Ryzom

I supply myself for all my crafting, I have no trouble leveling either craft trees or harvesting since I play many hours. Since harvesting is my highest skill and has been for well over a month, I have power leveled others in both forest (level 230) and prime roots (level 219) in efforts to SLOW my leveling in harvest and thus INCREASING my death penalty.

There are ways to power level folks from level 60-200 using different techniques which we do quite effectively.

As far as the focus goes a simple technique I recommend to all those in my guild (this tip hasn't made it into my guide yet) is the "free prospect". Most everyone still has old bad habits from the previous system. With this system you want to use your highest levels of "multiple sources" and "bonus time". Supplement these with any other skills you have that can make you more effective.

We can do this without skimping on skills because of the restoration of focus after a harvest. I am using a 600 focus prospecting brick, and many in our guild are using similar setups. "Free Prospecting" allows this if you use our technique. TWEAK your "self heal focus" stanza to match/exceed by 1, your prospecting stanza ONLY ! Though I have all the self heal focus skills I use ONLY level 6 to restore the 600 focus credit used in my stanza (though the stanza actually used 350 focus). This allows me to prospect (twice oftentimes) and use my "self heal" to fill my focus again and give me a full pull. By the time I have harvested my typical 2 sources my "self heal focus" stanza has reloaded and the cycle begins again.

To make this most effective you have to already be using your harvesting skills wisely. Your stanza's should be setup (regardless of your level) to harvest whatever level material you want to harvest so that your focus and the source end at about the same time. You can do this by lowering the "speed" first, "rate" last, and others as needed to stay under the focus credit you need to have your focus last thru a complete source time.

If this seems complicated it isn't, but it is very effective and basically can turn you into a harvesting machine. Non-stop, no downtime harvesting...

DoubleTap
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DT is way better than I am in harvesting, so his advise would be best on this subject IMO.

Harvest focus lost vs gained seems right to me, the only loss I have is from the Focus in the Prospecting, but I don't care about the time it takes to prospect, so I don't use that block.

What happens during my prospecting is say I loose 100 focus for my prospecting run the first time around, and I have 925 focus, when I start my harvest directly after prospecting, I am now at around 825 (give or take any regen).

When I finish my harvest, I am down to around 100 focus before I pull my 5'th item from the harvest.

When I start my second prospecting I am up around 850 focus, but since I am slow on prospecting, I get back close to 910 total focus before my prospecting hits its targets.

Then of course, I loose the 100, giving me 810 focus, loosing only 40 focus between pulls, so I can do up to 3 different prospect / pulls and hit 2 sources for up to 5 mats a source before I have to rest or loose to much focus for a full harvest at level 86 now of forest.

I wouldn't begin to try to talk you through my bricks or setup, because its probably very uneffective.

(Doubletap, Anissa was correct in her post on the DP, and I have stated that on the other thread, I screwed up on my numbers big time, and openly appologized, yes, its based on your single highest level of any skill and sub skills don't matter, Again, I am sorry to all of you whom I offended about the DP, carying it from thread to thread is ok if you want to continue to hound on my mistake,, I am SORRY.)

There are actually 3 ways I've found so far to lose focus while extracting:

1. As stated in this thread, any focus amount that you self-heal during extraction is lost at the end of the extraction.

2. If you start a second extraction while a first hasn't completed (for example, the first stops due to lack of focus, but the source timer hasn't expired), the second extraction will eventually restore your focus to the level when it started (which could be more or less zero, in the example) instead of what it was before the first extraction started.

3. If you click Drop All during an extraction, the focus isn't restored at all.

Using all gentle is a MAJOR Focus hog. If you have the focus...go for it, but under 100...you have to conserve, OR spend crafting SP for focus/regen boosts, and wear best focus jewelery you can find. OR use weaker gentle stanzas.

syneris wrote:I prospect 4 nodes (the higher the multisource stanza the longer they stay active waiting to be extracted on), use 300 focus selfheal to return focus to max (if you are prospecting with higher than a -400 credit then you are probably high enough lvl to increase the wait 10 seconds without worry ), extract a node, extract a second node (yup it's still there because of multisource 3), and repeat. By the time i finish extracting both nodes and prospect again my selfheal is ready. I've been doing this since Q100 and now still at q150.

Group Harvesting? With one extractor and one careplanner, I've noticed less mats per person and less xp per person. 2 solo using all gentle with terrain specs can get more xp and more mats in the same time. The only use for grouping i can see is powerleveling.