Foraging >200??

[Doebi]

I was hunting in Jagged Pine last night, with a ranger with foraging (188).
I also had a foraging machette equiped (+10% to foraging) for part of the time.

Theoretically, this should have given me a forage of 206 or 207 depending on the rounding.

I didn't actually record the numbers, but it seemed that I was getting a much better rate of forage on plant shoots WITH the machette than without.

Does anyone know what the modified max on foraging is?

[lonewylfe]

I think foraging is 200, period.

[Catranizi]

I am fairly sure foraging skill eliminates the "didn't find anything" message by giving you better chances to forage something.

I don't think I have ever failed a single forage at 200 skill.

I would be hard pressed to believe that high skill would select a particular item from the zone list and increase its chance in being foraged. I mean, it wouldn't make sense that suddenly plant shoots abound and vegetables are getting rare.

The only way I would see it raise the chance of finding something is if the check is done this way:
- Press forage
- EQ determine what item you would be foraging on the random zone list
- Item has a % chance of failing to be foraged
- Check is made on forage skill
- Item appears on cursor if success

Which would probably make "rare items" increase with skill. But I doubt foraging works like that and more like, forage check, success, random item is foraging.

[Morani]

I think foraging and fishing work the same. In the past few weeks worth of playing, I've spent about 35 hours foraging with 2 characters simultaneously (that's nearly 70 hours combined; one at 200 and the other at, now, 195) as well as fishing through 30 stacks of bait on one of them. Since there's been a lot of talk about these things recently, its been on my mind while I've been doing it (unfortunately, I didn't think to log my fishing until I was 2/3 done). All of my fishing was done in Ak'Anon (was working on cultural needles for smithing skill) over 2 days. I'm pretty systematic with how I do my tradeskilling so I know roughly how much I gathered of each. Here is how it broke down:

Day one:
Bait: 17 stacks (mix of foraged grubs and purchased, normal bait), 4 batches of 4 stacks with one last stack finishing.
Time spent: ~ 6 hours
Skill: Started at 119, ended at 141
40 Clockwork Koi
~40 (slightly less) Fish Scales
~80 Fresh Fish
well over 100 pieces of "junk" (daggers and sandals)

Day two:
Bait: 13 stacks (mix of foraged grubs and purchased, normal bait), 3 batches of 4 stacks with one last stack finishing.
Time: ~ 3.5 hours
Skill: Started at 141, ended at 153
53 Clockwork Koi
~70 Fish Scales
~ 85 Fresh Fish
less than 50 pieces of "junk"

Patterns I observed:[list][*]During both days, I noticed I was nearly constantly catching 1 Koi for every 2 fresh fish. On day 2 I had a few "odd streaks" where I would get 3 Koi in 3 casts. Since my data pool for observation is so small I feel pretty sure that it was the RNG demonstrating it's know quirk. I can't really be sure though.[*]I gathered MUCH more junk on day 1 than day 2. In my first batch of 80 bait, I gathered nearly 50 items of junk and gained 12 points in my skill. Each batch of 80 bait there after resulted in less and less junk. My last two batches resulted in less than 20 junk items each with only 12 items in the last one. [*]I noticed a SUBSTANTIAL reduction in the junk gathered after hitting 136. One character experiencing this doesn't mean anything other than there MAY BE a "hill" to peak on the skill. Farther experimentation required.[*]As expected, the number of casts resulting in nothing reduced significantly as the skill increased. This resulted in substantially less time needed to use up the bait.[/list:u]

Hypothesis:
There are 3 "tiers" to fishing and the skill acts as a sliding scale moving up the tiers. Tier one (the lowest) is the various "nothing" results including lost bait. Tier two is the "junk" (MAY include fish scales since it would make sense but the data doesn't support it). Tier three is the various "fresh fish" equivalencies, for most zones this is just "fresh fish" (MAY include fish scales; data suggests so). Tier 3 also includes zone specific but in a slightly different way. When the tier is determined by the skill and the RNG, a second roll is made to determine what specific result comes up. For tiers 1 and 2 its likely to be a straight roll with all options having an equal chance. Tier 3 seems to have sub-tables with an uneven chance: as an example, 1-66 (out of 100) is zone "common" (Cabilis & Firiona would have the fetid bass on the normal list for example) and 67-100 is zone "rare. THEN the specific result is determined. SO, the first roll determines what tier is chosen from. If the results are tier 1 or 2, a second roll determines what the text and item results are. If tier 3 comes up, the second roll determines whether the results are zone common or zone rare and a third roll determines what the item result is. The only time skill enters into this is on the first roll.

Foraging, I believe, works the same way but without tier 2. There are to major reasons for my belief: 1) My experience with foraging seems to agree (I don't have data, just personal observation). Other peoples' observations seem to agree. 2) Okam's razor (or the law of simplicity); the results seem to be similar between fishing and foraging as do the options so it is likely that the same system is used rather than making a separate one resulting in more work, more complexity, and more places for problems to occur.

(I was raise by a scientist and have a love it myself, its hard for me to present this type of infomation any other way; I'll loose track of where I am. )

[Catranizi]

I have an iksar monk as a main and a alt druid... druid maxed at 200, iksar capped at 50. I should put them in DL and see what happens... Of course, foraging with Iksars is so fun.