloriously broken, and really made the nodes glow/standout. It was the only time it ever felt like the skill was doing anything, but it was quickly "fixed." Survey is a skill that really really needs a rethink as to what it does, or some passive bonus added to it. Particularly useless is field dressing survey, since you've just killed the thing and its corpse is literally right at your feet!
I was hoping that once maps were fully re-implemented, the survey skill would record all discovered nodes on the scene map as long as your survey skill was "high enough" compared to the scene level, for example. That'd actually be really useful and survey-like. Or, if the glow at level 100 was once again "obvious" (like it was for that one release, where spectral mines glowed like a furnace...), it would actually be worth the experience investment. At the moment my advice to people to ask it shut it off at 40 as it has no noticeable effect / no point beyond unlocking meticulous.

I find visibility to be very difficult in many scenes, particularly at night, and pretty much have been forced to play with night vision on at all times as I'm unable to find any combination of settings that give good visibility otherwise. With night vision on any twinkle or glow of nodes is nonexistent making these skills even more useless than they already were =/