Forage Frustration

[jujumon]

Sigh.

I am dealing with that same demon that I have seen so many others battle in the forums. And yet I cannot find a solution for this. It's track materials. I purchased the skills for "track resource deposit" and "ammo jacket specialization" 2 weeks ago. After foraging from then until now, trying out new stanzas for better mats, longer range, and wandering all over the Matis lands I STILL cannot get that goddam skill to work.

SOMETIMES it will work. I will use it and I will land on an ammo jacket, yay! SOMETIMES it will tell me that there is a resource within 1-2 m, and there will be nothing around that is an ammo jacket. And I swear to god, NOTHING. Amber, yes, wood nodes, yes, seeds, yes. Lining, no.

I have had a high lvl forager help me in one particular instance. I tracked using:
-prospection plan
-100 m tracking
-ammo jacket specialization
-lvl 5 focus credit

It said I had found the resource. I stood still on that spot. She then walked all around me prospecting at long range with high angle, nothing. It never said anything about "resources exist, but are too high to find". It never said anything about "resources are not available at this time". Just found other crap a ways out ( at least 10 meters ) which was certainly not lining.

I have been told I am not doing it right, well WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING WRONG? I tried swapping in the fine or choice stanzas, no change. I tried tracking at 50, 100 and 200 m. I prospected all over that damn spot with her help.

It's not that big a deal tho, right? Why don't I just move on? So that spot doesn't work, mark it as a dud. Maybe give up on finding lining. Maybe give up on crafting. Maybe give up on wearing armor. I suppose I have run out of patience here, but when I spend 2 weeks tinkering with a skill that as I understand it isn't *Broken* but delivers to me results that don't always work, I just don't know what I can do. Toss a coin, and hope for the best? It's this kind of helpless feeling that just isn't fun. I'm not progressing, I'm not learning, I'm just walking in circles.

Now I'm not really even sure what I'm trying to say anymore but... what should I do? Is there just some little trick I'm missing? If I spent two WEEKS on this tracking crap without getting a definite working state out of it, am I just not cut out for harvesting? For this game even? I'm confused. Let me know if there is any wisdom you'd like to share.

Juein

[kamagi]

come back in 6 months time when the game is working thats what I am going to do - expressing frustrations here is not a good idea from my experience.

[dpkdpk]

SOMETIMES it will work. I will use it and I will land on an ammo jacket, yay! SOMETIMES it will tell me that there is a resource within 1-2 m, and there will be nothing around that is an ammo jacket. And I swear to god, NOTHING. Amber, yes, wood nodes, yes, seeds, yes. Lining, no.

Juein

I wonder if you're finding other resources "on top" of the ammo jackets, and you have to deplete them before you get there.

I noticed when I tracked choice materials, it brought me to an area full of basics. On a hunch, I did what I could to destroy them (drop the heart bar) and after destroying 2 (I think it was 2, took a while), I was able to reach a choice material source.

[ixils]

I have been thinking about this a lot. As a database administrator in my life away from Ryzom I started thinking of it as a model.

This also works with plain old tracking... 100 meter etc.

So.. if we think of the model... the entity is probably a 'resource'. That comprises a number of 'nodes'. A node is either active (alive) or inactive (dead) - but it remains and will respawn.

I think that the tracking is looking for the node without distinction between alive ones or dead ones.

The final question is ... is this by design or a bug. I do not really know. When asking a GM they will tell you that it is dependent on weather - season - etc. This leads me to think that it is by design.

So... following my own train of thought. I use the tracking this way. First of all I move along a straight line between two points. I pick a town and head out along that line so I can get a count of how many meters I have traveled.

I use resource tracking and if I get a hit I search it out. After the countdown I prospect and if I do not find it, I can most often know that there are other nodes in that general area. And I harvest there as I am not at the point (level 59) to be using specific search (have not purchased yet).

For you... search it out. If it is not there, proceed along your path 50 meters and try again. If at any point you do find a node, then I think we can say that I may be correct in my assumptions.

I still use it when I am out and about with a group and there is downtime to see if I can identify other 'resource' fields that might not be well known.

So far this has kept my interest alive.

I hope this helps

Atanna

[oloriun]

I wonder if you're finding other resources "on top" of the ammo jackets, and you have to deplete them before you get there.

I noticed when I tracked choice materials, it brought me to an area full of basics. On a hunch, I did what I could to destroy them (drop the heart bar) and after destroying 2 (I think it was 2, took a while), I was able to reach a choice material source.

No you didn't, choice bricks dont find choice, they find upto choice.... so chances are the tracker picked up basic, nothing to do with destroying sources to find other things. Dropping the heartbeat gives you the chance of destroying things in the area as well, so I wouldnt do that if I were you.

[dpkdpk]

No you didn't, choice bricks dont find choice, they find upto choice.... so chances are the tracker picked up basic, nothing to do with destroying sources to find other things. Dropping the heartbeat gives you the chance of destroying things in the area as well, so I wouldnt do that if I were you.

Hmm, maybe. Is there a definitive guide on this from the developers? All I know is what I did seemed to work. I'll try it some more. I know it sucks to destroy sources, but without the aforementioned guide I don't know what else to do exactly. Not that I don't trust what I read on forums... but... I don't know how to end this sentence.

If the tracker tracked basic, what's the point of having a choice tracker? Shouldn't it just then be called "track everything" once you get up to Excellent/Supreme(or whatever the max is)?

[wayas]

ok, i havent tried the specific mat specialiation but i wouldent be suprised if your just extracting the wrong source. i know myself when i search for exellent mats and so many times extracting basic insted and it wasent until i began to see the visual clues a couple of days ago that i noticed how many sorces can be next to eachother...

say that you track a source and it says: soruce in 1m, end of tracking.
then you might have up to 5-6 sources at one 1m distance...

then again i might be wrong, prove me.

[bfox3]

I had the exact same experience with this today, and finally just petitioned it as a bug, because i spent two hours on one spot trying to use specific item deposit tracking. The way the GM explained it to me was that if the desired mat was not in range, the tracking would just take you to the next closest mat. I accepted this explanation, because i did find another mat (sap) in the vicinity where the tracking told me i had found blade mats. At the time I didn't think about the fact that sometimes you get the message "No specified materials are present in the area" which should never come up if the action just takes you to the closest mat when the desired one isnt there. Instead, you should either get "No raw materials were found in the area" OR it should just take you to the nearest deposit. There would be no need for the "no specified materials" statement.

Anyway, I come to find later that not even 40 m away there is a huge area of basic and fine shells! If the skill were working, it should have taken me there. Specific item deposit tracking is definitely, without a doubt broken, not working as intended. It is easily the most frustrating aspect of any game I have ever played. Hell I nearly cancelled my account over it before I decided to petition the GM.

However, if it is intended to work the way the GM described, it shouldn't be. Specific item deposit tracking should track ONLY the item in question, none other for any reason. The only time you should ever get the message "Deposit within 1m, end of prospection" is when you are within 1m of the mat you are looking for, period. Basic, Fine, whatever, but it better be that mat.

[dpi209]

I must admit, I don't have any mat prospection specialisations, and I don't think that will ever change. Because from the description they seem to be usable from time to time, but they certainly aren't urgently needed. Might be that I like it the long way where I could take a short cut, but I find it enjoyable to run out and search for raws. Nothing specific, only have a look where the next deposit is and what's in there. Searching for a way to get past the aggro mobs unharmed.

Sometimes I do harvest for specific mats - just had a small delivery of seed and amber to a jeweler. Know what? I just went to one of the spots I know and filled up my bags.

Prospecting with Knowledge might be interesting, it certainly is important, and I do not only refer to the skill....

Edit: I know that my answer doesn't really address the problem. It's more meant to be a "don't let the head hang down, mate, you don't need to".

[vguerin]

I am a harvesting geek as most know, I am not really sure why this great skill gives so many folks fits. It's one of the few changes they made from FBT I actually like. The most common problem my guild folks were having with this is similar to what I have seen discussed in this thread. I will steal some graphics from my harvest guide and try to explain it a bit more as I use it:



This is a pretty standard tracker stanza, 50m - Supreme mats capable - 6 second prospect - 100 Focus. This will find any material type within 100m, from basic to supreme... whatever is closest. But most everyone seems to have the problem with find specific materials, so I will focus on that.


If you want to really find things you have to get serious and pump up the volume. In this example I am looking for "Clothes", up to Supreme that can be as far as 200m away. Adding forest specialization helps and adding a quicker search because I am using the "450" focus credit. Note the actual "focus consumed" is only 250. Do not be afraid to use your credits as they dont truly use 450 or whatever.

Now, this stanza WILL find the closest clothes source within 200m of my position. Now I just have to safely track it to the proper location to have my tracker shut itself down. This will put me within 1-2 meters away, most EVERYONE (even in this thread) talks now about using full power in every direction, WHY ? You have tracked it to within 2 m, the "range" skill is a bit odd in that it seems to search at the distance you have set and not so much where your standing. ALSO, have a seperate stanza just for finding the specific material you searched for. Add these things together and you should have a stanza that is similar to this:


Notice that range is set to one and I am looking specifically for the material I tracked here. Any other mats in the area will not be found, only the "clothes". I am not looking at max range because I already know I am within 2m... This has NEVER failed me...

Click here to join Melinoe
Ultimate Harvesting Guide