Make Sure You Harvest in Everquest 2

Posted by Stropp on August 7, 2008

That should probably be rule numero uno in the Everquest 2 guide for noobs.

And there’s a pretty darn good reason for it too. That is, spending five plus hours harvesting in order to raise your harvesting skills is about as boring as watching chili seeds grow*.

That’s about the time it took me last night to bring all of my harvest skills to the point where I can harvest tier 4 resources. Unfortunately, when I started, my fishing and trapping skills were low at 22 and 63, while my mining, gathering and foresting were in the respectable 130s.

However, even my mining, gathering and lumberjacking skills needed some love. Ssirius the Sarnak Shadowknight has just reached 31 by doing quests in Nektulos Forest. While Nek is a treasure trove of quests and XP, it’s a dismal dreary place, especially when it’s raining. And it seems to rain all the time.

In search of nicer weather, I did some traveling to both the Enchanted Lands and Zek, both level 30 plus zones. At both locales I ran around loading up on quests — I’m almost out of space in the quest log now — and just looking around the early parts of the zone. However, when I tried to do some harvesting I was soundly rebuked.

So. I needed to improve my harvesting skills.

Tier	Min Skill Req.	Final Skill Gain
Tier 1	1	32
Tier 2	20	95
Tier 3	90	155
Tier 4	140	?
Tier 5	190	?
Tier 6	240	?
Tier 7	290 (varies)	?
Tier 8	340	?

I’ve thrown together this little table to give you an idea of what the skills are for each tier. The Final Skill Gain column is where the tier x nodes stop giving me skillups. I’m not sure what these values are after Tier 3 at this stage. I also pulled some of this data from the EQ2i wiki which states that the Tier 7 minimum requirements vary.

The EL and Zek are both Tier 4 zones, so I needed to get my minimum skill to 140. Unfortunately, my fishing was still in Tier 1, and my Trapping at Tier 2. So back to the newbie zones I went.

Fishing was relatively easy, if time consuming. I basically swam around the coast of Mok Rent looking for fish. At one and a half laps, I hit 95. At that point I dried off and went looking for nests to practice trapping. These were like looking for hens teeth. After just over an hour, the server came down with still 10 points to get. This was around 11:30pm. When it came back up, there were more nests than before and I quickly finished off.

Now it was off to Butcherblock. This was easier, but I needed to be more careful. In the newbie zone everything was gray to me. I could walk around raptors and man eating plants unhindered. In BB, it was mostly green. In any case, I ran around gathering from nodes like a madman until all of my skills were 140+. I finished of at 3:30am.

So take my caution. It’s easier to harvest as you go along. If you craft you’ll need the resources to make gear. If you don’t craft, you’ll need the rares to make cash. I ended up harvesting about ten rares in my session last night. I’m not sure if I’ll sell them on the broker or use them to make some goodies. In both cases, having your harvest skill as high as possible will help you out later. Not to mention that some quests require certain high harvesting skills.

* Watching chili seed germinate is not all that interesting until they actually appear. I recently purchased some Dorset Naga seeds from the UK, and they are beginning to grow now. They are supposedly the hottest chili in the world with a SKU rating of approximately 1,000,000. In comparison the humble Habenero is around 100,000 - 200,000 SKU. Woo Hoo!

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