Harvesting Changes Coming

Discussion in 'Tradeskill Discussion' started by ARCHIVED-Frizznik, Apr 18, 2011.

  1. ARCHIVED-Frizznik Guest

    I wanted to let you all know about some harvesting changes that will be hitting test this week and then going out with GU60.
    Three things: harvesting speed is faster, harvesting skill up rate is faster, and a desperate plea.
    Harvesting speed is going to be faster at lower levels. Five seconds felt like an an extra long time when harvesting as a new player. It gets faster as you level up and have access to harvesting tools to the point that it feels much better. I changed it so that the base time of harvesting is now 3 seconds to help ease new harvesters into it and make it more enjoyable. The tools and racial traits have been modified as well. There are tools at 20, 30, 40, 50, and 70. They started at a .5 reduction and added .5 seconds at each tier ending in 2.5 second reduction. Those tools now will start at a .1 reduction and add .1 second per tier ending in a .5 second reduction. This means that at level 80+ you would be exactly the same as you were with 3 seconds - .5 seconds ending in a 2.5 second harveting time. Wood elf and half elf racial traits were also decreased from 1 second to .5 seconds and the human and sarnak traits were reduced from .5 seconds to .25 seconds. This may feel like a nerf to the tools and racial traits, but if you look at it as a whole system you will see that it is more fair to lower level players trying to become interested in harvesting.
    Harvesting skill up chance is a little higher. The way that you gain a skill is based on chance. This chance decreases the closer you get to the skill required to harvest from a specific node. The chance was around 30~50%. This seemed especially unfair to the player who is only doing tradeskills and have their harvesting skill cap rely on their tradeskill level. You would get into a situation where you needed to reach the cap for a tier to move into the next tier, but it would get slower and slower based on how the chance to gain skill works. Not only that but this ratio of skill gain has not changed since launch. That means, because you can level up faster than you could at launch it was super easy to leave your harvesting skill in the dust. The chance to gain a skill up has changed to 50~80% on appropriate harvesting nodes. Overall you should notice you get a skill gain 20~30% faster.
    The last addition is the desperate plea. After the update, upon harvesting the first time you will get a letter in the mail from Lian Augren. She will let you know that she has heard of your interest in harvesting and that you should come talk to her son Qho on the Isle of Mara. She will include a heirloom bonus xp tradeskill potion to entice you and to apologize if the letter found you too late. The intention of this addition is to make players aware of the Gathering Obsession questline as soon as they start harvesting. It was entirely possible to not find this questline until much later in your career which would then force you to go harvest in low level zones. It is much more compelling to work on the quest, gain harvesting skill, and materials all at the same time. The unfortunate part of this addition is that it will apply to all players whether they have worked on Qho's questline or not, so if you did "get the mail late" please enjoy the complimentary potion.

  2. ARCHIVED-Eileah Guest

    I had hoped you would just put in harvesting tools for the lower levels, oh well.
    The higher skill up chance is nice ;)
  3. ARCHIVED-LaurnaRose Fauldorn Guest

    While you're at it ... is there anyway we could get the nodes tweaked? While doing the harvesting cloak questline, I have discovered that dens are in rare form. My personal suggestion would be to put the nodes on 15 respawn timers. If a node has gone unharvested in 15 minutes, it should despawn and respawn based on the current roll that occurrs once nodes are cleared out of a zone. This would greatly reduce the irritation I feel when going into a zone to find it completely cherry picked, having to clear the entire zone to get what I need to spawn, only to have DirkDigs come in behind me and gank all the nodes that I need out from under my nose ... VISIOUS cycle ... totally /hairpulling /facepalming /beatingheadonkeyboard. LOL
    Please consider :) tyvm
  4. ARCHIVED-Darth Stomper Guest

    Sounds good--anything that gets more hands on those nodes is good! (Rule #1 of Harvesting: Rares don't harvest themselves!)
    A wild hair of long standing of mine--any way the result (as in, what's yielded, even among common results) could be influenced? By this I mean increasing the odds of getting 'X' instead of 'Y' (perhaps at the cost of reducing odds of rares)...this was the old bane of crafters who couldn't get metals and wound up buried under loams, among other things!
    I know it's probably a tough one, but a fella can dream...
  5. ARCHIVED-Miznit Guest

    First off, thank you for the information, as well as the changes. Second, why couldn't this have been put in BEFORE I went to the trouble of raising my harvesting skils? (Didn't even start until about 70 or so with my main :) )
    Third, I've given up on getting ANY rares from harvesting. In the very early tiers (up to tier 3, if I remember correctly), I got them in spurts....none for a while, then several in only a few harvests. From that point on, I have been able to get precisely 3, yes THREE rares on my main toon. I couldn't care less about harvesting rares now, and will only try to find some (usually on the broker) if I absolutely HAVE to. (Before someone comes along and says it, no I'm not complaining. Well, I am, but I'm not demanding it be changed. Ohters that I know are getting RICH on rares.)

    *DISCLAIMER: I am probably exagerating the rares I've gotten. It's hard to really say, as all my characters give thier rares to my main to keep in his bank. They don't want to, but they are all scared of that Ogre SK :) Having said that, I stand by belief that I either used up my luck on harvest early in my carreer, or the RNG just flat out HATES me :)

    Laters
  6. ARCHIVED-Tallithia Guest

    I am hoping that at some point SOE will have character harvesting and trade tabs so that we can get special gear and not have to physically change it out when doing these things but rather equip them and upon activating the skill, the buffs and gear will auto switch. :)
  7. ARCHIVED-Tallithia Guest

    Miznit wrote:
    I have found it depends on where you are harvesting. I have a few sweet spots but I am not telling :p
  8. ARCHIVED-Senya Guest

    Bah! I'm working on my 9th harvesting pony and now we get the changes to harvesting. /grumble ;) Just kidding! I think this is a great change. Five second harvesting did feel like an eternity at lower levels and several of my crafters waited until they were 66+ to start harvesting so I could use the tinkered tools. It's too late for me to enjoy this but I'm glad it's being changed anyway.
  9. ARCHIVED-Nindaene Guest

    Frizznik wrote:
    What about the Tinkered Tools that go off of your Tradeskill level at 30, 46 and 66. How will those be changed?
    Most of my characters use those over the Woodworker made ones because they are all crafters and I want the bonuses to the skills (that you don't get from the other tools).
  10. ARCHIVED-Nindaene Guest

    Frizznik wrote:
    Another question... at what point will you get the potion from Lian Augren? Is it included in the mail, as it sounds from your post? I'm all for the "Heirloom" XP Tradeskill Potion, especially since I have mostly maxed characters and my last one would love the benefit of the potion (although she might be 90 before GU60 launches)... however I can easily see how this could be abused. If you are getting the mail with the potion from Lian upon harvesting your first node, I can see people creating a toon, harvesting a node, getting the mail and potion and putting it in the bank. Then deleting the character and rinse and repeat.
  11. ARCHIVED-noluuk Guest

    What about making it so we can make harvesting macros so we dont get carpel (sp?) tunnel from harvesting. One button hit to attempt 3 times.
  12. ARCHIVED-EQ2Magroo Guest

    I have no words to acurately express the disappointment I feel about this change and what impression it gives regarding the devs and a) their priorities and b) their vision for the game.
    Yes it did take a little while to level you harvest skill at low levels. But you know what, it gave you an incentive to aquire the tools, and select the racial tradition classes, and heaven forbid it actually meant you didn't just go from 0-max harvesting in 30 seconds.
    With this change why not just remove all the tools and stick everyone at 2.5 seconds harvest time ? Do you really think you'll notice the difference between 3 and 2.5 seconds ? Are people really going to bother with a .1 increase in harvest time ? Let's face it, nobody harvests at 90 anyway, the market is so flooded with cheap raws it's a waste of time.
    Once again we have another game mechanism nerfed into pointlessness and replaced with a big red instant "I win!" button.
    :-(
  13. ARCHIVED-Whilhelmina Guest

    I love it, it seems very good changes. Perhaps I'll start once more levelling my harvest skills through T5-T9 on some ver low level chars ;p

    Question: if the harvest items are now 0.5s for max harvest item, will we be able to stack them? aka: use a sumac kit + overcloaked gear for a 1s reduction instead of one OR the other for a 0.5s reduction

    (trust me, you definatedly notice a change between 3 and 2.5)
  14. ARCHIVED-Rijacki Guest

    Now if meat to hide could be tweaked -while- one is on the quest.. :)
  15. ARCHIVED-Nindaene Guest

    Whilhelmina@Storms wrote:
    I doubt it. I believe the fastest you will ever be able to do it would be 2.5 sec. Truthfully, anything less than that would be totally unrealistic anyway (well... as realistic as it can be of course!). You'd be close to an instant harvest with every click.
  16. ARCHIVED-Eridu Guest

    Huzzah Great Changes! A great change, and good on you for helping out lower level characters by front load time savings like this.
    I made a woodworker to run through the new post-pristine era writs and I'll tell ya, leveling Foresting was annoying. :p For some reason I have the vague memory of a patch note saying dens and meats had been adjusted. While doing Qho's quests, for as obnoxious as the meats from dens are, I've never capped Trapping before getting all the meats for each stage. That's saying something.
    I also wonder about the level 30, 46 and 66 sets of tinerked tools. Perhaps they could be included/changed to 20, 40, 60 with a new "compact" tinkered tool at 80?
    Thank you for the new writs for T2 and for these changes as well =)
  17. ARCHIVED-Frizznik Guest

    Rijacki wrote:
    I want to look at doing something for that... especially in Rivervale is it frustrating, not sure there is time for GU60 but it is something that should get looked at.
  18. ARCHIVED-Cusashorn Guest

    Domino intentionally designed the quest so that Rivervale, and well, gathering meat in general, would be the absolute hardest and longest part of the quest to complete. It wouldn't be so bad if the quest didn't require you to harvest the same amount of both meats as you need to harvest for everything else.


    All in all, I think these changes to harvesting will help out though. I really see nothing being nerfed or changed for the worse.
  19. ARCHIVED-Elifin Guest

    Rijacki wrote:
    Lol every time I do the harvesting quest I'm reminded why the meat is harder to get. We did used to complain that there was far too much meat in them there dens! ;)
    Great changes. Thank you.
  20. ARCHIVED-Rijacki Guest

    Frizznik wrote:
    Rivervale never got the "Overland as solo" re-population pass and that's part of the problem with harvesting there. The agro radius on everything agro there is HUGE and nearly ever mob in the whole zone is heroic. This leaves a very limited number harvest nodes for any who aren't a high level adventurer.
    It's sad because Rivervale is a pretty nice zone, but it's completely and utterly underutilised because it requires a group even though it is 'Overland'.