Resource Gathering

BlackLotusDragon

In this week's community update Elyssia covers resource gathering ToA-style:

Hello to you all, ToA Fans! It’s Elyssia again, with this week’s Community Update article! I want to announce a quick change in terminology before we begin. It has been decreed by the powers that be that we will no longer refer to flawless resources as flawless. Now instead, those special resources that are needed to craft Legendary items are to be referred to as “Perfect”.

With that out of the way, onto this week’s topic: Resource Gathering!

Imagine for a moment the day ToA launches. Chaos will certainly ensue and reign for several hours, if not days or weeks. But at some point, human characters will need to brave the wilds of TerVarus for no other reason than to harvest resources. Without resources, the human population would slowly starve to death and industry would halt. Knowing this, the humble resource gatherers could be called the backbone of the human race.

So what kind of stuff can be gathered? Just about anything you can imagine! Food would be an obvious one; fruit and nuts from trees, various tubers from plants, and meat from animals. From trees you can also gather sap, lumber, and bark. From all plants you will be able to gather leaves, roots, stems, seeds, and flowers, provided the plant in question produces them. Since all the plants on TerVarus will be placed there via the Dynamic Spawning system, almost all of them will be available for harvest.

That being said, some plants will regrow faster than others. Trees will take a relatively long amount of game time to grow to a useful size compared to say, a dandelion. You will want to be responsible in your gathering, for once all of a resource has been gathered from a spawning node, the node will die and the resource will be gone from the area. There are not currently any plans to allow players to regenerate a lost or dwindling resource, so take care!

Settlements will be able to set permissions for who may gather what within the boundaries of their territory. Gathering resources within the boundaries without permission is considered poaching. This might deter some gatherers, but if a resource is rare enough a settlement could risk losing the resource to other players’ greed if they do not work to protect their territory.

Many skills are involved in the gathering of resources from the flora, fauna, and ground of TerVarus. Improving these skills increases the character’s chance of successfully gathering the resource they are after without damaging it. You can increase your gathering skills by gathering challenging resources. Once you unlock Legendary in a skill, you will have a chance to gather Perfect versions of resources.

While many resources require a skill to gather properly, some resources do not. For example, gathering sand from a beach might require a bucket, but there won’t be any related skill. Same goes for dirt and water. This also means that there won’t be any way to gather Perfect versions of these resources. But don’t fret! Since Perfect versions won’t be obtainable, they won’t be required for Legendary items. Instead it will likely just require the very best quality than can be made, so you future glazers can relax.

Tools are an important aspect of gathering resources, but not always a required one. When you right-click something you wish to gather from, your selection ring will appear and allow you to choose what you wish to gather from your target. If your target is a tree then you can gather fruit with your hands, but would require something sharp to gather bark or a container of a sort to gather sap. You do not have to equip a tool to use it; it’s enough just to have it in your inventory.

In most instances of resource gathering, a variety of tools can get the job done with varying degrees of success. For example, the best way to skin an animal is to have a skinning knife in your inventory. But if you don’t have one, a dagger or small blade would be a good second choice. You could even make due with a sword if you were in a pinch!

To gather resources from under the surface, you will need a mine. Mines are special buildings that allow access to an underground area through a portal. Mines can be built on private land, which make them the property of the land owner, or in the wild. Access into and construction of mines operate similarly to any other building (blueprints, permissions, locks, etc).

Once you enter your mineshaft via the portal, you will be presented with a massive wall of dirt, stone, and minerals. To get at the “good” stuff, you’ll have to dig EVERYTHING out. As your mine grows, you will have to use the Shoring skill to keep your mine from collapsing on you. Since a mine is like any other building, other players can enter it and help you with it, either hauling away materials, shoring your walls, holding the torch so you can see what you’re doing, or even protecting you from anything unpleasant you might uncover through your digging.

Mining in mineshafts is hands-down the most dangerous of the gathering skills, but it comes with its own rewards via the quantity and quality of the resources. In addition to unpleasant discoveries, miners have to keep their mines in good repair or risk collapse. Even the best maintained mines can also collapse if they’re left unattended too long or become depleted. Once a mine reaches the conditions to collapse, a timer begins and the occupants inside are given warnings through cues such as falling pebbles, shaking ground, and other clear indicators. Failure to observe these warnings and escape in time will result in the death of the character and likely the loss of their inventory as well.

That’s all I have to share with you for today. For more information on resources, be sure to check out the Resource Gathering section of The Guide.