How long is this foraging timer I've heard about? And what will be the best thing for my learning? Foraging for something I find all the time, foraging for something I have to work at a while to find, or foraging for something I never get? Foraging seems like a really hard skill to work.... anyway, thanks for all the great replies to my previous posts, and thanks in advance for helping me on this one.

Kardlo Brownfeather, Halfling Smokist

Fish! Fish like mad! And sell them for vast profits... Its great.

-Korsobar

hehe.. I fish when ever I'm on a boat
and I can get foragign to very muddles.. and its so much more fun then foraging corn all day..

Falk, still trying to get his name of the fish record board

I already posted this in the empath folders, because so many have been wondering about how to learn foraging lately, but I figured some of you young rangers may find it useful. A lot of the information has probably already been covered in this topic, but it can't hurt. Feel free to come find me east of Riverhaven if you would like help figuring any of it out.

Tsarenzi



How to Learn Foraging

The basic procedure I've found for learning foraging well is to create a list of items that are about at your level and challenge you. Then, you go through the list from start to finish, foraging each item carefully, if you can. Unfortunately, this method is only available to Rangers and Empaths, so all other guilds should forage normally or collect the item. Then once you've reached the end of the list, go back to the beginning and repeat it. You probably won't be above pondering after the first time through, so you will probably have to repeat the list several times to get to the level of learning you want. I'll detail how to create a good list further down.

A very important thing to remember is that you need to find the items to learn well from it. If you don't find the item, you pretty much don't learn. To be foraging at your best so you can find things that challenge you, there are a number of things you can do.
-The simplest thing is position. Kneeling is the best position to be in while foraging and it actually does make a big difference.
- Another thing is wounds. This is nearly impossible for empaths, but foraging when completely free of wounds will make a large difference. When this isn't possible, hand and eye wounds affect your foraging the most, so get rid of them first.
- Similiarly, wearing armor while foraging makes it much harder to do, especially hand and eye protection. Removing all armor is ideal, but gloves and helms should be the first to go.
- Also, watch out for burden. If you keep your burden low, you will have better luck foraging. However, wearing body armor seems to affect foraging more negatively than does the extra burden from putting it in your backpack.
- Location matters a lot. If an herb does not grow there, you will not be able to find it there. You will find that in some rooms there is practically nothing worth foraging for. Other rooms have a lot.
- Still more conditions are beyond your control. Foraging at nighttime, in bad weather, and during the winter will all be significantly harder. Some herbs are even not findable at all during the winter season, and possibly other seasons.

Creating Your List:
The ideal list has six to ten items that challenge you. More is better, but not at the stake of putting in extra items that shouldn't really be there. It is also significantly harder to find items for your list at lower ranks, as it is for those in guilds who cannot forage carefully. (Those in guilds that cannot forage carefully may want to just try out a list that a ranger or empath of approximately the same rank created. Lists seem to translate decently between guilds.) Below I'll list steps for finding items to put on your list, and then a few sample lists I've made that seem to work.

Note: Once you have enough items on your list, you can stop going through these steps. The best ones are at the top. Also, while you should put yourself in a state in which you'll do your best foraging, do not accept any outside help. If you do not have the wolf scent spell, creating your list with it cast on you may mean that you have to hunt down someone with the spell to cast it on you every time you want to practice foraging, just to find some of the items. Therefore, it's a much better idea to only use what you personally can do for yourself.

1. Find a general area to forage in and figure out what you can forage there. I've found http://www.olwydd.org/herbs/index.php to be a good website for finding where foragables are located. Some lists may work in multiple places, usually another place of the same climate as the place you design the list for, but as location has a big impact, you should design your list for the area you want to practice foraging.

2. Go through the items you can find in the room, trying to forage each one carefully. Any item that takes more than 10 seconds to forage carefully should be on your list. Items that take 15 seconds are ideal.

3. Try to collect items, putting any that that give you a roundtime of more than 30 seconds to find on your list. Also, any items that you can forage carefully, but cannot collect should be on your list.

4. Collect a pile of something you find very easy to forage. Count the number of items in the pile. Add any items of which you collected a pile of fewer of than are in this 'easy pile' to the list. (Example: You can collect a pile of grass with six tufts of grass in it. If you can only create a pile of five nemoih roots, put nemoih roots on your list.)

5. Finally, add any items which you can forage, but not every time you try to your list. Note that these should be items you may not always find even when in your best state, not that you can forage it when you're healthy, but not with a missing hand.


Now a few sample lists for various ranks. The ones for lower ranks are less ideal than higher ranks, and the best luck I've had using options besides foraging carefully has been getting the mind up to muddled. These lists were all designed for the road northeastwards out the East Gate of Riverhaven.

My personal list: ebony stick, elm stick, oak stick, willow stick, ebony limb, elm limb, oak limb, willow limb. I have approximately 140 ranks in foraging, and an empath with about 125 ranks also found my list to work quite well for her. I can lock my mind in approximately 7 minutes by repeating this list.

For a ranger of about 80 ranks: ash stick, birch stick, fir stick, spruce stick, ash limb, birch limb, fir limb, spruce limb. He got to perplexed after about three run throughs of the list.

For a ranger of about 40 ranks: jadice flower, stem, georin grass, limb, log, vine, weed, red flower, blue flower. I don't know how well it taught him, but he seemed happy with it, as was a non-ranger of approximately 35 ranks.

For an empath of about 10 ranks: berries, branch, wood chip, bread crumb, grass, leaf, rock, stick, twig, dirt. She had problems learning as well as the above but the percents seemed to go by, so it's probably more a result of learning so quick at these ranks than the list being inapproriate. A young bard of about the same rank tried the list as well, and could not collect berries or dirt, but otherwise had about the luck with learning, if not quite as good.


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>I knew you were smart Tsarenzi ;p . Right now I can go from clear to ML (at 66 ranks forage and 18 in all mentals)foraging the same thing carefully in three sets of twenty, just pausing to cast compost after each set. So thats basically in ten minutes. Have been foraging the same item carefully since about 44 lessons in foraging and thats tree roots.

Off a wall I'm locking in 2 - 2.5 sets of the same routine using oak sticks, ebony limbs or ebony sticks or old buttons, with foraging now at 178. Funny thing I seem to be noticing is old buttons which take 5 more seconds per forage seem to move perception better than sticks. So while I take longer to get foraging ML I end up learning more perception as a payback.

I suspect you could drop your number of sets by finding a harder item you can forage carefully.

Arrys

<<<Does changing items really make that big of a difference? I mean as in using a list of 6 as you are suggesting. Just asking because I have noticed that it is about time for me to move up from tree roots.>>>

I found this a rather interesting question, so I did some experiments, and yes, the number of items makes a significant difference. I started out with a full list of ten hard enough items, and cleared my mind of all foraging learning with a favor orb. Then I foraged through the list repeatedly for a full five minutes. After that, I cleared my mind again and repeated with 9 items, and so on, all the way down to only 1 item. After each 5 minute session, checked to see how well I was learning, and here are the results:

Foraging: 142 17% bewildering (10 items)
Foraging: 142 19% bewildering (9 items)
Foraging: 142 20% bewildering (8 items)
Foraging: 142 21% perplexed (7 items)
Foraging: 142 21% perplexed (6 items)
Foraging: 142 22% perplexing (5 items)
Foraging: 142 22% perplexing (4 items)
Foraging: 142 23% perplexing (3 items)
Foraging: 142 24% very muddled (2 items)
Foraging: 142 24% muddled (1 item)

After that, I also checked once to see how adding in items that are too easy affected learning. I created a list of five hard enough items and one extra easy item (a rock) and repeated the experiment. The result was: Foraging: 142 32% perplexing (5 items + 1 easy item). So, it appears you either don't gain any benefit from adding in the extra item, or it actually hurts your learning. May do more experiments on the topic later, but I think this is enough for now.

Hope this helps you figure out how you want to create your own list. Again, feel free to quiz me incessantly on anything you still need help with about it. I love questions!

Tsarenzi

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Thanks for the info. That is good stuff. The problem for me is finding the room where I can forage 10 items.


Ranger Aeclydis
~ Order of the Crystal Wolf
~ Langenfirth, Therengia

I actually did a little dance when I found it there myself!
Now if I could just find it on Aesry...




>Lucerella stares intently at a crust-covered ironwood chest, making sure it doesn't escape.

Yeah on aesry on the southeast side of town I found it in one of the housing areas.

Still searching for the root in Zoluren proper however. Closest I've found is sothern therengia along the North Road below crocs. If anyone knows of a supply closer to crossing I'ld apreciate hearing of it.

Think I've searched everywhere cept leth side, ogres and crossing possibly missing a few small areas like old bellirendiks manor etc which I'll be stopping by as I remember them.

Arthe garden seems to have resupplied many herbs since the last adjustment report. It's got 90% of what you need around crossing.

Midtown circle in crossing is also a good spot for several herbs.

Arrys

>Actually, that's not too far if you run the trail. I used to run the trail, swim to Haven, and stock up there, bringing some extra to donate to the young empaths.

Yeah, but when your a lt in the zoluren military facing a war situation with velmix's tower there and the gorbesh fort fallen you can't assume you will retain access to such, and you certainly can't have an empath collect it for the effort once hostilities really heat up assuming the Baron doesn't get upset of zolurenites taking therengian herbs.

But yeah step off the trail forage yelith and go home does make it pretty easy for rangers.

Looking at env factors room descriptions I think goblin area should be coded similarly but maybe it's to dry cause no luck there.

Arrys

Don't forget 'too cluttered' and 'Your raccoon scampers off,' for your matches. Also, although I haven't closely examined your unloading system, but could you save space by making your %1 be the 'dump' container or ground?

Zenayda


You wanted suggestions here, right? ~fidgets

;)

I went from the other end, with four line scripts and then studied what other people were doing to get more complex. I would never be brave enough to actually post one of mine, so you are miles ahead of me. That said, I do enjoy my variables.

Zenayda

.for "in that sleeping paladin's backpack" rock dirt feather branch strawberry toadstool

>>but could you save space by making your %1 be the 'dump' container or ground?

If you do that, make sure you use these lines:

save %1
shift

... and put a %s (%s contains whatever you put there with SAVE ... in the Wizard, make sure to enclose any multi-word text in quotes, just like using multi-word parameters) instead of %1 where you put the container. You can only call the first 9 parameters using %1-%9 and the whole line using %0, but the parameter line is capable of holding a very large number of paramters, I have used as many as 50 and I can still access them all as long as I SHIFT my way down the line to bring them into the %1-%9 range.

To see this at work, try running this little script:

# parameter test

loop:
echo * %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
shift
if_9 goto loop
exit

... and run it using this command:

.par-test 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

And see what happens. ;-)

~~~Krin
"Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati"
"Goblins ... aisle 6, Mycthengelde ... hunt smart, hunt S-Mart!"
"You whine like a mule ... you are still alive!"

OK, wasn't sure on that, my wolf isn't usually with me while I'm on a foraging binge. Would be easy enough to add one more MATCH to trap that. Like I said, not perfect, was just something I threw together quick to demonstrate some basic principles that make scripts much more compact when you use them (notice the labelError I used to simulate having an IF...THEN statment? goes even beyond that with the addition of another trick or two ... not that I care anymore, Genie has an actual IF...THEN statement that makes it SO much easier).

Would also need additional traps since sometimes you get an error message trying to drop an item using the same name you foraged it with. Wierd, but it's there.

~~~Krin
"Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati"
"Goblins ... aisle 6, Mycthengelde ... hunt smart, hunt S-Mart!"
"You whine like a mule ... you are still alive!"

Seems to be that way, Tsarenzi... I know I locked foraging finding ebony sticks for a Bardess friend of mine on Ratha without getting one myself, little Jitters Jr. found em all for me. <g>


-Treshan

* Treshan was just skinned alive and then struck down!
>Shakahn comes out of hiding.
>Shakahn picks up a trophy Treshan skin.

Different items can be found in different places. Keep in mind that wounds, weather, and time play a huge role in determining what you can forage. As well as the season.

If forage <item> careful doesn't work for you, there is another pattern I use for all of my foraging chars (read most that I have total). That is Forage (item 1) twice, collect (item 1), forage (item 2) twice, collect (item 2) and so on until I run out of items that I can forage. Then go back to the beginning.

Ryeka and the brood


Sometimes the key to happiness is not assuming it is locked in the first place- Ziggy

A journey of a thousand SMILES begins with a single step- Ziggy

Thanks, from filtering through the other help topic...didn't realize there was two heh, I think you're right about careful making it more difficult, which seems weird to me, but I can't find the original annoucement about new foraging so I dunno what the explanation of what careful and precise does was, assuming it wasn't pafo lol

I was thinking it was like disarm careful, but I guess it's not. I'll try doin the careful thing and see if it helps at all. Collect occasionally seems to yield results, but not often or consistently enough to be worth the roundtime. Did they get rid of the timers or are they still in place?

On another topic...I saw a post about there being some easier trails for youngsters, are any of them really easy trails or do you still have to have 35-50 ranks of scouting to find the first one?

Thanks much. Tried foraging for the top few things I could find careful and it definitely picked up the pace of learning. I guess I just didn't forage careful enough times to notice any change before, since I was thinking it made the forage easier instead of harder and was tryin to get more difficult items with it.

I'm kinda meh on new combat, but so far I really like most of the other changes, well except for the fact that there only seems to be around 800 players in prime time...I mean I don't miss having to squabble over hunting areas like in the really crowded days, but feels weird to see that number dip below 1000 :/

Also, as an odd survivalish thing, foraged grungy feathers can be combined an are burnable. These could make a comfortable but smelly alternative to wood fires if you really need a fire.

Each feather only has one count.


sylviir

---

Kunstrukshun
Cignichur

Hey i got a question :D

I was always told i should forage careful the hardest item i could find... so far it has been working for me but now:

forage yew stick careful

You manage to find a yew stick.
Roundtime: 23 sec.


23 seconds... does it really teach twice as much as something with 11 or 12 seconds?

Am i better off foraging something a bit easier with less RT?

What do you guys suggest? Thanks :D