Ryzom

Thanks DoubleTap.

I know you and many others have been quite successful with these skills, so I am sure they are at some point functional. Given that, I also have had the same experiences described above. So lets review and see if we cannot determine where the discrepancies lie.

The problem:

I create a simple Tracking Action with 100m tracking, and Minor Blade Prospection. Thats *it*. Period. I go to somewhere I *KNOW* has shells. I back up 50m (to the edge of the radar) and run my action.

BAM! Instantly: Deposit Detected, terminating tracking.

But there are NO blade resources where I am standing. Seeds, Resin, Bark, but no blades.

I see in your plans you use Terrain Specialization and the *Major* Prospection brick. Could the problems others are seeing be tied to the Minor bricks?

Another possible issue I was wondering about is if we are seeing some bad DB data. I remeber in Beta when other materials used to be Blades. Not just Shells. Could tracking still be finding these materials as they *used* to be, not as they currently are?

Another chunk of info, I am Fyros. Just in case this might be race specific. (perhaps Desert Mats are subject to this problem while others are not)??


Tonight I will replicate your test scenario with Major Clothing and Terrain Spec. I have been hesitant to pick up other Prospection stanzas (or upgrade mine to Major) until I can determine what use they will be.

Ill report back.

I dont know where your trying to find mats, but I can come to Fyros and help you solve this problem if you like... just send me a /tell.

As of now I have these specs.


Minor skills will give lesser results, personally I dont look at them as anything but an SP sink and don't use them. That combined with their lesser skills then what I use may skew the results.


I will pop over there and use the "minor" skills to see if it's just a fluke tho.

frostbit wrote:But there are NO blade resources where I am standing. Seeds, Resin, Bark, but no blades.

From my findings (and I have done a huge amount of tracking) about 75% of the time (unless you are in PRs) if you find seeds and resin, shells will be close by. I dont know why this is, but I have found it to be true more often than not.

Personally I have not used these filters at all. I find them to be a waste of SP rightnow since all it does is saves you time and once you know where something is, you dont need this skill ever again.

jesder wrote:Personally I have not used these filters at all. I find them to be a waste of SP rightnow since all it does is saves you time and once you know where something is, you dont need this skill ever again.

me too. when i got to matis lands i ran around prospecting EVERYWHERE for about 3 hours. i covered pretty much the entire majestic garden area. all i used was prospection for choice materials. sometimes it came up with something, sometimes it didn't. i marked all the choice spots with flags saying what they were and wrote down the mat stats on a piece of paper i keep by my comp(color, strengths, weaknesses etc etc).

now, whenever i need any mat, i've got it mapped out so i can just go there and grab some. so 3 hours of surprisingly fun searching resulted in me never having to search for <q50 mats again. at lvl 60 forest harvesting i did it again for the regions above and below majestic garden although not as thurough. it's a somewhat large time sink in the beginning but it saved me a lot of time and frustration.

and to do this, all i needed was basic prospection with the quality upgrade. no tracking, no mat specific stanzas, nothing else.

later on, in the prime roots or something i might pick up some of the better tracking stanzas(i've got 100m tracking which i never use) but so far they've been totally unnecessary.

Exactly.

I agree with both of you. However, there comes a time when you need a very specific mat and perhaps your wandering survey never found it.

I am now at the point (Forage 75) where I would very much like some direction in my canvassing. I picked up a minor material filter and was very frustrated at the results, so never upgraded it or purchased others.

I plan on investigating this a little this evening...

I had tried using Tracking 50m with Minor Clothes and it was dismal. I hardly ever found any mats for clothes. I did have my prospecting set up for Minor Clothes as well, but didn't seem to make a difference. I dropped using it and haven't used Tracking since. It was easier to just prospect with a wide angle and greater distance. I suppose I need to pick up Major instead of Minor and give that a try with Tracking.

Well, I would like to say my experience was clearly a success or clearly a failure. It was neither.

As near as I can tell, Tracking is working just fine. Unfortunetely it *appears* to be working incorrectly due to the large numbers of close spawns where I have been attempting to use it.

I was having no luck surfacing nodes of the type I was tracking, but DoubleTap showed up and using his SHOTGUN of a prospecting action, found the indicated resource at each spot.

I would have to say that I think the "1m" is a little misleading. Frequently when we found the nodes they were 5-10m away and often samwiched between other nodes.

Final recommendation: If you have the extra SP and REALLY need a specific mat, pick up some specializations. Otherwise, the best methods of finding stuff are:

a) Word of Mouth
b) Wander and Sweep

frostbit wrote:I was having no luck surfacing nodes of the type I was tracking, but DoubleTap showed up and using his SHOTGUN of a prospecting action, found the indicated resource at each spot.

Basicly .. that is the best way I have found to find a source unless you know exactly where it is. Use a basic style deposit tracking (noramally I use 50m). The once I get to an area I will use a low range wide angle multi source prospect a few times and attempt to find the limits to the area. Then I will systematicly search the area till I uncover everything I can.

One thing I noticed is, If you are using a high range on your prospecting plan, it seems to like lower class sources. I have yet to figure out exactly how it picks what it will pull up but I know that range seems to have NOTHING to do with it (sometimes it will pull up sources at max range while there are many in a shorter distance).

I haven't got as much experience as many of you other folk but here are my observations.

I set up a prospecting plan with Choice Quality for Blades within 50m Tracking.

Just outside Pyr I can fire this off and get the 1m report. I step back a few meters and use an unrestricted arc search to pop the sources and something else pops. I can mine the heck out of the area and get no Blades.

Now, on the other hand. I can go to an area I know is not a source field but Blades are nearby. When I start the 50m Tracking, I can follow it to the location of the Blades where the 1m Prospect will pop them.

What I deduce from this is: If you are standing on a source field, Tracking will give you the 1m report even if your specified mat is not there. Whereas, if you are not standing on a sourcefield, Tracking works as intended.

I have a question, tangential to this... It seems to me that since, for example, Blades always come from Shells and Shells will always make Blades - is it not redundant that there are two series of specifiers ? One series for material use and one for material type ? Or am I missing something ?

bizango wrote:What I deduce from this is: If you are standing on a source field, Tracking will give you the 1m report even if your specified mat is not there. Whereas, if you are not standing on a sourcefield, Tracking works as intended.

This is in line with how the GM told me that specific deposit tracking worked: if the desired mat is not available in the area, it will take you to the next closest mat. In my view, this makes the skill worthless. It also is suspect, seeing that it has never once worked for me, not once.

However, if major blade prospection works, then fine, but why have minor at all? Just double the skill points for major and be done with it. I guarantee that people have cancelled their accounts over this skill. It's that frustrating.

I'll be interested to hear the results of Doubletap's experiment with minor blade prospection tracking.