I recently went through the effort to harvest arcanium, for the overclocked automated combined harvesters (OACH) and gave the harvesters to a few of my characters on Test. Before switching harvesting tools I was zipping through harvesting. As soon as I equipped and started using the OACH my harvesting switched to a crawl. Harvesting the arcanium was not fun. It is as rare as a pink moon and gave me a massive headache and nausea, thanks to the nodes blending in with the background graphics. I found it really distressing, then, when the new harvesting tool made harvesting go as slow as when I first started harvesting at level 1. I don't remember this happening on the Live servers though it has been awhile since I played my higher-level characters on Live. Is this a new way DB has to slow us down, a bug, or intended? Using the OACH sure didn't get me arcanium (or other rares) any faster then if I'd used my older tools and just made the process more painful then ever. To go through all that distress, for no substantial reward, is really disheartening. Please tell me this is a bug and I should be getting rares more often and harvesting should be at least as fast as with the regular overclocked tools.
Btw, I did notice that it was easier to find the nodes I needed for the Gathering Obsession quests so if it is a tradeoff between taking longer to harvest a node, and finding more of them, I'll take the slower harvesting. I would like to see more arcanium available though as we need it for doing the sig quest and for crafting.
The combined version "should" be giving you the same speed reduction as you got from using the individual overclocked items, if memory serves. For the max harvesting speed reduction you'll need the overclocked (combined, or individual), plus the redwood harvesting kit from woodworkers, plus the gathering goblin buff (from "freeing" your gathering goblin during the optional part of the Obulus crafting line). The goblin buff drops if you die, mentor, etc., so if you suddenly see reduced harvesting speed, that's a good first thing to check.
