Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Tradeskill Farming

    • 259 posts
    August 23, 2018 9:19 AM PDT

    A very important part of any tradeskill is gathering the materials you need to craft your items. Some items are easy to obtain where others can be quite tedious. Playing and crafting as a Cleric in P99/EQ it can be very hard to gather materials because of being a support class. I needed a class that could solo and gather the harder materials for my trade. Weeks ago, when I had gotten to this point I couldn’t decide what class I wanted to use as a playable character and a gatherer at the same time. When the final classes were revealed in the last newsletter one class caught my eye, the Summoner. As the only true pet class that will be available at release, with the Necromancer coming along sometime later, I decided that a Magician would be the perfect playable farming class for my gathering needs. Meet Ellos, my level 44 Magician.

    I have to say that having never played a Magician to this level I am having quite a bit of fun with him. For my gathering need he has surpassed my wildest dreams. Many crafting components are dropped from low level npc’s which become a kill, loot, rinse, and repeat affair. As an example, I will use a very needed component in my blacksmithing tradeskill with Shyin, leather padding. For every combine now that he performs he needs 1 leather padding. While skilling up you can imagine the number of leather paddings I am going to use to reach the higher levels. To make leather paddings you need spiderling silks and low-quality pelts. These only drop from low level animals.

    This has forced me to go “farming” in non-experience areas to gather my much-needed materials. I personally have never had a problem with farming materials. It gives me an occasional break from the experience grind and allows me to relax for a little while gathering materials. I use a combination of farming abilities.

    I occasionally farm the npc merchants in the cities. Yesterday I found 2 lava rocks which are a very rare component needed for my blacksmithing skill that someone had sold to a merchant. I farmed for 3 days at the only spot that drops these lava rocks and had only gathered 5 lava rocks. This goes back to my write up on merchant shopping and why I do it. And merchant shopping will be in Pantheon, it has been confirmed.

    I also farm the merchant/auction house area of P99/EQ, called The Tunnel. It is a great place to relax and follow the auction chat looking for the items that you need that other players have taken the time to go gather and sell. Sometimes you hit a lucky streak and can save yourself some farming time by purchasing from other players. You can also auction for yourself and ask for specific items that you require for tradeskills.

    And lastly is the main type of farming that I do, npc farming. I go out into the game world and farm the creatures and npc’s that drop the items that I need for my tradeskills. This can be from a non-experience zone where you are just looking for certain items, to a zone where you can group and adventure for experience while also gathering your much needed tradeskill materials. Either way you are always farming in one way or another for tradeskill items.

    How do you feel about Tradeskill Farming? Is it something that you do, or would do to gather your tradeskill items?

    • 168 posts
    August 23, 2018 10:13 AM PDT

    Be careful of the Summoner. If encumberance is enabled in Pantheon, it is probable that the best Summoner race to play (based on racials and stats) will also be the whimpiest. It will amount to mine 2 nodes and maybe chop 1 tree and return to the bank because if someone so much as sneezes on you, you will be slowed from excess weight.

    • 1315 posts
    August 24, 2018 7:24 AM PDT

    Fundamentally if you are farming materials you need to ask yourself why. 

    Are you farming in order to train a trade skill?

    Are you farming in order to make profit?

    Are you farming in order to enjoy playing the game?

    If you are farming in order to train a trade skill wouldn’t you rather be spending that time training the trade skill rather than mindlessly killing grey con mobs or stuffing your all to limited inventory slots with materials to drag back to the bank.  Rather than spending 4 hours farming material to craft for 15 minutes wouldn’t it be better to have the crafting process take 3 hours and maybe only an hour to collect materials or trade your finished products for another 3 hour’s worth of material?

    If you are farming for profit wouldn’t you rather have high inventory efficiency in what you are collecting?  Either the drops are fairly uncommon but take a while to consume, the materials are common but fragmented and stack to huge numbers, are rare high value optional special materials, or even more revolutionary we have list inventories and can collect dozens of small light ingredients or focus on moving specific heavy inventory materials.

    If you are farming in order to enjoy the game, are you actually enjoying killing all the mobs that the lower level characters need for experience?  Is it fun to solo for hours with no challenge?  I know its not for me.

    Basically I am of the opinion that the need to farm large quantities of materials over many hours is a design flaw of the system and needs to be reevaluated.  Make farming be about getting the rare special material that makes a basic item exception, not getting truck loads of raw commodities, unless of course you are actually driving a wagon to a mine or forest to load up with ore or timber to turn into crafting materials.

    • 29 posts
    November 9, 2018 10:43 AM PST

         I'm an old-school MMO player and I rather enjoy grinding, in fact, most would call me a masochist when it comes to grinding. I also understand that most people do not enjoy this activity even though it does serve a purpose in the overall economy of the game. The main purpose of grinding is keeping the supply and demand in check. When they say time is money that it is no different in a virtual economy. Though some grinding can be ridiculous as in many eastern MMOs such as Lineage 2, the real trick is balancing out how much your time is worth for the currency or reward. Too many Western MMO's nowadays try to eliminate grinding overall which in my opinion is a bad idea. There are ways to make grinding more interesting and involved such as events or player made contracts like in Eve online. Since Pantheon will be based around old-school MMO's, I would assume there will be a fair deal of grinding.