Farming

Working the beds

The loop is short. Buy seeds and compost from the farmer beside the beds: Jessica in Eastbrook stocks the Vale pair, the Fenbridge farmer the marsh pair, Hollis on the Highwatch terraces the mountain crops, and Verbena the Evergarden parterre. A high-tier harvest also hands back a seed or two of its own, any seed changes hands on the World Market, and the mountain and parterre seeds now turn up in endgame drops and on the Heroic Quartermaster's counter besides, so the farmer beside the beds is the way in rather than the only way. Sow with a hoe in your bags, and tip the odds if you like: compost from the counter and the farmer's watch, paid in produce as you plant, each raise a crop's chance of coming through, an alchemist's growth tonic gives the harvest a shot at a larger yield, and once your skill has climbed a full band past a crop's tier that crop never fails at all. Then walk away. The bed keeps growing while you are logged out, a ripe crop waits as long as you leave it, and the Harvest Journal (Shift+K by default, or the Farming row of your professions window) lists every bed you have planted with its timer.

A crop that fails leaves withered husks in place of produce, and any farmer trades husks for compost, so a bad season buys the next one's insurance. What you bring in feeds more than your own recipes: the produce cooks into the farm dishes at the kitchens, and it now goes into Cook Marlow's own trainer ladder and into the apothecary's elixirs besides, so a farmer has a buyer from the very first rung. And the garden no longer stops at the trainer ladder: the terrace crops season the raid's own role plates and every apex flask, and the Evergarden beds feed the two skill-125 capstone stations, so the last rung of both crafts is bought from a farmer too. Marlow's wheat and rice orders take Vale Wheat and Marsh Rice off your hands for coin on the same clock as every other work order.

The scribe's desk buys from the beds too: the rung-50 Sunpetal Scroll takes a Frost Gourd off the Highwatch terraces, the same gourd the Elixir of the Serpent takes, which prices the two routes to that buff even.

From the beds to the table

The kitchens are where a season pays forward. Beyond the everyday farm dishes, each crop tier has a richer dish that leaves you Well Fed: finish the meal and a lasting boon stays with you, the kind of edge a group wants eaten before the dungeon door. Only one Well Fed effect at a time: a newer meal replaces it. Crowning the set is the Harvest Feast, a spread a cook sets out in the world itself: everyone at hand takes a serving of their own, one each, and every finished meal pays the same Well Fed boon, so one farmer's season can set the table for a whole party. The top of that ladder, the two richest dishes and the feast itself, leans on the mountain and parterre crops, whose seeds the farmers beside those beds sell. The recipes are another matter: the upper rungs of the farm ladder are no longer taught at any counter, and are found in the endgame or bought with Heroic Marks like every other endgame recipe. The dish ladder itself is Cooking's work: the Cooking page carries every rung.

Luck keeps a place at that table too. Every harvest you bring in rolls the same windfall chance the other gathering trades enjoy, and now and then a crop comes up golden: the yield lands far past a normal pull, something extra comes up with it (a seed for finer ground than you are working, or now and then one of those endgame recipes), the whole zone hears the find announced by name, and Golden Harvest is recorded in your Book of Deeds.

The farming rhythm

Planting is the short visible cast: 2 seconds flat at every rung, because a hoe opens ground rather than buying speed. Pulling a ripe crop is instant. There is no cast to interrupt and no bag check to refuse it, and a bed that has come ready waits as long as you leave it, so a full pack costs a farmer nothing but the walk to empty it.

What a harvest pays is produce and farming proficiency. Unlike a vein, it grants no character XP at all, so the beds are a trade to work rather than a way to level.

What a harvest teaches

Gain is deterministic and keyed to your own counter rather than to the crop: 0.25 proficiency a harvest below 25, 0.125 below 50, 0.063 below 75, and 0.031 the rest of the way to the cap of 100. It is never a skill-up roll, so the climb is exactly as long as the arithmetic makes it.

What the crop tier decides is how far a bed can carry you. A tier 1 crop teaches to 50 and grays there, a tier 2 crop to 75, and tier 3 and above to the cap, so moving up the beds is what keeps the counter moving at all.

What a harvest yields

A bed pays picks rather than a graded pull. Every plot starts with a floor of 3 lives, and each pick rolls a chance not to spend one: 15 percent at a fresh counter and 50 percent at the cap, which works out at roughly three and a half picks at the start and six at the end.

Quality rides those same picks instead of replacing them. Each pick has a 2 percent chance at a fresh counter, 10 percent at the cap, of coming up as the crop the bed grew in its fine grade rather than its plain one, so a fine pick upgrades a pick and never adds one. There is no common-to-legendary ladder on a bed: a crop mints its own two grades and nothing else.

Two things add picks outright, and both land at the plain grade. An alchemist's growth tonic, armed when you plant, pays 2 more picks on a 50 percent chance, and a slotted quantity effect adds 1, which is the cap farming puts on a Maker's Charm so the tonic keeps a reason to exist. A charged Artisan's Eye works on quality instead, adding 10 percentage points to every fine roll.

Tools

Every node needs its trade's tool in your bags, tier 1 included: no pick, no ore, and no pole, no fish. The vendor ladder covers tiers 1 to 3 across the three heartland hubs: the tier-1 tool is sold at all three, the rungs above it where the ground that uses them begins (Fenbridge adds tier 2, Highwatch tier 3), and the younger settlements beyond them stock no tools at all, so kit up before you travel. Farming buys elsewhere: its tier-1 hoe is stocked by the farmer who keeps the first allotment (she stands at the Eastbrook allotments, not at any tool counter), and no hoe rung above it is sold for coin anywhere. Every counter sells every rung it stocks freely, and any tool passes by direct trade; every rung also lists on the Market and travels by mail except the four 20-copper land starters (the Copper Mining Pick, the Handaxe, the Gathering Sickle and the Garden Hoe): those are bought at a counter or passed hand to hand, and never sold back, mailed, or listed. What is gated is the wielding. A land tool above tier 1 works only once your proficiency in its own trade has earned it, 40 for tier 2, 70 for tier 3, and 85 for tier 4 and 100 for tier 5, and the vendor row, the tooltip, and the table below all name the requirement up front. Until then a tool bought ahead simply waits in your bags, opening no ground, buying no speed, and minting no fine grades, then wields the moment your counter touches its number. Fishing rods are the one exception: no rod carries a wield requirement, and Trader Wilkes in Eastbrook deliberately stocks the tier 2 and tier 3 rods for anglers buying ahead. A tool never occupies an equip slot and never wears out, so each is a one-time purchase, and only the tier matters to the gate: a rarer tool of the same tier opens nothing extra. Rarity is not only colour, though. It makes a slotted tool effect last longer, and on a rod it widens the reel window.

A better tool buys three things, not two. It opens higher-tier ground, it shortens the cast, and it improves what comes out: work a vein with a tool ranked ABOVE the zone's own material and the harvest yields the fine grade of it instead of the plain one. The vein has to be one of the zone's full-grade ones, so the easier veins a zone keeps for travellers still yield the ordinary material. Fine materials are what the crafted tool recipes consume, and a fine grade counts as its ordinary version anywhere a recipe or a work order asks for one, so upgrading never strands you: it just means your copper ore arrives as Fine Copper Ore.

Above the vendor ladder the three node trades each have two crafted tools, tier 4 and tier 5, made at the toolworks (every character knows those two recipes; the skill that climbs for the work is Engineering's), or bought with Delve Marks at the Drowned Litany counter once its clears gates are met: the table below carries the Marks price and the clears each rung asks. No merchant ever sells them for coin. Farming's ladder is the long one: every hoe above the 20-copper starter is crafted, tiers 2 through 5, all four taught by the toolmaker rather than known from the start, and the top two rungs are also stocked at that same Marks counter. Fishing has three of its own, and they are learned rather than known from the start too: the toolmaker teaches the tier 4 Stormreel and the tier 5 Tidewrought, and the tier 6 Clockreel is built from a schematic instead; the Stormreel and the Tidewrought are also stocked at that same Marks counter, behind the same clears gates as the node tools of their tier, and the fishing page's tool table carries their Marks prices. Rods are the one ladder whose top rungs buy ACCESS on the water: every one of the three opens a catch band that skill alone can never reach, so a better rod is not comfort. For the three node trades no node today needs more than tier 3, so their tier 4 and tier 5 tools still buy speed and grade rather than access, and they will be the entry ticket when higher-tier ground arrives. Farming sits between the two: planting is what needs the hoe, so a bed of tier N asks a hoe of tier N right up to the fourth and last crop tier, and only the fifth rung opens no new ground.

Tool effects

A gathering tool has a slot in it, and a crafted charm is what goes in. A Gatherer's Cache adds a unit to what a harvest yields; an Artisan's Eye raises the grade of what it pulls up; a Maker's Charm adds two units the same way. The first two are enchanting work: Tinker Gizzel, Master of the Toolworks in Eastbrook, teaches them to enchanters who have reached 25 skill in the craft. The Maker's Charm is engineering work instead, a dropped pattern crafted at 100 skill; all three are made at his toolworks.

A freshly slotted charm carries 20 charges on a common tool and 10 more for every rarity rung above common, so the same charm slotted on an epic pick starts at 50. A charge is spent only when the charm actually changed the outcome, never on a harvest it did not improve, and a slot can be set to ask each use, so the charm waits until you say Use a Charge. Slotting a fresh charm re-mints the slot around the tool you are carrying at that moment, so it fills to what that tool can hold rather than back to some earlier high mark, and a re-slot that would change nothing at all is turned away instead of eating the charm.

Running out of charges does not destroy the charm: the tool's owner refills the slot, 10 charges for each arcane material spent, and which material it asks for follows the better of the tool you are carrying and the best tool that slot has ever been filled by, Chime Dust for a common or uncommon tool, Chime Essence for a rare one, and a Chime Shard for an epic. Leaving the good tool in the bank does not buy a cheaper refill, only a smaller one at the same price; the honest way down to a cheaper rung is to slot a fresh charm while carrying the lesser tool, which re-mints the slot there. If the slot's ceiling sits above what your current tool can fill, the refill stops where that tool stops and tells you to carry the better one. The refill costs half the materials when you are the crafter who signed the charm, and less again if you are specialized in the charm's own craft, Enchanting for a Cache or an Eye, Engineering for a Maker's Charm; anyone else pays the full rate. A refill is a short cast, like the rest of the craft family.

Proficiency bands

Proficiency bands are the shared 0/100/200 ladder over a land trade's counter: the band crossed at 100 shaves the gather cast, and the land cap makes band 1 the ceiling. Fishing keeps a ladder of its own, six rungs at 0, 100, 150 and then three more at 200. Its bands shave nothing; they select the catch tables, each with a rod to match. After that third rung the gate moves once more, to the 200 cap, and then stops: from the cap on, the rod alone decides how far the table goes. The climb is what pulls an angler to deeper water, where the better tables and the further lessons both live.

• Band 0: from 0 proficiency
• Band 1: from 100 proficiency
• Band 2: from 200 proficiency

Rare finds

Every harvest, whatever your skill, carries a 1 in 90 chance of a rare find: a pristine vein in ore, ancient heartwood in timber, a moonlit bloom among the herbs, a golden harvest from a garden bed. The find multiplies that harvest's yield 5 times over, every unit arrives signed with your name regardless of the quality rolled, and the whole zone hears about it by name. Each flavor also inscribes its own zero-Renown deed in your Book of Deeds, a collector's mark that exists purely to prove it happened to you.

An ordinary material signature stays with its units and can share a compatible stack with other gatherers and signers, so material that lands never loses its mark for lack of a matching stack. Corpse harvesting has its own jackpot arm too: about 16% of each harvested component comes up rare or better. A family with a perfect specimen to give (hide, silk, venom, claw, meat) keeps its ordinary yield plain and mints the signed specimen beside it; that distinct item still needs bag room, and if it cannot fit the ordinary yield remains but the specimen is lost. The other five, fang, cloth, tusk, horn, and gills, sign the yield itself.

Harvesting the hunt itself

Gathering does not stop at nodes. Many slain beasts can be harvested once each for hides, fangs, claws, tusks, horns, gills, silk, venom, cloth, and meat, straight from the corpse alongside its ordinary loot: whoever earned the kill, and their party if grouped, get first claim on it for a short while, then it opens to whoever gets there first. Your interact key and Take Loot take only the ordinary loot; harvesting needs a Field Kit, a cheap tool sold by quartermasters and gathering suppliers, carried rather than spent, and its own Harvest command, a brief cast rather than an instant grab. The Field Kit's harvest preference, the same picker the Professions window and a corpse's own Change option open, defaults to taking everything a body offers; naming one material and pressing Apply saves a choice to concentrate on it instead, which can earn a finer grade when doing so leaves the body's other workable materials ungathered. A chosen material the body does not carry refuses the harvest rather than falling back to the rest.

A rare or better harvest roll on a specimen-bearing family also grants a signed perfect specimen (a Pristine Hide, Pristine Silk, Pristine Venom Gland, Pristine Claw, or Prime Cut) on top of the ordinary yield, and records A Perfect Specimen in your Book of Deeds. Any character can harvest, no training required, and any gathering tool you own counts toward the premium arm, whichever trade it belongs to.

Town Focus

Every hub town keeps a Town Focus panel for visiting harvesters: stand in town, open it from beside the minimap, and spread a budget of 10 focus points across the component types you care about. Every 5 points on a component raises its harvest grade one step (two steps at most), and each point adds 10 percent to its yield; unfocused components are never made worse.

Your allocation follows your character everywhere and can be re-aimed on any later visit to town, at a pace you choose. Taking your time is free: the re-aim runs for 1 minute per point you move. Paying a little speeds it up, 15 seconds per point plus 5 copper and 1 Chime Dust per point, and paying in full makes it instant for 25 copper and 5 Chime Dust per point. Only the points you actually move are counted, so nudging a single point is cheap, and a panel you open and close unchanged costs nothing at any tier.

Deeds along the way

Farming keeps its own shelf in the Book of Deeds now. Sow It Begins marks your first planted crop, and four chronicle pages mark a first thriving harvest at each of the bed sites, from Eastbrook Vale to the Evergarden. A golden harvest records its own zero-Renown collector's mark, and proficiency in Farming counts toward Master Gatherer, earned at 100 in any three gathering trades. Every Furrow Filled gathers the whole roster onto one page: grow every crop the four gardens carry and the collection closes. The capstone above it is Harvestmaster, the trade's 100-proficiency title, and with the mountain and parterre seeds now on their farmers' counters it is a climb you can finish today. Deeds are titles and Renown only, never power.