Foraging Skill Cap?

[ruodrra]

foraging skill is capped at 200 for my lvl 53 druid. If i get a quested foraging machete that adds 10 percent to forage skill, will my effective foraging skill be 220?

There seems to be much confusion on this. In a long thread in Allakhazam message boards, and more recently on newbie zone board topic started by me -- some say no, others yes -- anyone have a definitive answer?

I had read that fishing skill level determines the chance of catching zone-specific fish (fishing capped at 200 with +5 modifier supposedly gets you more, say cod, in cobalt scar than regular 'catches' of fish, scales and sandals) and this led me to lean towards that concept applying to foraging too.

thanks

[ChaseFV]

Well, there isn't one.

The problem is, there is not a definitive answer.

My belief is this: as one progresses in foraging skill, one fails less and less often to forage *something*. At 200 foraging, you always succeed (unless of course, you've foraged a 2nd LORE forage). Therefore, increasing your foraging above 200 gains you nothing. A long time ago, you used to have to have a foraging skill above 100 to have a chance to forage zone-specific items (aka rare forages). About a year ago, that was changed, such that anyone of any foraging skill level would have a chance to get a zone-specific forage. This leads me to hold to the belief that increased foraging skill only affects your likelihood of a successful forage, and has no bearing on what you forage.

I don't think we've ever asked the development team about this one. It may be time to ask them.

Hope that helps,

[ruodrra]

I guess that since foraging isn't a real 'trade skill' like fishing maybe the same rules don't apply. It struck me reading your post that it's the only skill you DON'T get a 5 percent failure chance in even when skill is maxxed. Even so, my logic keeps screaming that it makes sense to get rarer stuff as skill goes up. Of course, if everything in EQ were based on logic and made sense....

Thanks for the very informative post. I may just get the machete for the heck of it.

BTW, love your drop down in your sig!

[DeegerStormcrow]

This might answer your question...
http://mboards.eqtraders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2637&highlight=

[ruodrra]

thank you very much for this information...i thought i did a thorough search on the boards for previous info but i obviously missed this. Certainly doesn't seem worth while to get the machete...especially if it lengthens foraging time without providing much help.

Maybe SOE will read this and make changes to foraging skill so that higher foraging skill and machete give better chance for rare forages -- it certainly SEEMS like it should work like that.

[Troodon]

Basically it seems foraging machete is only signifcantly useful if your foraging is significantly below 200. So if you're a bard, or a druid/ranger with low foraging skill, go for it. I'd get it if I could use it, sadly it's usable by characters that get foraging by virtue of their class (bards, rangers, druids) not race (iksar and wood elves).

There are no skill restricted forages anymore. However, there are some class restricted forages; certain items can only ever be foraged by druids or rangers(mainly applies to quest items for these classes; druid epic requires a few foraged items that non-druids will never forage), other foragers will simply have this removed from the table on a succesful forage.

Basically foraging now works like fishing. First, based on your skill, it is decided whether or not you succesgully foraging anything, then if it decides you succeed, randomly picks an itme off the forage table based on set rarities of the items. So a 50 forager has just as good a chance getting a rare forage as a 200 forager on a succesful forage. Difference is the 200 forager will succesfully forage more often.

Should expermientally test this some time, hehe, though a 50 forager will take much longer to get the same representative sample. I do know with my 50 foraging I have received many rare forages on ocassion, such as the Firiona Rose and branch of planar oak. So skill restricitons on what you can forage seem to no longer exist. Foraging skill seems to only affect how often you succesfully forage, not what you get when you do.