Tradeskill Talk: Harvesting

There's been a lot of changes in tradekills since game launch. Lakota published a very good guide to tradeskilling on the official EQ2 forums, but since then tradeskills have changed a lot, and the guide has disappeared. So I'm going to be writing a new guide, and posting it here, section by section. Todays first installment is about harvesting.

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Almost any crafting that you do will require inputs that cannot be
bought from the games vendors, but instead must be harvested from the
wild. Most, if not all, of the games outdoor, non-city zones contain
nodes from which harvests can be made, and even the Caves in Qeynos.
If, for example, you wander into Oakmyst Forest you might see a
twisted root on the ground with the name “natural garden”
or some such. Double click on it and you will begin gathering from
it. When done, there is a “virtual die roll” based on
your skill level, and if successful, you will get a food item.
Otherwise, you will find nothing.

There are five harvesting skills, Gathering, Mining, Foresting,
Trapping, and Fishing. And there are 8 kinds of nodes, ore, stone,
roots, shrubs, herbs/fungi, wood, dens, and fish. Ore nodes produce
non-precious metals, iron ore and such, that are used in making armor
and weapons, among other things. Stone produces gemstones and
precious metal, such as might be used in jewelry. Roots produce
fiber, which is useful for making cloth and basic chemicals needed
for processing other items. Shrubs produce food items. Fungi/herb
gardens produce exotic herbs and are almost exclusively used by
Alchemists. Wood produces wood, which can be refined into lumber.
Dens produce pelts and animal meat which can be used to make food
items. And finally, unsurprisingly, fish nodes will produce fish. One
thing of note is that pelts will also drop off of animals as well.

Zones in Everquest 2 are arranged by tier. Tier 1 zones have mobs
suitable for adventurers of level 1-10, tier 2 for those of level
11-20, and so on. The nodes in these zones have the same arrangement.
They will produce raw materials appropriate for crafters of the same
tier. And there will be a minimum skill requirement to harvest in
these zones. The minimum gathering skill is slightly higher than the
others, but this usually isn't a problem, since there are 3 different
nodes which gathering is useful, roots, herb/fungi, and shrubs. So
Gathering is usually the highest, anyway.

Tier	Min. Req. Skill(Harvesting)	Uncommon	Example Zone
1	0(0)	None	Oakmyst
2	20(25)	Glowing	Antonica
3	90(95)	Sparkling	Nektulos Forest
4	140(145)	Glimmering	Zek
5	190(195)	Luminous	Everfrost

Very infrequently, you will gather something very unusual from a
node. For example, from a tier 2 ore node, you might get a piece of
coral, or a silver cluster. These rare items allow the crafting of
items that are superior in quality and are highly prized. For a
complete list of all the gathers by tier, see Niami Denmother's
excellent article The
Node Knows.

One other thing drops from nodes in tiers 2 through 5. These are
the uncommon drops, which can be made into essences, which are in
turn used to add a spell or special property to a tradeskilled item.
So, for example, a sword can be given a special kind of extra damage,
a ring can be given a spell that enhances a stat, and armor can be
given a damage shield capability. Each tier has a different quality,
listed in the table above. There are multiple types of items –
flowers, gems and teeth – that can drop. So in tier 2 you
might get a Glowing Gem from an ore or stone node, a Glowing Tooth
from a den or fish node, and a Glowing Flower from a root, fungi,
shrub, or wood node. For the most part, all Glowing items can be put
to the same use.

These days, a brand new node will give up three gathers, always.
If someone has been along before you and taken only one or two of
them, then you won't get all three, but usually that doesn't happen.
Upon yielding its third item, the node will disappear, and a new node
(of a random type) will appear somewhere else in the zone.