I've recently returned after being away for nearly 5 years. When I left, harvesting a rare was not such a rare occurance. In an hour of harvesting all nodes, I usally walked away with about 10-15 rares. In the 2 weeks I've been back, I've spent several hours harvesting nodes in Kunark and have gotten 0 rares. From any node (though I've been favoring Ore nodes the most, to make myself a set of MC armor.) Has something changed with harvesting I'm not aware of? I see there are tradeskill AA, some which mention harvesting. That's new. And some tinkered items provide a slight increase in the rate of pulling a rare. That too is new. I have nothing - no AA skills and no items - I'm using when I harvest. Rares seem to be truely rare for me. What am I doing wrong?
Sounds like you have hit a dry patch. Though there are tiers where rares seem much harder to find than they should be (teir 6, sinking sands/pillars of flame seem that way to me despite having aa & items to aid). Overall harvesting rares is easier than ever even without harvesting aids. I do recommend getting a woodworker harvesting kit & if you have the crafting levels for it, a set of tinkered tools. Those help speed things along which in turn gives you more chances to harvest a rare in the same time. There are a lot of items that add to your harvesting skills as well & the higher above the zones required skill the better your chances are. Some time ago our former crafting dev posted about there being a bonus rare table after you get a certain amount over the skill needed for a zone.
As you move from t1-t8 the chance to harvest a rare diminishes with each teir. You'll get many more rares in t3 than you will in t7 for the same amount of nodes harvested. That is a generalization of course, thanks to the RNG you can have streaks of good and back luck but over time it evens out. An hour spent harvesting in t8 (kunark) isn't a large enough amount of time spent harvesting to get reliable results with the low percentage of rare harvests in t8. I think 4 hours is a much better amount of time to get a real feel for the harvesting rates there. Honestly, tracking the number of nodes visited is a better way to measure things but that requires a lot of work. Somewhere around t4 the 1% from the Trim Reaver tradeskill AA line becomes more powerful than being on the bonus table for harvesting. Around t6 that 1% outweighs the actual harvest percentage by such a large amount that you'd have to harvest thousands of rares to start to bring out any kind of statistically significant indications that your percentage is anything other than that 1%. In other words, I'm saying get Trim Reaver if your going to harvest. Yes, it is so good that the only thing that matters other than Trim Reaver is the Potion of Bountiful Harvests from the daily Tradeskill Apprentice quest. I'd recommend taking the Bountiful Harvest AA while your at it, and the Overclocked harvesting tools as well for the double harvest chances. Actually raising the harvest skills with equipment isn't really necessary. There isn't any compelling reason to remove adventuring gear to harvest if you take my advice (the tools work from inventory).
