Gathering

In order to upgrade equipment in the forge, the player must first gather the materials. While many materials can be collected from looting enemies, the best way to get the resource(s) you're looking for is to go out and gather them.

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## Getting Started with Gathering

The first thing you will need to do is to figure out which resource it is you want, as you can only equip the tools required for one resource at a time, although you can carry multiple tools with you in your inventory, you can't change your equipped items while gathering. To see what materials you require, open the Forge interface when in Starr Village, and place the item you want to upgrade into the slot, this will then show the resources needed.

Once you know what it is you want to go out and gather, you will need the appropriate tools for the job. All the tier 1 tools can be bought from the Village shop. It is still possible to successfully gather without the right tool, but only at a 5% success chance so it is not recommended. These tools are as follows:

* Woodcutters Axe for Wood
* Mining Pick for Ore
* Fiber Sickle for Fiber
* Stonecutting Hammer for Stone
* Hunting Bow and Knife for Leather

Each of these tools, at their base rarity, will provide a flat 55% bonus to gathering, with higher rarities increasing that by an additional 5% per rarity level so a maximum of 75% (including the base 5% chance) at Epic rarity.

As well as tools, it is also recommended to equip the corresponding outfits, as these will increase the chance of the right node spawning for you, as well as providing extra Flee Chance should enemies appear. The clothes all follow the same naming convention as the tools and are also available from the Village Shop.

Once you know what you're looking for and have the equipment, you'll need to find where it is that the material can be found, as not all materials can be found in all biomes.

Leather is the odd one out when it comes to materials as it is not tied to any specific biomes, instead it is found after defeating Starr Beasts enemies in combat, while having a Hunting Bow and Knife equipped. As a result, leather can be one of the tougher materials to get, especially at the higher tiers where the enemies will hit fairly hard.

So, you know the what and the where, now for the how. Gathering is, in principle, fairly similar to normal adventuring in that you head to the tile you want to gather from and then wait for the event to pop up. While gathering nodes do appear during standard adventuring, you can greatly increase the chance of nodes appearing and reduce the number of enemies by entering Gathering Mode. This is done at the top centre of the screen press pressing the gathering button, as shown to the right.

The next step is when a node appears like the one below from a Tier 2 forest. There is quite a lot of information here pertaining to the situation.

Ultimately, this is quite a passive process, the grey bars in the middle represent how many chances you have at getting 1 material. The percentage shows your chance of succeeding and will vary depending on the tool, tier, rarity and certain skills. While the icon simply shows the tier and type of material. Each node is individual to the player, when playing in a group, other group members may encounter enemies at the same time as the player encountering a gathering node. If the gatherer completes a node before the groups combat is over then they will be entered into the fight and can help as normal.

Leather nodes will not appear in the same way as other materials, instead, a player must defeat animals in regular combat with the Hunting Bow and Knife and then a node will appear with the number of materials on offer depending on the number and rarity of the animals defeated. For optimal leather gathering, it is recommended to do this in a group, to increase spawn rates of enemies and defeat them faster.

Your character will automatically attempt to gather each node at a speed determined by your Attack Speed stat, this can also be affected by a number of skills. Upon completion of all the nodes, success or fail, you will receive any materials gathering in a standard loot window, requiring you to be present and accept the loot. It should be mentioned that you gain experience towards gathering regardless of whether you accept the loot or not, so it can be worthwhile to be AFK gathering if you are trying to increase your skills.

## Improving your Gathering

When first starting out, you will only be able to use Tier 1 tools, which mostly restricts you to gathering Tier 1 materials (as mentioned previously, it is possible to gather any resource without tools, albeit very poorly). In order to use higher tier tools, and more effectively gather higher tier materials, you will need to improve your associated skills much like with other types of equipment.

You gain experience towards gathering skills with successful gather attempts while using the right tool, success without the right tool or with no tool at all will not reward any experience.

Certain classes offer a 50% bonus to gathering experience gain as well as increasing the max level of the skills. These are Hunter for Hunting Mastery and Prospector for all other gathering skills. The classes also offer abilities can can help to speed up the process as well as increase success chances. It should be noted that only your most recently selected class will apply its corresponding experience bonuses to the player.