Surviving on Mainland with harvesting skills only
 

I had initially created an Alt Char named Solodigger where I wanted to see how far I can go on Mainland with only one skill : harvesting. It seamed like an interesting challenge.

On Fyros Mainland, I currently have :
- Fight level 1
- Magic level 1
- Crafting level 45 (see below as to why)
- Harvesting level 104

HP = 763, Stamina = 200, Sap = 200, Focus = 1550


So far, after reaching harvesting level 104, I have come to a conclusion. Doing this goal with harvesting skills only is not enough.

Sure I can wear jewels/armors with Focus boosts. Half of the jewels I have have each 50 Focus Boosts. But that kind of item is not actively present in the NPC stores at all times. So either you wait until you can buy one or ask others to do it for you or you build them yourself.

That is the conclusion I have reached. No matter how many people out there are crafting Focus boost items, you are bound to find your self with stores that do not have them. So until you wait for them to show up, you can always ask in the Chats but again, sooner or later, none will be available when you need them. That is why, I have modified my goal to include crafting jewels with Focus Boosts that I will make myself. My playing time is not regular, nor constant. So I often meet those situations and do not want to wait around for help (unless its available right now at that moment).

As for health, you can upgrade your health through harvesting XP and/or wear items with HP Boosts. I have both.

I even created a guild of my own with this Alt Char : Solo Guild.

I admit I have used Catalysts boosts because some players offered them to me without me asking for it. Maybe that was the cause of this problem. I grew up my harvesting stanza too quickly for the normal amount of focus I should have at my current level ?

In any case, I will now build up my jewel crafting to create all my focus boosted jewels myself. I just hope I don't wind up in another situation where this is not enough to keep moving forward this goal.

So if any new players thinks they cannot survive on Mainland with Harvesting only, you can. One new player was thinking the opposite in a chat today.

Re: Surviving on Mainland with harvesting skills only
 

Cool experiment. :) Yet another piece of proof that the game can be played in many ways, not just in the way the average gamer expects.

Re: Surviving on Mainland with harvesting skills only
 

cats are not the problem, all they do is speed up character development.
You will find that no matter what you do you will never have enough focus.

I was lucky enough to find people to make focus jewels for me for free so far, and even with 55 extra focus on each plus 10 on each (q110 jewels) on the armour I craft (I have mainly hp boosts on that, q100 light armour) I run out.
Having a second toon specialising as a careplanner helps, but only goes so far as well.

And oh, you will always find yourself lagging behind in crafting next to harvesting unless you use cats only when crafting, not when harvesting.

I may try to boost my alt's crafting skills to where she can create focus jewels of a next level when I need them, but that will take a lot of work as she's currently some 90 levels behind my digging :)

Re: Surviving on Mainland with harvesting skills only
 

Not true at all.. It's a careful balance of many different factors including (but not limited to) level, danger, xp... For instance, if you're running out of focus so quick that you'd get more mats and xp using lesser stanzas in your actions then it's a waste. Going all out with the best stanzas is not always teh best option. There's quite a bit to play with and think about when digging, and much of it is not obvious.

If you can find your way to Dyron as a low level (not too hard, in comparison with trying to get to some other area's high level dig spots) then I don't think you'll have too much issue at all getting most of the way to 250.

Good luck with your experiment :)

Peace,
- Sui

Re: Surviving on Mainland with harvesting skills only
 

As much as I love Dyron (it's my home, after all) I would still recommend exploring and trying to dig Oflovak's Oasis and Frahar Towers, rather than going easy mode for 150+ levels. You seem to like a challenge. Digging Dyron is probably the least challenging forage you can do out of the 5 continents. Digging the same mats at the same spots for about 200 levels does get old.
Especially if you dig the same 2 mats in the same spots over and over. (Yay, jewel craft. :rolleyes: )

I already mastered desert, so it's too late, but if I had to do it again, I'd try to find good grind spots in the lower level regions for each of my mats. Just for variety's sake. Easyness is probably the single most boring way to go... and the fastest one to get burnt out.

If you want to get bored even faster, start in Flaming Forest. Once you've mastered dodging the aggro at the entrance ramp, you're good for 250 levels of the same spots over and over.

You can tell that what I enjoy most about digging is to find new, alternate spots where to dig that no one knows or cares about. Like the q50 zun amps mat spots that I found in Pyr strictly by using deposit tracking. I knew that BM site wouldn't tell me about basic or fine q50 mats. Why waste q250 stuff to make q50 maga amps ?

That was a silly, yet interesting challenge.

Re: Surviving on Mainland with harvesting skills only
 

This is a heck of a challenge. I salute you.

(And if you ever want to buy focus jewels, just ask me. I'll be happy to charge you a reasonable fee to keep it fair to your challenge, or perhaps I'll ask you to supply the materials.)

Also, jewel crafting without cats is madness. I know, I've done most of mine without, and I'm still well short of mastery. *cradles destroyed mouse-click-finger*

P.S. I'll second Sherk's suggestions on Desert digging - there are nice, scenic, and even safe spots to dig in OO and FT if you just take the time to look.

Re: Surviving on Mainland with harvesting skills only
 

While solodigger may be a new character, let me point out that you have an advantage many newbs don't. You already had knowledge of the land based on that of your other toons.

Re: Surviving on Mainland with harvesting skills only
 

At this point i would now suggest to truly new players to take up this challenge. Most of us older players know it can be done ( though very few have the patience to try it). I had a similar bias when i first came to mainland. Mostly due to trying to start a guild with a few other new players :)

Long story short i got lured towards elemental magic after seeing higher level players using it :)

But i still think it would be great to see a new player attempt self sufficiency(dont know if i spelled that right) on the mainland

Re: Surviving on Mainland with harvesting skills only
 

So new players are too shy to ask for good spots in the game chat ?

Anybody doing this do not need to know the land. All you have to do is ask chat questions on where and how.

Re: Surviving on Mainland with harvesting skills only
 

Apologies for my maybe-stupid question, but where is the challenge? What I mean: it's not like you risk starving or anything.....
My character has digging at double the combat skill, and this is only because at one time I decided to "grind" the combat skills and raised them, otherwise it would be 3x. But it makes no difference: if you stay in a safe area the lack of combat skills is not an handicap to survival, and if you go in dangerous areas chances are you'll be torn apart anyway, 500 HP more won't change the result, the important thing is to learn to avoid aggro, which has nothing to do with combat skills (ok, I'll grant you that extra HP may mean survival in case of source explosion, but that really should not happen).
Locating the spots where to dig is more a matter of tracking sucking horribly at what it should do, but again, if you only want to level digging then WHAT you dig is irrelevant, and finding places for random stuff is not that hard, even without ballistic's map.
You're right on the availability of equipment: I'll try to see if it's possible to dig at 100+ without any focus boost.... hmmm I have 20 mins, I'll try it now :)

Edit: you can but of course the yield is not as much as it would be with full jewels. After some quick tests, being at digging 140, I can pull out q150 mats without wearing any armor/clothing and without being forced to stop and wait for the source to expire (which means a lot of time wasted). I'm around 3-4 mats short of what I can do with full focus equipment.
Stats: focus 1650
prospection cost: 200 (you have to remove some frills, but I've kept both mat and terrain spec)
For careplan: I used my expensive one: 4+4+mat+terrain

Initial dig: S3G, R4H, Q40G, mat+terrain, execute 3 times (75 focus each)
Execute one careplan
Final dig: S2G, R4H, Q150G, mat+terrain, execute until end of source (112 focus each)
Result 7.8 @ q150.
The dig was done without self-heal after prospecting.

This was done quick without any attempt at optimizing by doing the math, so it's probably possible to do better. It should also be doable to squeeze in one more mat (going to 8) either by extending a bit the source lifetime or by doing a better work with the final dig action (there's enough focus for one more dig at the end).