Foraging, success by zone?

[Tildy]

Hey there. This is my first browse through the EQTC forum and first post, though I'm a frequent visitor to the page. I'm a 63 halfling druid from Drinal with tradeskills varying from 161 to 209. The 209 is in baking.

I'm sitting around in LFaydark at the moment slaughtering brownies left and right while I try to forage fruit and vegetables. Ironically, I seem to be foraging mostly water and morning dew. I've yet to get a single fruit while getting 11 morning dews and 2 veggies. So it brought me back to an old wondering: has anyone studied the different foraging rates in different zones? I know I can forage fruits and vegetables in almost all zones, but is any one zone better than another if I'm looking for a specific thing? I first wondered this when I was looking for mushrooms. I haven't had Luclin for very long, and someone assured me that Grimling was a safe place. So I went there are foraged for hours and had a grand total of 2 mushrooms and backpacks full of feathers. But on an excursion to Umbral Plains, I found I foraged practically nothing but mushrooms.

So, the thing is... in real life... I'm a mathematician! Now you see why I'm so interested. If no one has done such a study before, I might be about to embark on the most masochistic mission ever... so sit for hours on end in zone after zone, foraging my little but off and cataloguing what ends up in my little knapsack afterwards.

So, has anyone done this before? If not, do any of you with 200 foraging skill want to pick a zone and offer to do 100 forages and tell me the results?

-Tildy

P.S. This board system is totally sexy, easy to use. I like it!

[fielan]

Tower of Frozen Shadows-

Forages predominantly the clams (I think? whatever the little shell icon is) and bone chips. Roots and splinters of frozen shadows rare.

[Labios]

Not paid much attention to this myself, but I have to aggree with UP and mushrooms. If you want roots then go to PoK. I do think each zone has a unique table, including basic forages.

[Sanna]

I get easily 90pct Roots in pok. we call them the #$%^ roots. Why are there so many roots in pok? Are the foragers responsible for the dead south side? ^_^

I recall getting a healthy spread of veggies/fruits/berries in gfay. most of my forages in Great Divide are either the Slush Water, Roots, or the Lichen Roots. Rarely do I see a clam icon on my cursor. And someone mentioned 'hoping to get that elusive Tuft of Dire Wolf Fur', yet in a half hour of foraging in Kael I got 12. /shrug. curiouser and curiouser.

[pennyrose]

This is an interesting discussion and your project certainly sounds useful to me. I would be willing to do your requested 100 forages in one zone, at least, though I wonder if that is a large enough sampling given the vargies of the RNG we've all come to know as tradeskillers.

Pennyrose

[Itek]

My findings

Here goes,

I got bored with my main and made a druid twink.

I held on to every foraged item I got until I had a full bank vault, then gave them away in West Commons.

I used Pod of Water and Roots as my food and drink so obviously those numbers are a little skewed.

I had roughly:

200 Berries
200 Fruit
100 Rabbit Meat
400 Veggies
200 Pods of water left over
200 Roots left over

I did not take my twink to Kunark, Velious or Luclin. I did the "give away" well before I hit 200 foraging skill so I had VERY few rare forages.

I did spend several levels hunting in Lesser Fay.

Here's a hint "sylvan berries" == "berries" on the "foraging table" in Lesser Fay. You will never, in my experience, get a "berries" but will get a LOT of "sylvan berries." (I wish to Karana I had not sold them now, could use them for LoY tailoring.)

Oh, for my experience .... I spent level 25 thru level 34 hunting Faerie Guards in Lesser Fay -exclusively- ... on two different druids. 18 levels solo with constant foraging.

(I have a hotkey for all my druids....
/sit off
/doability -forage- [number varies but you understand]
/sit on
/time [which helps time dots, roots, spawns, etc, as well as keep me from being late for work]

And this hotkey sits next to the "forage" ability key so I can forage as I run from place to place, and jump up and forage and sit back down if it happens to refresh while medding.

Yes, that means I forage a LOT of stuff. My wife and I have two accounts and two computers. We share a "baking / brewing supplies" mule. Currently, thank LoY, have about 15 deluxe toolboxes full of foraged stuff. Yeah, 3000 foraged items sitting in the bank waiting for the day we decide to make it all into something.)

Recently we have needed to gather Tea Leaves, and Morning Dew.

In East Karana we have both had our druids on, and seem to average right around 4 tea leaves an hour. Yes, it's boring, but thankfully my main now can at least use the spider silks for tailoring while her main saves the wolf meat for Halas Meat Pies once she gets Craft Mastery One. Everything else seems to be pretty random, but evens out on the large / long term scale.

In Lesser Fay we have been trying to get Morning Dew for our friend who is a High Elven Smith. Again, about 4 dew per forager per hour seems to be pretty standard. Again, NO berries, but those now USEFUL sylvan berries. (We had nearly 100 dew from our time killing Faerie Guards sitting in the bank, added to the 50 or so we have gotten in the last few weeks of sitting in LFay foraging while re-reading the Harry Potter series to refresh for the new book next month. One VERY HAPPY HE smith.)

Your mileage may vary. All opinions my own.

[Hobbun]

Re: My findings

(I have a hotkey for all my druids....
/sit off
/doability -forage- [number varies but you understand]
/sit on
/time [which helps time dots, roots, spawns, etc, as well as keep me from being late for work]

Now, I have seen this similar setup from another website for doing Feign Death quickly. I don't understand exactly how this works. Are you saying you sit, forage, then sit down? How does it make it quicker? And what do you mean by the number varies? I don't doubt this, I just don't understand how it works.


Hobbun

[Tildy]

Foraging, update

The /sit off is a computery way to say "stand," Hobbun. So what his/her hotkey does is make the char stand up, forage, and sit back down again.

I was foraging like a mad hatter in PoS while XPing. I got:

100 forages, no failures
-20 vegetables
-38 pods of water
-12 berries
-5 fishing grubs
-5 fruit
-7 rabbit meats
-13 roots

This is with my 200 foraging skill and no skill modifying items equipped. For uniformities sake, I want to keep them all that way. (BTW, another question is: does equipping a +10% item change the ratio of items foraged? Or is that extra skill just for less chance of foraging nothing?)

I have some other zones I've written down, but this was the essential idea.

I have no really sat down with a pen and paper to consider whether 100 is enough. But most random variables tend towa... well, it ought to be enough, I'll leave it at that. The primary concern is that, if I actually go to a zone just to forage, 100 forages alone takes about 3 hours (it seems forage pops in a little less than 2 minutes, no?). So it's a good start, I think.

I will make up a little webpage posting my results, will update you later.

-Tildy, crazy

[Itek]

Sorry if I wasn't clear about the hotkey...

/sit off

this is the old way, and more UNIX style command (forgive an old computer geek)

they patched it a while ago so that /stand will work

/stand
/doability #
/sit
/time

+line one makes you stand
+line two does the command /doability 1 2 3 4 5 or 6
---- you have it do the NUMBER of the ability from the "abilities" menu, say for instance you have "forage" as your "ability" in slot one. Then you need /doability 1
---- but this number varies from user to user, some people have "bind wounds" or "taunt" or "fishing" or "begging" as 1 and "forage" as some other number, this part I can't guess so you have to put whatever number is right for you in place of #
+line three makes you sit (the default of /sit is /sit on and is also the OPPOSITE of whatever state you are in... if you are standing /sit makes you sit, if you are sitting /sit makes you stand... trust me, makes perfect sense to the programers)
+line four does the /time command which tells you the game (unless on Luclin) and real times
--- mobs respawn on times based on when they die (NOT when they are looted, hopefully that myth has been put to rest) so knowing when a mob dies, and it's respawn time (by killing one, seeing the time it died, and then noticing when the next one spawns, killing it, repeat till the time is pretty well established..... LGuk spawn time is 28 minutes 30 seconds... trust the guy who camped Ghoul Arch Magus for 15 hours getting his SMR solo...) this allows you to know when it's safe to /afk Bio or /afk Cig or /afk Grabbing a soda from the fridge ... or even /afk Shower (hey... the respawn in Fear is what... 8 hours?? *grin*)

Hotkeys are great for a lot of things...

/who all GM
/who all friend
/who all GUILD

/pause 550, /doability 1
/pause 550, /em feels stupid waiting to forage
/pause 550, /doability 1
/pause 550, /em waits some more
/doability 1

forage, pause 55 seconds, emote, pause 55 seconds, forage, pause 55 seconds, emote, pause 55 seconds, forage....

3 forages with one keypress. (you can wait closer to 50 seconds as forage is pretty close to 100 second refresh... but you might jump the gun and miss a forage) Just remember to click the items into your inventory, as duplicate items vanish. (i.e. you can have roots, water and veggies all waiting on the cursor... but if you, by some strange chance of the random number generator, get 3 tea leaves all in a row... *faint* two of them would vanish into the ether.)

further notes about /pause
the increments are in 10ths of a second (550 is 55 second)
the max /pause is 600 (one minute)
/pause HAS to come first on the line followed by , and then a command (if you wish, command optional, but it saves a line in the hotkey)
the command AFTER the comma is done FIRST, then the pause

Your mileage may vary, all comments in my opinion only.

[Morani]

Just remember to click the items into your inventory, as duplicate items vanish.

Not anymore. Since the fix with multiple items, I've sat my 2nd boxed druid in one place for about an hour foraging and not once dumped items into my inventory box. By the end of it, I had 36 items "stacked" on the cursor. Duplicates now remain.
/Cheer

[Itek]

I stand corrected...

That's.... sweet....

.sig under construction

[Catranizi]

Been foraging a lot in some zones to raise tailoring and baking.

Did:

Swamp of No Hope, Dreadlands, Laggedpine Forest

Considering there is a maximum of 36 forage per hour (100sec reset).

I was foraging for Honey Berries, Plant Shoots and Maneater Buds.

Rate for each was about 24/6hours. 4/hours. 1/9 forage. 2 other spots were usually other zone specific items. 6 remaining were grubs, water, fruits, roots, veggies, etc.

I'll keep track of my numbers from now on.

[wrin]

Thanks for the hotkey info.

I tried it last night and as long as I stayed put it worked great. Also found that you can use 110 for the second pause (then you don't have to wait as long).

Wrin

[Faymar]

I've been using a hotkey like that for a while and one thing has been bugging me...

I'll sit and time it and modify the hotkey until I end up foraging the moment forage pops up, 3 forages per hotkey press.

Then, at some later point, I use the same key, and the timing is off.

Does it vary by zone? Skill ability maybe? Or am I just losing my mind?

[wrin]

I've been using a hotkey like that for a while and one thing has been bugging me...

I'll sit and time it and modify the hotkey until I end up foraging the moment forage pops up, 3 forages per hotkey press.

Then, at some later point, I use the same key, and the timing is off.

Does it vary by zone? Skill ability maybe? Or am I just losing my mind?

I noticed that too. Seemed to happen if I used another hot key for the most part.

other times seemed to be for no reason.