So!

I've been doing a lot of gathering lately in my quest of getting all classes up to 20 while we wait for S-E to figure out party SP and the SP curve. Originally while fishing, and later through the chopping of hundreds of trees, I have formulated a theory on how gathering classes work. Let me try to explain it as best as I can, because if I'm correct, it could prove to be very handy for gathering classes.

Part 1:

Each node only offers 4 items. From my limited testing, it seems as if a node will only ever offer 4 items.

Part 2:

Nodes belong to "groups". That is, a certain zone will have multiple nodes that offer the exact same 4 items.

Part 3:

Within the node, the 4 items will always be "Right There" at the same notch every time. Furthermore, once I made the connection, it would seem as if even when an item belongs to more than one "group", it'll still be located at the same notch.

Combined:

Hopefully that's not too confusing. If you've done gathering since the latest patch, hopefully most of that made sense. Basically what I did was I took a screenshot of the immediate area surrounding bearded rock. And as I gathered from trees, I marked the location of the tree on the map with a number and kept track of the items I got from them.

At first I just wanted to keep track of what items I got from what trees (as I had made that connection earlier), but I soon realized that when I found the right "notch" for a Willow log on one tree, if I found another tree that dropped Willow Logs, then I could use the same notch for better success.

Below are two pictures. The first is of all the trees I I found during my testing. And the second picture is my gathering results.

How to read it:

You'll see the data isn't complete by any means. It's hard when you can't easily get back to the same tree now. But I'm pretty confident with my results. The > and >>'s represent the notches you can pick before you start the tree cutting mini-game. The >> is the center notch. If an item has () around it, then that means that it is considered the precise "Right There" spot for that item. If there are no parenthesis, then that means the item is most likely in one of those spots, but I didn't get to finish testing on that tree before I ran out of tries before I went to bed, so it's simply the narrowed-down results.

I'd be curious to see anyone wouldn't mind testing to see if they receive similar results. Either go to bearded rock and test my results, or just keep track of their own gathering. I would expect mining to basically be identical. Fishing is different, since bait matters, but similar principles apply.

Thoughts/suggestions? If it ends up being true, then I think it'd be an awesome way of targeting harder items, like Zinc, Silver Sand, Maple Sap and things like that.

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So they changed it to work like this after the patch, right? I haven't mined since then, but when I was mining I'd never get the same item by mining the same spot on the same node.

The below may be completely out of date because I haven't mined since the patch:

Assuming they didn't change this either, it's handy to tell people that you're allowed to harvest a node again after you harvest your third node. If you know what nodes are up, and you know where they are, you don't have to listen to what your scan ability says. Lets say you harvest Node 1, then move on to Node 2, then go do Node 3. After finishing Node 3, Node 1 will become active again for you. Your scan ability will likely tell you to go elsewhere, but if you return to Node 1 after finishing Node 3 it'll let you harvest it again.

This means you can make yourself a "triangle" of gathering nodes that are dropping items that you want, providing they are up. Unfortunately, eventually one of those nodes will "collapse" and this will force you to make up a new path. But it's still very handy to realise this is how it works. Combined with the above information, we can get some very efficient gathering going on.

I was able to get three mining levels and 3/4's mining levels (14-17 3/4) in absolutly no time yesterday. it seems that regardless of item, there are only two spots in the circle that will produce successful results unless the item is a raw gem. raw gem's are easily determined by the amount of stamina your attempt bar has to start, very low lol.

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I'll have to try that, this is handy to know.

Also I'm pretty sure that your botany level affects how many times you can gather at each node.

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Retired 8/21/06
Don't click this link.

Ket, I know about the 3 node cycling, and that still works just fine. The problem is that trees "collapse" now, too. I was most interested in willow logs, so I ran down to the willow trees every three attempts to see if they were up, but usually I had to wait an extra tree, or two.

Either way, if my theory is correct, it'd be pretty awesome to always know what items you'll get, and where to target them in terms of the notch/mine equivalent of the notch.

All that being said, I could notch a tree perfectly for Willow Logs and still end up getting different items every time. Gotta love S-E's Random Number generator. Generally that's not the case, though. Once I found this out, I was usually able to get like up to 8 of the desired item each attempt at a tree.

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So I wanted to touch base with this topic again, because I find it quite interesting and super useful. I have a bit more information...

I've currently done the following gathering:

Grid:
Grade-1 Mining.

Ul'dah:
Grade-1 Fishing.

Limsa Lominsa:
Grade-1 Mining/Harvesting.
Grade-2 Mining.

In that admittingly limited amount of grinding, I can confirm a few things.

1. Nomatter the zone or grade, a Copper ore will always be "Right There" at the exact same notch.

2. The same node will always offer the same times (Generally 4-5 different times)

3. S-E loves their random number generators, so even if you use 1 and 2 above to perfectly target an item, you can blow all your 5-7 attempts and still not get what you're looking for.

So what I've been doing now is this. For fishing, mining and harvesting, I have a chart that shows the 11 different notches and notch to target for each item. A different chart for each of the three classes, just to avoid clutter.

Just going off of memory alone, here's an example of mining notches and items.



Again, those are just the ones that I remember off the top of my head. The important thing to keep in mind is that even from going from Grid grade-1 nodes to LL grade-2 leves, the notch location remained in the exact same spot.

So as I mine/Harvest, I basically just keep track of what items I get from a node, as well as finding the perfect notch for any new items I come across.

If we get enough data for this, it could be a great resource for targetting items that you desire. Again, the random number generator ultimately randomizes the hell out of everything, but in theory, if you target the exact notch for the item you want, you should get more of that item than you would just randomly targetting wherever.

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