Tea Leaves *grumbles*

[ChaseFV]

Here's another thought I had

Since the change to foraging about a year ago, when they allowed people of all skill levels of foraging to obtain zone-specific forages, it is my belief that foraging skill only increases the likelihood that you will forage something, and has no bearing on what you forage. Thus the foraging machette would only theoretically be useful to those of less than 200 foraging skill (as at 200 you never fail to forage something, though you occassionally come up empty-handed after successfully foraging a second lore forage).

C

[Troodon]

Re: Here's another thought I had

Since the change to foraging about a year ago, when they allowed people of all skill levels of foraging to obtain zone-specific forages, it is my belief that foraging skill only increases the likelihood that you will forage something, and has no bearing on what you forage. Thus the foraging machette would only theoretically be useful to those of less than 200 foraging skill (as at 200 you never fail to forage something, though you occassionally come up empty-handed after successfully foraging a second lore forage).

C

This is how I've always believed foraging works (well it has since I paid attention anyway). When you hit the forage button, RNG looks at your skill and decides whether or not you succesfully foraged. Once it's decided you succeeded, it looks at the forage table, and based on rarity of tiems there, chooses what you get. (Fishing works essentially the same way). As I understand it, increasing your foraging skill only increases the likelihood of succesfully foraging ANYTHING, and has no bearing on what you get; what you get is based on the fixed rarity of items on the forage table.

I know my iksar with only 50 foraging has on ocassion come up with items that were supposedly rare, that people believed you couldn't possibly get without 200 foraging. So that leads me to believe she has just as good a chance as a druid to get a rare item on a succesful forage; it's just that she won't succesfully forage nearly as often.

On my trips to EK to farm spider silk and cat pelts, I've got between 2 and 6 tea leaves on a 6 hour session. Sometimes I do betther than others, but I consider the tea leaves a "special bonus" since it's not what I'm really there for. Everey tea leaf though is potentially 6 QATs, hehe.

I seriously wish I could use the foraging machete. But it's only usable by rangers, druids, and bards. So wood elf warriors and rogues, and any class of iksar, can't use it to effectively improve their 50 foraging they get as a racial bonus; only people who get it as a class skill can.

[TraxxusFV]

At 200 forage skill, my ranger forages an average of 4 tea leaves an hour. I mapped my forage button to my right turn key. I just run around the zone killing cats and spiders and the leaves slowly trickle in. After an hour I generally end up with two stacks of spider silk, 10-15 HQ cat pelts, 10-15 MQ cat pelts and four tea leaves.

[Soulfiend]

Foraging is fickle.

Some days you forage 5 in 4 hours, the next day you forage a stack in an hour.

Only thing the skill does, is unlocks the rare items, and adds them to forage table.

[Troodon]

Only thing the skill does, is unlocks the rare items, and adds them to forage table.

Well in most cases that's not true, a 50 forager can forage most of what a 200 forager can, just takes longer.

There are exceptions to this though, where an item simply will not be on the forage table for you below a certain skill. However this usually only applies to quest items for druids and rangers (as they're the only ones that can get 200 foraging anyway). Remeber hearing of an iksar SK on a PoG raid who got a bracnch of planar oak and had no idea what it was for, hehe, so I know that's not on the "you can't get it below 200" table. Though for someone with 50 foraging to get one it's like winnig two consecutive lottery jackpots, hehe.

Most cases it's just like fishing. Your skill determines how often you get something, not what you get.

[Soulfiend]

What I meant to say was, reduces the amount of empty forages.

[Falmorn]

Odd tea leaf foraging thingie...

Well, I'll throw my own two cents into the mix. Mind you, this was probably a fluke, a complete waste of luck on my part that probably means I won't win the lottery any time soon. ("Meet me halfway; buy a ticket!")

I went out to EK yesterday with my 25 ranger 1/2 elf. Mostly I was foraging for my main brewing shaman, but the exp was nice from the crag spiders (and the silks didn't hurt either). In the two hours or so that I spent hunting and resting/medding, I foraged 4 tea leaves. But the odd thing is this: I foraged all four while resting in the house with Merchant Silvia (westmost building in the village near the zone to the Gorge of King Xorbb). I was running around the zone, mostly north of the mountains, but all I really got there were the standard roots, veggies, pods of water and the occasional pebble.

Mind you, I know this is probably a fluke, but I've also heard rumors that say the leaves are more likely to be foraged near this village. I seriously doubt VI/SOE has something that detailed in the coding that says, "if in this region, then add 'x' to score on foraging table," but I felt I should at least pass that info on.

"... your Image takes noise, and filters data; you, the Player, take data, and filter Truth. Without noise, you cannot find truth."

-Ring (an AI), The Long Run, Daniel Keyes Moran

Falmorn, shaman of 54 winters and Elmeth, ranger of 25 seasons

Edit: Yesterday (5/30/03), I hopped on, and started running my ranger around. My *first* forage was a tea leaf, and it happened outside the village area. So the RNG was simply playing games with me that first day.

[Balkin]

ARGH~!

OK OK...

I finally... FINALLY transferred the tea leaves to my brewer a few days ago.

Someone smack me please?

For some dumb reason, I never really bothered to examine the rest of the recipe. I knew there would be some subcombines, but no big deal right?

ARGH!!! I need griffon feathers to make Bayles delight? If I had know that, I would have commited griffawn genocide while foraging and leveling my druid in EK and had plenty. As it is, my brewer is only a 21 wizard. Griffawns are still a tough kill, and most still give experience! If root breaks, his scrawny erudite butt is in trouble! I ended up buying several from merchants, since it took WAY to long killing the dang things.

And Kings Foil, sold on ONE merchant in the entire game somewhere on the side of a mountain out in steamfont! Man! I finally had to bring my druid in and track the little wench!

We won't even talk about the tea leaf forage deal anymore...

Otherwise, it went fairly smoothly, but here's the kicker.

As hard as it is to gather tea leaves... With three of the six ingredients being sub combines, one wich requires hunting griff's, and an item sold only in Steamfont... I thought these drinks would sell for a fairly high price. where else can you get 5 WIS and INT from a Miraculous drink?!

I'm thinking 40-50 pp each, as hard as it is to gather the tea leaves...

I go to the bazaar with over 600 qeynos afternoon tea... and someone's selling 360 of them at 15pp. One other person had about 80 at 25pp each. ARGH!!! Sometimes I hate Xegony! 15pp? *sigh* I can, and did match the person at 25pp, but didn't leave my trader up long. I was kinda disappointed.

I know he has the right to price at whatever he wants, and 15pp is a fair profit, but for some unkown, and uninformed reason, I expected them to sell higher since it's such a pain to get the ingredients.

Bah, there's really no purpose to this rant, I was just annoyed.

Carry on! Nothing to see here! Carry on!

[TraxxusFV]

20pp is the most I've ever been able to sell QAT for, and that was slow going on the FV server. At 15pp, they sell decently and you get a reasonable return on initial investment. I set my price after months of trying different values to see where they'd sell most efficiently. Not too fast not too slow.

What drives me nuts is when someone comes in, takes my price and subtracts 5 gold. If you're going to undercut the market, at least do it by a few platinum so you'll sell out quickly and won't hurt the market value by starting a pricewar :?