Fishing and Foraging - a suggestion

[Kaysha Soulsinger]

My main is a Human Cleric and being the nut I am, I fell for Tradeskills. On my way up to the higher echelons, I noticed just how many components were either Fished or Foraged. The Fishing I could do on my Cleric, but the Foraging I could not. Now a cheap and easy suggestion here is to give everyone the Forage skill (be it for free or through some AA's, or maybe even a quest?), but that's beside the issue. For the Foraging part - and mainly because I didn't want to pay through my nose for heavy inflated Bazaar prices - I created a Druid. A WoodElf Druid so I would also be able to imbue my own Emeralds en-masse for the Ceremonial Solstice Robes.

Anyway, Fishing on my Cleric (and now also my Druid) as well as Foraging with my Druid, my skill increased until they were capped. With Fishing I still fish up a lot of Rusty Daggers and Tattered Cloth Sandals, not to mention Fresh Fish and Fish Scales. While Foraging, I come across a lot of weird stuff; stuff I am not even looking for. I mean, if I am foraging for Roots (which requires digging in the ground), then how do I come across berries (picked from bushes or even trees)? Why can't I look specifically for the item I am interested in? Also, at higher fishing skills, I should have learned various fishing techniques which increase my odds of fishing for specific fish.

So this lead me to my idea: setting your Forage and/or Fishing preference.

This immediately leads to an issue: how do you know what is forageable or fishable before looking around or testing the waters? It would not be fair or be in the spirit of the game if the list would just show everything available for the zone you're in; especially when this would include quest forages. The solution is actually simple and is much alike the recipes we learn with our Tradeskills right now: besides a few basic items (like Pod of Water, Vegetables, Fresh Fish, Fish Scales, etc ...), you can simply "learn" how to forage or fish something and each new foraged or fished item is added to your known list of forages or fishings. Whenever you forage or fish something new, you would get a message like this:

"You have learned how to forage Some_Forageable_Item_01!"
"You have learned how to fish for Some_Watery_Item_01!"

Of course, some items may be excluded from appearing on the list (mostly quest items, I'd guess), much like some Tradeskill recipes are not learnable right now.

Now how can you use this? My idea is that you can pull up a new Forage window and a new Fish window, wherever you are. The window will have a list of forages or fishings known to you and those among them that are available in your current zone are highlighted (those not available in that zone are greyed out). The window should furthermore have two buttons, one with which you can set your "focus", one with which you can clear your focus. A small piece of text should indicate your current Foraging or Fishing focus. Each time you zone, the focus should be cleared and be displayed as "none".

Now this focus is not intended to give a guaranteed hit each time you hit your forage or your fishing button, that would be too powerful. However, based on your skill level, it should increase your odds of finding exactly the item you are focussing on. Technically, the game increases the overall odds to get that particular item while decreasing the odds of other items - again, based on your skill level, so the higher your skill, the more the game increases your odds of getting it.

I think this idea would spice up Foraging and Fishing somewhat, they are currently somewhat bland.

[Lokase]

I thought about your post last night and came up with a simpler and effecitve solution that, I think, would be "easier" for the dev's to program.

We could have a Forage Window that we could bring up. In the window there is a list for every foragble item in the game or for the zone. Each foragble item has a check mark beside it (default is checked). If you do not want to forage for a certain item then you uncheck the foragble item.

So, lets say you have unchecked "Pod of Water" and you are in a zone foraging. One of your forage attempts yeilds a "Pod of Water", but since you unchecked that item in the forage window you get a message instead -

"You have foraged an item that you do not require."

The "Pod of Water" would not show up on your cursor and would not show up in any of your containers.

I think this approach would be much easier for the devs to program. Still the development effort may be too much for them to include in the game anytime soon.

Cheers,

Lokase

[Itek]

*sigh*

Yeah, giving everyone forage would be nice. (Personally I'd pay 3 to 10 aa for it maybe.) But they almost certainly won't do it. It's a class/race ability. So you only get it in certain situations. (They will wave the "player interaction" flag, and that will be the end of it.)

Secondly that's not how "forage" works. Either in the game or reality.

When you forage you take a little time out of your travels to look around and see if there is something (usually edible) in the area you happen to be. You might see a root-plant. Or you might see a berry plant. Or you might see a rabbit. Or a small pool of water. Or a bone chip sticking up out of the ground.

YOU might be looking for "roots" but the CHARACTER is looking for FOOD. Big difference. You would want to be looking only for one thing. But that thing might not be in the area, as you ignore 5 or 6 other things that your character might be able to use.

Saying "I'm only looking for roots right now" would be great. But it doesn't increase the chances of there BEING roots where you happen to be. All it would do is increase the number of failures (200 foraging skill = never fail) or keep you from having to store/destroy the "junk" you aren't looking for.

Collect it all. Use shared bank space to off-load it to a mule. Sell the stuff you don't want to buy the stuff you do.

Itek: I don't need morning dew or sylvan berries, but I do need Misty Acorns.
Carala: I -urgently- need both morning dew and sylvan berries. I will pay you 20pp for dew and 30pp for berries.
Itek: Great, here's a couple stacks of each.
Zeapho: I have found 4 acorns since you visited Misty last... 100pp each?
Itek: Sure.... and have KEI/Vallon's/Druzzil to boot.
TheWife: Did you find me some acorns yet?
Itek: Uh huh. Here's 10. I'm going to bring on the taxi/forage bot so let me rebuff you before I switch.

Don't fix what works. Especially don't fix what works pretty darn well.

[Lickity]

I like this idea on face Itek, or a roleplaying reason to leave it as it is. However, I just logged on and found Fresh Fruit and Berries laying around in Innoruuk's home, which is indoor, and devoid of nature. So, as far as there not being what I am looking for, where I am, I don't buy it. (Ranger_01 has foraged a Pod of Water deep in the desert of Marr, grats!)

The poster isn't saying to up the forage rate on what you are looking for, just that you are only to pick up what you are looking for. It stands to reason if you aren't thirsty you won't look for water, so you tell your character not to look for Pod of Water. If you are combing the beach for money, you probably wont pickup the beer bottle labels, they aren't your destination, so you tell yourself not to pick up anything except what you are looking for (and your added focus might make you more likely to see what your single destination more easily than a fell swoop would just yield anything easy to find.)

[Raienya]

I was thinking about a forage AA ability the other day, actually. It would still be for only the classes able to forage, but there would be three ranks you could put AA points into for it (3/6/9 points). At say 3 points spent, you would have a 20% better chance of foraging rare components, then 40%, then 60%, or something similar.

I for one am deathly sick of the low forage rates for some items in zones with huge forage tables, such as Natimbi. I have foraged literally hundreds of times there, and yesterday just foraged my first tea leaf oil (or whatever it's called, it looks rather like a short beer in inventory).

[Koru]

Well, look at it this way, if you go to the store do you buy the nearest thing because you don't want to go home empty handed? Even if you didn't need or want it?

With 280 wisdom you'd think by now my druid would have grasped the concept of "If you don't need it or want it, just don't pick it up". So in that regard it would be nice to be able to tell her if all she could find were berries not to bother picking them up to take up valuable space. Sometimes getting nothing is preferable to getting the wrong thing. There are a few zones where I'd rather get an advance decline on what I would have found on that forage rather than continually destroying it over and over and over and over again.

[Itek]

*sigh*

I'm not joking. I'm -deathly- serious about how foraging really works. You will find the most unusual things in the most unlikely of places. Like water in the desert. There's a TON of water in the desert if you know where (and HOW) to look for it. (when helps a lot too) Fruit and berries in PoHate? Well, I'm not a necromancer I'm an enchanter... but IIRC not everything in Hate is Undead right?

I'm not defending the "general forage table" or any zone specific tables. Could they be more logical and better arranged. Heck yeah. Do you want them to do that rather than fixing broken combines (like the Discord conversions) or implementing "bridges" for the tailoring and smithing skills? Somehow I think not.

As I said all a "don't pick up a root" filter would do is increase, dramaticly, the failure rate of forage. They have set the "commonality" of the "rare" forages for each zone. (Hopefully) this is not an accident. Personally I'd hate to think Misty Acorns (which I actually spent 4 SOLID DAYS doing nothing but foraging, ground spawn hunting and trading/buffing for, only to get a grand total of less than 20) are as rare as they are because someone put 0100 in the database rather than 1001 or something.

Would I, indeed all of WE, like to see more rare forages (and fish) sure. But I don't think a "filter" would be helpful. And I don't believe that the rarity is accidental. And I don't believe they will dramaticly increase "rares" because they want them coming into the game at the current rate.

An AA ability to improve the "rare" success rate for people that already have forage. That might be cool. And something they might actually do. Certainly more likely than a "anyone can get it" AA forage, which would annoy those that can already forage.

[Koru]

I don't realistically think there's much chance they'll give us increased chances to pull up rares, which really doesn't bother me a lot. But a 'do not pick it up' filter has somewhat higher chance of happening I think since you'd still use up your forage chance for that round, you just don't get the item in your rat nest of an inventory (when I write you, I actually mean me). I'd love to have the option to get those forages list as a failure rather than actually getting the item. There is a serious limit to how many foraged no drop not-lore no-stacking quest items I need.

I can usually make something out of roots, berries or pods of water, they forcefeed well if nothing else or I make them into something I can sell for a gold or two in baz (I was surprised someone actually bought my fruit and berry juice!). But what am I going to do with 8+ bark bindings? I think a filter might be a nice future enhancement down the road.

[Kaysha Soulsinger]

There's a TON of water in the desert if you know where (and HOW) to look for it. (when helps a lot too)

You are proving my point here. When I am looking for something and I specifically want to AVOID finding something I am not looking for, my odds to find something else should increase.

[splunge]

Giving every class foraging would be nice.

...

Giving every deity worshipping caster class imbue spells would be nice. (Tunare rangers imbuing emeralds etc...)
Giving all classes Jewelcraft Mastery would be nice.
Giving all classes Tinkering skill would be nice.

Shall i push the 'Forced class/race inter-dependancy thing thats been in EQ since Day 1' thing any more or have we had enough?

Infravision for Barbarians/Humans... innate Sneak/Hide for Ogres.. la de da de da do de do deedle deedle dee wubba wubba wubba boogidy boogidy shoo...

[Ambrya]

As I have said before, as a Ranger, I will support other classes getting forage ability when...

...I have the ability to:
--Imbue my own stones
--Enchant my own metals, clay, gems, and make mana vials
--Achieve JCM
--Manufacture my own stalking probes, bow cams, and shrink device
--Mix up my own gate potions
--Whip up some poison and apply it to my arrows

There's a reason why not every class can do what every other class can do.

[Aryse Andenter]

I normally agree on the certain classes should have certain abilities deal - but for one thing, foraging isn't a class ability, it can also be a racial one.

I play on a server where you can only have three characters, and you are restricted on what races and classes you can have. I cannot make a woodelf druid (or any character which has both racial and class foraging ability) on my account now even if I was willing to delete one of my (unfortuantely all) non-foraging characters.

Since the price of vegetables has not unfrequently been at 45pp, and there are forages for dyes that I have not seen once in the bazaar even after nightly searching for longer than two months, I have to say I think that there should be some sort of AA or something which allows other classes to forage. I would spend at least 10 AA for a forage skill even if it was capped at 50. Because foraged items are just not adequately available for me now, even in a manner through player interaction.