General Foraging tips and maneater bud

[Eggborn]

I am an Iksar trying to raise my tailoring skill. I have a couple of alts who can forage--a ranger, 47, forages at 127, and 28 druid, forages in the 140's.

Any tricks to foraging stuff better? Are there particular spots in zones where things are foraged, or is it zonewide random? with some things like pods of water and roots being more common. Does zoning in and out or moving or casting do anything to help get that rare forage if you are on a string of bad luck? I see people post they do these things.. do they really help? or just superstition? Like I swear I get more tealeaves in NK after it rains.

I have the ranger parked in the Swamp of No Hope for Maneater buds. UGh! so rare, at least the plants there can drop them. I tend to spend my time just tracking plants and killing them to get a better rate. I have no wonders when I see them in the bazaar for over 500 each! Anyone ever see them other than this zone? According to the database no.

Honey berries with my druid can be very plentyful or non-exsistent for hours in a row. Not sure why. The only real safe spot (and not safe if people run from skellies in the combine city) is the succor point in the Lost Valley section of the Dreadlands.

I have never done the autoforrage thing, is it illegal? I see people saying it is, and some who say it isn't.

Anyone else ever hunt for these items, and have any advise? Certainly dont take my Iksar at 50 forage skill to get them!

[Kemie Dreamshadow]

I'm sure the devs would tell you it ain't so, but I used to forage extensively for items for my tailoring, especially things like morning dew and oak bark for wood elf cultural. The RNG can be ugly. There seemed almost to be a cycle involved (both with those and the dreaded excellent sabertooth hides dropping in LOIO) wherein some nights I'd go for hours and get almost zilch, while others I'd score a stack within a relatively short time.

I can't remember if the buds are tradeable. The honey berries, however, can often be found on merchants in FV, so I would suggest that you do check those periodically.

Kemie Dreamshadow, Lanys

[Silound]

Aye Honey Berries are a common drop off drolvargs and more rare drop off Drachnids in Dreadlands. I leveled my wizard there from 40-51 and collected a few stacks doing so. Foraged them relatively often as well. All this was fighting around north wall. Buds, well I foraged one of those once, I think it was in SoNH on my way to Trak's Teeth. I have no clue about those, however let me offer you this idea:

Anyone can do the dyes, therefore I suggest not focusing all your efforts on Iksar dyes. There are others that whose components are far more common. Odds are you can find large quantities of already made ribbons in the bazaar for less than cost. Thus I would scout your bazaar for racial ribbons already made. If you can afford them (if they exist), then I would suggest buying them up and avoiding the loss of time from making your own. Make the more common dyes and ribbons and sell those or vendor them to speed past to the 187 mark. Then use bazaar purchased ribbons for cultral stuff.

If you can't afford that option, then I suggest you bind left and/or right to Forage and run around killing the mobs you say drop the buds (or the ones I suggested that drop berries). YOu can level, forage, and kill farm all at once.

[Veremar]

Foraging machette

There is a quest for an item called a foraging machette that will increase your chance to forage rares etc.
I do not have the quest in front of me but this is the result of it. I remember the quest was to forage 4 items in different zones and combine in a bag obtained in Katta.


Foraging Machette
LORE ITEM
Slot: PRIMARY SECONDARY
Skill: 1H Slashing Atk Delay: 32
DMG: 5 Dmg Bonus: 15
Skill Mod: Forage +10%
WT: 4.5 Size: MEDIUM
Class: RNG DRU BRD
Race: HUM ELF HEF HFL VAH
Slot 1, Type 4

[Tweedledea]

I've never seen any evidence that the machete increases your chance of getting rare forages... but if you are a race that can't get forage high enough to get an item every click, it will increase the number of successful forages. That I believe. I used to have a machete and never noticed a difference.

If anything has been confirmed about this I'd love to see it. Otherwise as far as I'm concerned it's just the luck of the draw.

Anyway. Maneater buds=awful forage rate. The other junk foraged in the swamp makes it a real pain. I have done a /feedback to say that Hopeless Willow Moss is TOO COMMON. Seriously, there can't be that many low level iksar warriors doing the quest. I suggest if the rate bothers you, feedback it too, because it is a truly awful item to acquire.

[Kaaba]

There is no flag for "rare" forage. Your foraging skill determines whether you forage something from the table for that zone, or nothing at all. It's probably a sliding percentage, like foraging skill / 200 = % chance of foraging something. So if you have a druid or ranger with maxed foraging skill, the machete does nothing for you. If you haven't maxed your skill, it can improve your chances of foraging something, or if you are a class or race with a lower foraging cap.

[ChaseFV]

If anything has been confirmed about this I'd love to see it.

Ishibara (I think?) did some extremely detailed work both with and without the foraging machette and determined that it does not have any effect on what is foraged. I believe if you hop in the wayback machine and search through the general tradeskills forum for "foraging", you should find links to the tables that were put together showing the results. Sorry for being too lazy to look it up myself.

Edit: I lied. It was killing me not knowing. It was Hibashira. And while this isn't the original post, it does contain useful links (or did when it was created, I am *definitely* too lazy to check to see if they still work) regarding foraging frequency. Really old foraging thread