Herbalism

The gathering rhythm

A harvest is a short visible cast, not an instant grab: 2.5 seconds base, never below a 1.5 second floor. Carrying a tool above the node's tier, one your proficiency lets you wield, speeds you up by 0.4 seconds per tier above it, and each proficiency band you cross trims another 0.15 seconds; merely matching the node's tier gets you in the door, it is the tiers above it that make you fast.

A full bag politely refuses the cast before it starts, so nothing is wasted mid-swing, and every harvest pays a small slice of character XP, scaled by the node's level against your own the way kill XP scales: a trivial gray node teaches a capped character nothing.

Gain is deterministic, never a skill-up roll: a node at or above your gain tier teaches a full point per harvest, and every 25 proficiency is one tier scored against the node. Tier 1 nodes pay in full below 25, half to 49, a quarter to 74, and nothing from 75 on; tier 2 nodes pay in full to 49; the two tier 3 nodes of each trade pay in full to 74 and half right up to the cap of 100.

The intended route is plain: learn on the starter nodes of the Vale, move to the marsh, and finish the climb on the high ground of Thornpeak Heights. At the cap the learning stops but the yields do not: a capped gatherer keeps rolling the best odds the trade offers forever.

Nodes by zone

Where the nodes are, their tier, the tool they need, and what they yield. Every node respawns for you 240 seconds after your own harvest, and that timer is yours alone: another gatherer working the same node never delays yours, so there is no node racing and no camping. Each zone up the ladder brings a better material out of tougher ground.

You do not have to find these by eye. Every node in the zone is drawn on the zone map wherever the map is showing that ground, and on the minimap as you pass it, so a farming loop can be planned from the map screen before you set out. A node your tools cannot work yet is marked rather than hidden: it keeps its place with a struck, dimmed mark, so you can see the ground you are training toward. On desktop, hovering a vein, stand, or patch in the world names it, tells you the tool it wants, and, once you have worked it, counts your own respawn down to the second. On touch there is nothing to hover, so the minimap marks tell the same story.

What a harvest yields

Every harvest rolls a quality for what it grants, and your proficiency is the whole story of that roll. A brand new gatherer always pulls common material; every point of skill moves weight steadily out of common into the higher grades and never backward, until at the 100 cap the common grade disappears entirely: 60 percent uncommon, 30 percent rare, 8 percent epic, and 2 percent legendary, every time.

Quality also means quantity: a common roll yields 1 unit, uncommon and rare yield 2, epic 3, and legendary 4. Any rare, epic, or legendary pull arrives as a signed instance stamped Gathered by you: at cap that is four harvests in ten carrying your name, and the provenance rules on the Crafting Economy page explain why crafters pay extra for exactly those stacks.

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

Your first node of any trade earns Fruits of the Field, and the 100 cap in Herbalism inscribes Master of the Meadow. Reaching 100 in any three gathering trades adds Master Gatherer at 25 Renown, and a moonlit bloom records its own collector's mark. Twelve zones keep a gatherer's chronicle page apiece too, filled by harvesting an ore vein, a wood stand, and an herb patch within the zone's bounds. Deeds are titles and Renown only, never power.