Best Places to Forage?

[Nitpaac]

Suspicious

What are some zones where one is going to forage the best stuff to sell in Bazaar?

I was really surprised how many people are answering (with good intentions) to this question.
Forage bots are as illegal as common these days.

In my eyes the question was: How can I maximise the money output from my forage bot. Please help me to have personal pp gain by violating the EULA.

Excuse me if I am looking at this too negatively, but I've paid too much pp in my EQ Live for foraged goods that flowed into the market way faster than a normal forager could gather them. Way faster.

I'm sorry if that wasn't Kaz's the intention, but the original posting looks highly suspicious to me.

-Nitpaac

[Aryse Andenter]

Wow, some people are cynical. Similar to Ndaara, my first thought was more that people use a second account to forage while doing something mildly boring on a primary acount like raiding or camping a particular spawn or something. Sure bots exist, but that's a heavy accusation Nitpaac for what could easily be a totally legit question.


And actually, if it comes right down to it, after about 6 months with not a single foraged item needed for the erudite robes coming into the bazaar on my server and trying to find enough of it through hours and hours of super green mobs, you'd have trouble convincing me a forage bot supplying something that annoying was a bad thing

[Catha]

Basically you can forage all the stuff for Shellcracker's Seaside Salad - a very tasty item from the look to it, but not a cash crop!

http://www.eqtraders.com/search/reve...r=035000000000

Catha, that was you selling that Bamboo dye for my Erudite robe? No wonder it was so over priced! (/jk Hugs, my sister)

Hehe. Yes, that was me selling that bamboo dye but I *know* you didn't buy any off of me. I woulda yelled at you if had. :P And our other resident Erudite tailor was getting all the dye he wanted for free off of me.

[Kaz]

I was really surprised how many people are answering (with good intentions) to this question.
Forage bots are as illegal as common these days.

In my eyes the question was: How can I maximise the money output from my forage bot. Please help me to have personal pp gain by violating the EULA.

Personally, I find nothing at all wrong with a simple forage bot, and if I had the initiative I'd set one up. Booh hoo, forbidden blah blah blah. As someone who regularly searches the bazaar for tradeskill items to resell, I know quite well that most forage-only items are ultra-rare, and laughably overpriced, so that I wish people WOULD use forage bots, to make up for the foolishness of the recipe design that leaves non-foragers pretty much effed, even if they were willing to pay ANY price.

Take Plant Shoots, for example. There are right now, as usual, ZERO available in bazaar. When I do see them, it's usually one or two, for hundreds of plat. We need some people to set up for-profit foragebots.

But it's a pain to do, so my plan...which does not involve xp...is simply to write a five line macro and poke it with my finger every few minutes while watching a movie.

This is why I don't care, at all, about the xp part. Hell, even if I were to run around, I'd probably just find something to kill that dropped something bazaar sellable, like killing for skins and silks in EK while foraging tea leaves. But I can work that out once I know of a few good foraging zones.

[Nitpaac]

I know quite well that most forage-only items are ultra-rare, and laughably overpriced, so that I wish people WOULD use forage bots, ...

In spite of my nasty post earlier, I have to agree!
If there were enough people gathering foraged supplies, prices would get down to a reasonable level.

At the moment, *if* there is something available by the plenty, you can almost be sure it was macro-foraged. Buying from those people supports this behaviour, only alternative would be to create your own forage character.
Hmm, which leads us to the initial posting in this thread....

-Nitpaac, Expert Artisan, Paladin with very bad foraging skills.

[Flehmen]

A case in point of stupid rare components. (And this is a very common forage, with a fairly simple combine!)

Qeynos Afternoon Tea.

Last night someone advertised 90 tea leaves for sale. I stopped and checked the price... 30pp... wow, so I run over as fast as I can.. not 30s have gone by.. and manage to buy 10 of the 90 as the rest of them are sold. The seller and I got into a conversation about how people used to destroy stacks of those leaves 'cause everyone and their buddy lvled in EK.

Anyways , it was a good deal as 30 is 5 plat less than I put them up for in buyer!

ALL my foraging toons leveled close to 10 times in Karana, taking tasks from the common lands and soloing out there or with my spouse's foragers. Maybe got 150 tea leaves from both of our efforts. (We both had forge set up to spam on most keypresses)

That was most of my EQ time for a week or two. I once, in that time, saw someone hunt that zone for a four hour long period, with a non-forage character. Farming spiderling silks. I also bought a bunch of tea leaves for poison glands from a nice magician. (I was also farming halfling parts at the time. )

No wonder tea leaves are 100pp a piece! No wonder QAT goes for 20-40 pp each.

I asked in a few of the new general channels about Tea Leaves, and basically got the responce "Who would bother going to EK?" three or four times.

<shrug> Supply and demand I guess. I've set my max price and if I have to buy tea leaves to make a batch I just send my forager back to the Karana's to forage one tea leaves for each I have to buy. That way I average down the price and save myself some time so I can level that character.

Long story short, I guess what I'd like to see is the "rare" components to remain rare enough, but spread out through the game from lvl 1-70. Rather than making it neccessary to bot forage stuff how about add an instance to EK where people can lvl (1-50+) but also has the occasional tea leaves? If more tea leaves came into the bazaar as ones and two then the price would get pushed down, not a lot, but a little. This would probably push down QAT as there is always someone whose time is worth less than yours. The benifit would be to also make a reasonible profit while skilling up to a little over 200.

(I refuse to spend $ for pp and get another account to set up a mostly afk forager)

[Rendael Brigh]

It was already said as long as you are near the computer it is not afk.

Do what you will. No one can tell you are afk foraging unlike afk buying / selling and tradeskilling.

[Neebat]

But it's a pain to do, so my plan...which does not involve xp...is simply to write a five line macro and poke it with my finger every few minutes while watching a movie.

Ok, that's cool. So long as you're at the keyboard, it's completely legitimate.

WW, EK, NK, JPF, all good choices.

Based on your criteria, you might not like the DoN zones mentioned because there's such a huge list of possible forages.

[eqNichola]

It was already said as long as you are near the computer it is not afk.

How near is near?

[Neebat]

How near is near?

Hydras are not considered to be playing AFK, even when the computers on opposites sides of the room. You're allowed to go AFK while your character continues an action you started. A great example is the melee types who went AFK during the Luclin boss fights. No one claimed they were exploiting anything. Sony has recognized that those encounters were badly designed and a lot of the encounters now do more to encourage people to be present and actively engaged.

As far as macros, I'm not too sure. I don't know that there IS a consistent set of rules. From what I can tell, hardware macroing is acceptable while you're at the keyboard, but software macroing (outside of EQ) is always an exploit.

For an example of hardware macros, consider what happened before Autofire. Some rangers used programmable game controllers. The programmable auto-repeat of a button could be set to match the firing rate on the bow. That button could be programmed to send a keystroke. That keystroke activated the Ranged Attack button. So a ranger could flip a switch on the controller and start firing arrows until they flipped it back off. So long as the player was at the keyboard the whole time, this was perfectly valid.

Imagine using that same controller to hit an autoforage button, then going AFK for hours. The foraging game mechanic is a bit broken because it lets you sit in one place foraging over and over for hours. They could fix that by requiring you to move some distance between forages. In the mean time, it seems like an exploit to me. (And I think Sony classifies it as an exploit.)

[Kaz]

Imagine using that same controller to hit an autoforage button, then going AFK for hours. The foraging game mechanic is a bit broken because it lets you sit in one place foraging over and over for hours. They could fix that by requiring you to move some distance between forages. In the mean time, it seems like an exploit to me. (And I think Sony classifies it as an exploit.)

Sony thinks anything creative or unexpected is an exploit. We're supposed to do what they already explicitly planned, and nothing more. And they don't care who else they hurt while trying to prevent that creativity...their nerfs often effect 99% legit players, and 1% alleged exploiters. It's one of the most annoying aspects of the game, along with the constant effort, until recently, to force soloists to group, and groupies to raid.

I'd say it's an "exploit", by saner definition, only if someone other than the player taking the action is being hurt.

And is someone hurt by a player having a joystick autofire, instead of a five line macro they only have to hit every several minutes while watching a movie?

No.

In fact, people would be helped, as noted above, because of the insane shortage of so many foraged goods.

I wish I were not so lazy...I'd go set up a forage "exploit" just on principle, now.

[Neebat]

Sony thinks anything creative or unexpected is an exploit.

This is wandering kind of far off the original topic, but Sony really does allow creative, unexpected strategies all the time. I think the entire concept of kiting was a surprise to Sony and I KNOW monk pulling was. There's an entire debate on the live forums about the number of masks used in the OMM event. Sony declared the tactics involved to be creative, clever and perfectly valid.

As a rule, Sony calls it an exploit if it reduces the overall level of "fun". If the fun is reduced for either the one doing the deed or someone caught in the process, they'll prolly call it an exploit. For example, my wizard can use snare and a zone-line to get a single pull. That's an acceptable strategy until my train hits someone else the second time. It's exciting to me, but ruins the game for someone else.

If you make a decent amount off the things you foraged while hunting, that's fun and exciting. (I'm always pleased to find some odd looking whatzit from nowhere is on a buy line for 200pp) Mass-foragers could ruin that by flooding the market. The mass foragers haven't created any new, fun, exciting way to play. In fact, if they're AFK, they're having exactly ZERO fun from playing the game. (They aren't playing.)

My wife has used my computer when I wasn't home to run a forager while she did something else on hers. She got excited every time something cool popped up on the cursor. A forage hydra could actually be fun. I support your notion of hitting the button every now and then while watching a movie. Who knows? You may get more excited about the forages than the plot.

[Kaz]

This is wandering kind of far off the original topic, but Sony really does allow creative, unexpected strategies all the time. I think the entire concept of kiting was a surprise to Sony and I KNOW monk pulling was. There's an entire debate on the live forums about the number of masks used in the OMM event. Sony declared the tactics involved to be creative, clever and perfectly valid.

It's often said, correctly, that if someone just invented Aspirin today, or penicilin, or coffee (or, especially, adding caffeine to drinks), it would be illegal.

I suspect that we're lucky Verant happened to accept kiting and monk pulling.

As a rule, Sony calls it an exploit if it reduces the overall level of "fun". If the fun is reduced for either the one doing the deed or someone caught in the process, they'll prolly call it an exploit. For example, my wizard can use snare and a zone-line to get a single pull. That's an acceptable strategy until my train hits someone else the second time. It's exciting to me, but ruins the game for someone else.

This is only true if we accept a sort of authoritarian's definition of "fun". Like people who insist that we should have been forced to use Beta instead of VHS, because they think it was more important to have imperceptibly better recording quality on 30 minute tapes than have broadcast-quality recording on two hour tapes.

I mean, of course it's true if you're training someone. But how about a guy who parks himself on top of a cyan mob and feigns death, so that his pet kills it every five minutes, all night? That added up to only a moderate amount of xp, because cyan is insignificant, so it wasn't going to produce thousands of uber Necros.

Did this really merit not only ending pet aggro, but making pets vanish after you're down for a minute, and THEN just making mobs regain health completely if you're feigned, and THEN making them teleport back to their posts...when all of those things ended up effecting mostly people other than the few exploiters?

If you make a decent amount off the things you foraged while hunting, that's fun and exciting. (I'm always pleased to find some odd looking whatzit from nowhere is on a buy line for 200pp) Mass-foragers could ruin that by flooding the market. The mass foragers haven't created any new, fun, exciting way to play. In fact, if they're AFK, they're having exactly ZERO fun from playing the game. (They aren't playing.)

Sounds pretty authoritarian, to me. What about the fun they have when they get back and have enough ingredients to work on their skill ups, or to sell in the bazaar for plat that allows them to buy better gear and have more fun playing?

What about the people to whom they sell the previously nonexistant foraged ingredients, who thus have more fun playing, because impossible recipes are now useful for their own skillups?

My wife has used my computer when I wasn't home to run a forager while she did something else on hers. She got excited every time something cool popped up on the cursor. A forage hydra could actually be fun. I support your notion of hitting the button every now and then while watching a movie. Who knows? You may get more excited about the forages than the plot.

Again, it's not up to you, and shouldn't be up to Sony, to decide what is "fun", aside from deciding what is directly violating someone else's fun.

Their efforts to force people to group had precisely that mentality; they believed, correctly, that for the plurality of players grouping was more fun...therefore, they concluded, it was more fun for EVERYONE, and all those soloists needed to forced...ok, "encouraged" via penalties, nerfs, a whole expansion full of spells and gear otherwise unattainable, and artificial grouping bonuses...to group.

Why, they just weren't having enough fun, CHOOSING to solo. One size fits all.

The only reason they've finally let up is that they have "discovered" that a lot of people solo when they cannot group, and in that context they find soloing tolerable, as long as they have the (often false) impression that we do group whenever we can.

The fact that I almost never group even when people are inviting me, because I have more fun soloing, is inconceivable to them.

[Lothay]

Wandered very far afield. Foraging "bots" are disallowed by the EULA. Automated "playing" of the game is also against the EULA.

As such, the topic has wandered into and is staying firmly on ground this board doesn't support. I'm closing this thread. If you want to discuss the best places to forage, please make a new thread.