Goblin Squad Member
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There has been a lot of discussion that 'gathering is broken' and 'I can't find what I'm looking for' here on these boards.
I have tried to gather (pun intended) some hard data for gathering in a hex. I tried to keep the data as clean as possible. Here is the set-up of the experiment.
Gatherer: Thod - dwarf, level 7 in doswer, forrester, scavenger and miner.
Thod uses Pot Steel Plate, Great Sword and Longbow - he has no skills to increase his carrying capacity
I only gathered in a single hex - directly south of Emerald Lodge.
I used a hex that I assumed should be around 100% full
I timed how long it took to gather (stop watch on my phone)
I gathered until I got encumbered. At that stage I stopped the clock, dropped all resources on a character waiting at the nearby tower and tried to get back to the place I was before I started to be encumbered
I tried to avoid fighting to ensure time was used for moving and gathering
I did run when possible
I used stealth when I felt a node was too close to monsters
I tried to make a note for each node gathered
I harvested every node I could see to ensure I'm not preferring certain nodes
Total time gathering: 53 minutes
Total raw materials gathered: 298
Total nodes 91 (33 plants, 30 scap heaps, 28 sparks)
Total times reaching encumbrance 5
Time to reach encumbrance 4-15 minutes
Total fights 9
I found a total of 14 different resources:
Raw Tier Type Total
Perfect Jade 2 Mitten 7
Potent Brimstone 1 Mitten 46
Rich Lodestone 2 Mitten 7
Smooth Animal Pelt 1 Mitten 5
Smooth Creature Pelt 2 Mitten 9
Superior Cotton 2 Mitten 1
True Iron Ore 1 Mitten 21
Potent Neversleep Sap 1 Plant 6
Potent Tansy Leaves 1 Plant 45
Potent Yellowcap Mushrooms 2 Plant 7
Smooth Maple Sapling 2 Plant 42
Smooth Yew Sapling 1 Plant 26
Uncanny Anagogic Essence 2 Spark 38
Uncanny Esoteric Essence 1 Spark 38
Here are the raw numbers for all 5 individual gathering parts
Total Time 14 28 37 41 53
Perfect Jade 4 2 0 1 0
Potent Brimstone 12 13 6 7 8
Rich Lodestone 1 4 1 0 1
Smooth Animal Pelt 0 0 0 1 4
Smooth Creature Pelt 0 1 4 2 2
Superior Cotton 1 0 0 0 0
True Iron Ore 4 6 7 1 3
Potent Neversleep Sap 1 2 0 1 2
Potent Tansy Leaves 17 8 5 2 13
Potent Yellowcap Mushrooms 2 2 2 0 1
Smooth Maple Sapling 15 14 2 3 8
Smooth Yew Sapling 9 4 3 2 8
Uncanny Anagogic Essence 9 12 4 6 7
Uncanny Esoteric Essence 17 12 0 4 5
Total 92 80 34 30 62
Summary and remarks
I managed to gather 298 resources in 53 minutes. This is quite decent. I don't think you should be able to gather much faster than that.
Encumbrance was an issue - it took on average just 10 minutes to become encumbered. Off cource you have to take into account that I was using the worst possible option - heavy armor, greatsword and bow (the latter which I didn't use at all)
I tried to avoid fighting - but a lot of resources were close to monsters. So despite using stealth (a few times) I triggered a total of 9 encounters. One of them was responsible to be overloaded after <5 minutes as I got some armour weighing 7 as well as a staff for another 2 encumbrance.
Being attacked 9 times means that 'going naked' is not a good idea. This was a hex with monsters at 100%. I could have avoided most of these - but then I would have been much slower or would have left some nodes not harvested. Also keep in mind that you (eventually) will lose some of your harvested good when husks come into play.
Going heavy armor is no good idea either as you are overloaded too quickly.
I will return to encumbrance and what it means for gathering later. All in all I gathered around 60 units of encumbrance in 53 minutes. This was wooded area. The items loading you down are:
Ore (iron, lodestone) and wood (yew and maple). Without these there wouldn't be an issue.
Resource distribution:
Assuming a total of 10000 raw materials in this hex I generate the following numbers:
Raw Score Daily
Perfect Jade 235 78
Potent Brimstone 1544 515
Rich Lodestone 235 78
Smooth Animal Pelt 168 56
Smooth Creature Pelt 302 101
Superior Cotton 34 11
True Iron Ore 705 235
Potent Neversleep Sap 201 67
Potent Tansy Leaves 1510 503
Potent Yellowcap Mushrooms 235 78
Smooth Maple Sapling 1409 470
Smooth Yew Sapling 872 291
Uncanny Anagogic Essence 1275 425
Uncanny Esoteric Essence 1275 425
10000 should be approximately right as Lee showed an NPC hex with 9009 resources. A non NPC hex should have more resources - but some of them look more valuable - so I decided to scale it with 10000.
The daily number is how much you can harvest per day without ruining the hex. This number assumes a growth of 1% each 15 minues, scaled by the current amount of resources left (so 0.8% growth for an 80% intact hex). These numbers can plummet if you over harvest. But that would be a thread on it's own.
It means the hex sustains around 10 hours of harvesting per day without ill effect. This can be 10 hours by a single harvester or 10 harvesters with 1 hour each.
Targeted harvesting:
The only resources you can truly target are resources above 10% of all resources. These are the 2 different kinds of essence, maple, tansy leaves and brimstone - and maybe iron and yew at 7% and 9%.
Rare resources are a hit and miss - for example smooth animal pelts. I didn't find a single one in the first 37 minutes (first three parts of harvesting), then I found a single one and then I suddenly found 4 in 12 minutes.
Targeting such rare resources will be frustating if this is all you need.
To get these resources you either need to know a hex where they are much more abundant - or you need to collect them over a longer time or you need to trade them.
Targeted harvesting is dangerous if you deplete some resources quicker if you only go for mitten heaps for example. A single hex might only sustain 3 hours of such harvesting before slowly running out.
This experiment was deliberately done in a hex that I assumed to be 'healthy'. It is possible some hexes are not healthy - I'm happy to investigate this if someone points me to such a hex. Ideally not too far from Emerald Lodge.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A few more bits:
How did I determine the amount of resources you can harvest per day in a hex?
Well - the formula for growth is %left * 1% max = growth
This means if 50% of a resource is left, then you will get 0.5% growth (on average !!) every 15 minutes. I say average as you either have 0% or you have 1%.
This means a hex at 40% (rounded) of resources takes 92 15 minute intervals which is 1 day (assuming 1 hour downtime. So you 'could' harvest up to 60% - but to be on the save side I assume 1/3 of resources is safe to harvest.
Now this is 1/3 of what is available !! So 1/3 of a full hex - no issue. 1/3 of a hex at 10% is a lot less. 1/3 of a hex at 1% - and you are in deep trouble.
It take 1 day with 0 harvesting !! to recover from 40%, 2 days to recover from 16%, 3 days from 6.4%, 4 days from 2.6%, 5 days from 1%. But off course how likely is it that if you gathered down to below 1% that you suddenly stop completely for 5 days??
I would say - unlikely ...
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've now also done the same experiment in a plains hex.
The differences to the wood hex:
I didn't fight a single time. Some of this might be attributed to being more cautious (I dislike hell hounds) - but part of it is that you better see all enemies and can better judge distance.
This is the difference of relying on the minimap (wood) or relying on actual spotting everyone.
I did have a roughly 1:1:1 distribution of sparks/mittens/plants. In the plains it was 2:1:1 (45%/29%/26% to be exact - off course this doesn't include an error bar - but sparks are significantly more common in this hex).
In the woods I did manage 3.8 raw material / node plants, 3.2 / node mittens and 2.7 per node sparks. I assumed that was because of skill 80/80/65 (I'm a dwarf - not good in dowsing).
In the plains it was 2.85:3.08:3.05 - so plants suddenly were worst ... Seems not only skill is important but also if what you find is tier 1 or 2.
In the woods 60% of plants found were tier 1. In the plains only around 12% were tier 1. At the same time in the woods 50% was tier 1 while in the plains 60% was tier 1.
This also is a hex that would discourage a low level gatherer - at least the plant nodes. 12% of resources found = tier 1 means a lot of nodes with nothing to find unless you are level 7 or higher.
I also only managed 9 different raw materials in this hex.
Speed of gathering: It seemed faster - but in the end I gathered around 1.9 nodes per minute compared to 1.7 in the woods. In regard to raw materials it was 5.8 vs 5.6 - so not really any difference at all.
What was different a lot was encumbrance. Wool was the only medium weight item (0.25 / wool) while everything else was light (0.04) and nothing was heavy (0.5). This means I only gathered around 20 encumbrance in 48 minutes (279 raw materials).
So unless you carry heavy armor you could gather here for an hour without having to drop anything / become encumbered.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Do you have the raw data / distribution for how many items per node?
3.2 items per midden with skill 80 is significantly higher than my latest calculated 2.9 items per midden with skill 76 (including armor bonus). Different hex with different materials (lots of wool and quicksilver) might explain much of the difference - or it might be that one extra rank of training just is that much better.
I get 2 items only in 75-80% of the nodes, but in the rest i get 4,6,8 or 10 items (never seen odd number, never seen more than 10).
Is your higher average due to more of the 'good nodes', or because they are even better?
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Goblin Squad Member
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@randomwalker
I might not have enough data yet.
Mitten from 3 different hexes:
a) 96 in 30 = 3.2
b) 74 in 24 = 3.08
c) 46 in 17 = 2.71
Keep in mind that just a single 10 instead of 2 makes a difference of 0.27 for a) and more for b and c. It is also possible I just forgot to make a tickmark once or twice.
How do you get skill 76?? What armor bonus for gathering ??
My 80 is level 7 +10 for being dwarf.
I've now done a third hex and numbers look similar enough to possibly be identical with one before - but might be slightly different. So won't pool them.
What I can say now is that one resource makes a huge difference where you look for it as I got 12%, 10% and 2% overall in the three hexes. So while you can find it in all three it makes only sense to look for it in two of them.
Awesome stuff, Thod. If I ever get back into the game before EE, I'll have to play with some of this, myself.
On your comment about light armor not being recommended, I have run around plenty in my +2 peasants clothes with little to risk to myself. It is just a matter of, as you said, guaging proximity to baddies (and not getting too greedy).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Diego
I agree with trading. This is an issue of critical mass. We need EE to reach enough players - and I know it will be more difficult for Europe. But given enough players and a way to communicate this should sort out itself.
This leaves transport. Raw items (not inferior quality or salvage) fall into 3 weight categories. Assuming 30 encumbrance free to transport this results in
0.5 -> 60
0.25 -> 120
0.04 -> 750
Lets start at the bottom - herbs and essence can be transported in large quantities across the whole map. There should be enough profit to carry 750 of anything around the whole map.
The medium weight items are more difficult. But 120 is still good enough to carry to the closest settlement (not counting your own). This weight are hides and wool. It also should be possible to lower the weight by processing it.
The heavy items are where issues start. You certainly don't want to carry these anywhere far. This applies for wood and ore.
I need to check weights for processed wood. This might be the solution. What becomes an issue is iron / coal. Here you need both to process it and possibly to lower the weight.
This could be a major issue for the Southeast (Brighthaven) as they are furthest away from lots of coal. Not sure how much coal they can find in trash heaps around.
I'm actually quite happy with the location of Emerald Lodge. Nothing is really too far away. At least nothing which I miss so far.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Awesome stuff, Thod. If I ever get back into the game before EE, I'll have to play with some of this, myself.
On your comment about light armor not being recommended, I have run around plenty in my +2 peasants clothes with little to risk to myself. It is just a matter of, as you said, guaging proximity to baddies (and not getting too greedy).
Spitfire
I only didn't recommend
a) heavy armour because of carrying capacity
b) no armour as you might get into a fight
and I should add
c) being overloaded because it means you can't run away
Actually in the last hex I got killed twice. Yes - too greedy and being zapped by hellhounds and fire clerics and then killed again when I spawned next to another group.
I have been inactive for a while - as there seemed not much sensible to be done ahead of EE. Just back to check out that this all works fine and gathering some more accurate information around Emerald Lodge before the game actually begins.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In the older builds it was possible to gather enough coal for some production, the problem is more the northern woods (at least from point of view, as I am a wizard and need pine for staves and wands).
I don't know if something has changed with alpha 14 or 15 as I haven't really played them so far.
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Actually in the last hex I got killed twice. Yes - too greedy and being zapped by hellhounds and fire clerics and then killed again when I spawned next to another group.
One of the things I love about my Peasants Clothes +2 is that, once paired up with Guide 5, I have 6 Resistance to Fire and Cold. Add on Water or Fire domain as my feature, and Shamans, Razmirans, and Molochs are suddenly a lot less scary. Of course, I still ahve to run like hell before the melee troops and archers get me....
And then there is the +9 to encumbrance while wearing an item that only weighs 1 Enc. Love it!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Does the coal come to the iron or the iron to the coal?
Cold iron can be processed without coal. No transport needed. But you need a higher skill to do so. I would need to pour over other recipes.
Dwarven steel needs Lorestone and iron. So here the coal travels.
Silver if I remember often come with coal together - so from memory it makes sense iron travels.
Back when the nodes were not wrking properly and I was getting my iron from the mountains south of Forgeholm, I was also getting equal amounts of silver. That seems to go against the stated assumption of coal and silver being a pair. I've also found hexes that drop both coal AND iron in their middens.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@spitfire
coal and silver was from memory - I might be wrong.
edit:
Actucally I looked in the (pretty empty) spreadsheet that was started to list what to find where. I found at least 1 hex coal and silver in a highland but quite a few with iron/silver in mountains.
:end edit
About coal and iron - yes - these middens do exist. The latest hex I prospected had one such node. The question I don't know - do hexes exist with an economic amount of both.
What do I mean by economic amount?
The hex I just describe got me 31 coal from 20 midden nodes. That is on average 1.5 coal per midden (level 7 / skill 80 scavenger).
The same 20 midden nodes produced a single iron. The hex therefore is a economic source of coal - albeit of course inferior to highland hexes - but it is uneconomical as iron source.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Lee
I did a few more hexes. Let me know if you want my raw data in spreadsheet format. Don't want to detail every hex around Emerald Lodge to everyone.
A hex takes me at least an hour - not just the gathering - but also book keeping. Ideally I try to look at >30 nodes of each. I'm not fully there yet.
Just doing some sobering math ...
The chances to miss a rare ingredient that is only 1% available of total resources in a hex (100 out of 10000)
150 recources collected -> 20%
300 resources collected -> 5%
This is the moonstone in the example where you posted values (100/9009).
Well - I should be sure to find everything with at least 5% occurence and need to revisit some hexes where I gathered <200 resources.