Improving Mining, Logging, and Harvesting

Mining, Logging, and Harvesting is probably one of the biggest things in Final Fantasy XI that strikes me as needing vast improvements.

Right now, Mining, Logging, and Harvesting is almost 100% a waste of time. You can take 5+ stacks of tools to an area to try to get something specific, and blow them all and have less than 10 as a result, even while wearing the appropriate clothes.

The time spent vs reward gained is nowhere near reasonable. It takes hours to hunt down these nodes you can gather from, you end up with worthless items and you break far too many tools.

So, to improve this....

1). Let's create 2 new guilds: Mining, Harvesting. Mining would cover both Mining and Excavation while Harvesting would cover Logging and Harvesting both.

2). Add Mining and Harvesting skill to the craft skill window, and have the crafts skill up in a manner close to Fishing.

3). Each zone would have its own Mining/Harvesting skill caps. For example, Mining in Palborough Mines should give you skill until, perhaps Lv10, while mining in Ifrit's Cauldron should give you skill until Level 70-80 and perhaps places like Halvung would go the rest of the way up to 100.

4). Your skill should determine the items you get. If you are low in skill, you would get results similar to the way they are today -- lots of pebbles, copper ore, etc.

5). If you meet the requirements, and if you are in the right zone, you get the "better" results more often as you skill up. For example, if you go to Ifrit's Cauldron at Lv0, you'll get nothing but pebbles and copper ore. If you go back there at Lv50, you might get a few Iron, Silver, etc. Go back there at Lv70-80, whatever it caps at, and you'll get the higher stuff like Gold, Mythril, and rarely Platinum.

6). If you want lower level ore, go to lower-level areas. If you are a Lv100 and you want Iron, then you'd go to Gusgen Mines for example.

7). Get rid of the consumable tools, and make new tools: 5 for every 20 levels. The first tool that you use, perhaps a bronze one, would limit skill to Lv20. If you are Lv25 using a Bronze Pickaxe, you are limited to Lv20 Mining Skill. Despite the fact you are Lv25, you will mine as though you are Lv20. These new tools would not break. Perhaps something like Bronze (1-20), Iron (21-40), Mythril (41-60), Darksteel (61-80), and Adamantite (81-100).

8). Using a higher level tool should not impose any negative effects on you. If you use an Adamantite Pickaxe at Lv10, it should work just fine.

9). Spawns in some areas should be increased. A family member recently went to Fort Karugo-Narugo to try for Dragon Fruit, but she wound up with two fruits in over three hours of work and 4 stacks of axes, a lot of that time was spent aimlessly running around between known spawn areas looking for a logging point.