Gathering Classes & 'Item Fatigue'

[SeleneVenizelos]

I can understand that Botanist, Fisher and Miner are inflicted with fatigue, just like all the other classes. It has to be balanced and fair, so I don't grumble about suffering the SP penalty whilst gathering, I usually work through it. However, the more time I have been spending at Camp Dragon Head and Camp Iron Lake lately, the more I have been growing increasingly frustrated with this apparent 'item fatigue'.

I am referring to the radical descent from near perfection to drastic failure in no more than 10-15 minutes. The change is not even gradual, either. It literally is as drastic as that. At first you are gathering normally and watching both the materials and SP flooding in, when all of a sudden everything you attempt fails. I have failed Iron Chestnuts four times in a row as a Rank 36 with only one swing of the Hatchet; something that, outside of this breakdown of ability, would never happen. For the third day in a row of levelling I have had to stop, feeling rather disgruntled, because my SP / hour has halved and because the overwhelming urge to severely harm something or somebody in my vicinity has drastically risen.

Considering we are already having to deal with a 10%/20%/30%/etc cut to our hourly SP rate because of fatigue (like every other job, which is fair) it seems ludicrous and unbalanced that we now have to combat with a fatigue that essentially stops us from playing our job. And for what purpose? To limit the amount of items we can obtain? That is the only reason I can think of that may be behind this decision, which is a flawed one anyway. No other job has it's item creation hindered in this way; just gathering. Disciples of War and Magic levelling or killing low level monsters can still obtain items, even if they're getting 0 SP from fatigue. Disciples of the Hand can still synthesise to their hearts content even if they're getting 0 SP from fatigue, or it being a low level synth.

Why, then, do gatherers get hindered at the one thing they can do, which is gather things?

Were it a gradual process whereby my character descended into a slightly less success rate, it might be tolerable. But the fact that in the space of 10-15 minutes I can literally gather nothing whatsoever, at this particular location or anywhere, is drastic and unfair. I have to, quite simply, stop playing the job. The only thing my Botanist is good for in this state is throwing rocks at Star Marmots outside Ul'dah. We already succumb to fatigue, so why inflict this level of alteration on gathering jobs? You don't stop Disciples of War attacking if they've been doing it too long, or Magic from casting spells if they've been doing it too long. Why, then, does gathering get it so hard?

If I'm missing something pretty simple, please, somebody point it out. I have read around on all the community sites and have found nothing to explain what this is or how to get rid of it. I appreciate the development team is very busy turning this game around and, believe me, I greatly appreciate the changes that have been and are being brought in. However, this seemingly pointless and unbalanced aspect of the job is really killing it and making it a potential heart attack catalyst to level. Fatigue is frustrating enough, with this as well it's almost enough to give up on Botanist altogether.

Would it be possible to change this aspect to gathering jobs? As outlined above, it is horrifically frustrating and I am confident, given the scale of the difficulty change my character suddenly suffers, that this has got a lot of other gatherer's goats up too! If I'm missing something, polite pointers would be appreciated, or even tips people have found to work around this.

Levelling Botanist is hard enough. Levelling a fatigued Botanist is even harder. Levelling a Botanist that fails every attempt at gathering is just absurd.

[Wolfie]

It is one of the many stupid limitations put in this game to prevent RMT or botting, which, as per usual, ends up pissing off regular players more than anything.

[TheVedis]

10-15 minutes for it to kick in is a major exageration
it should take at least 2 hours(its based on how many times you gather) before you start seeing the initial onset of it and by the 3-4 hour mark youll be fully into it

[SeleneVenizelos]

10-15 minutes for it to kick in is a major exageration
it should take at least 2 hours(its based on how many times you gather) before you start seeing the initial onset of it and by the 3-4 hour mark youll be fully into it

I really wish it was an exagerration. I arrived at Dragon Head today at 2pm my time, exhausted every tree and then began going to a harvesting spot, tree, tree, repeat. By 3pm I started getting an occasional fail (I know because I recorded my SP at 2pm and then at 3pm, hourly rate interests me), by 3:15pm I was failing every single attempt.

An hour of gathering whereby I obtained 22.3k SP and an unrecorded number of items, and 15 minutes later I am unable to obtain anything either at a tree or at a harvesting spot.

[Orcishgrappler]

It is not 10-15 minutes from full to nothing. They way it works is that you get 2500 points in gathering. Every time you gather something you go down 10 points if you get something from it. Every hour you get 100 points back. This means you get to gather 250 itmes per 25 hours before you cannot get anything.

Once you get down to 1000 of your 2500 points it gets a bit harder to get items but you still can.

As a high ranked gather guy myself I recomend you make it easy on yourself and gather once a day at the same general time every day that way you stay at near 2500 points every day (this will help avoid the 10-15 minutes issue)

Another think that will help you to feel a bit better is if you level Mining and Botany at the same time. That way you can just macro in your equip changes and have 2500 points in each every 25 hours.

Gathering is fun and not all that hard to level up if you just make it a once a day thing for a few hours. I hope this information helps and keep at it gathering rocks!

[TheVedis]

I really wish it was an exagerration. I arrived at Dragon Head today at 2pm my time, exhausted every tree and then began going to a harvesting spot, tree, tree, repeat. By 3pm I started getting an occasional fail (I know because I recorded my SP at 2pm and then at 3pm, hourly rate interests me), by 3:15pm I was failing every single attempt.

An hour of gathering whereby I obtained 22.3k SP and an unrecorded number of items, and 15 minutes later I am unable to obtain anything either at a tree or at a harvesting spot.

you realize you just admited it was an exageration...
sounds like it took you over an hour to hit it, not 10-15 minutes


what i do to get around this

first off, dont gather every day, if you do, youll get very little time every day before it sets in, set gathering sessions up every 3-4 days instead(i do mine sunday mornings and wednesday nights)
doing so will give you a near full reset on fatigue every time you do it.

i do mining and botony at the same time, i usualy get in around 30-40k sp still before it sets in bad on me. and thats 30-40k in each. usualy takes anywhere from 3-5 hours to kick in to where i stop doing it. and a few days later when i go back, its back to normal.

there are several reasons for this to be in game, one of course is rmt bots who can just gather millions of items to flood the market.
the other is again, players who will flood the market with these items. right now, with how it is, it keeps any one person from farming 5000 silver a day to sell to everyone and driving it into the ground to where its worthless. its a way to control how much stock goes public at any given time, and can only rise if more people gather rather then people gathering more on their own.


a second point you may wanna know, SP fatigue is being removed in 1.18 so its a null point at this time.

and yes it can suck when your trying to level....i wont deny it, but we gotta deal with it for now. I personaly dont mind it, and im 40 botony and mining, and i have 50 miner friends who had to deal with it all the way to the top and they didnt much care for it but they understand what happens if it doesnt exist too.

[SeleneVenizelos]

you realize you just admited it was an exageration...
sounds like it took you over an hour to hit it, not 10-15 minutes

I think there's a misunderstanding, probably my fault for not clarifying in more detail. When I refer to the fatigue setting in within 10-15 minutes, I mean from the point the game decides I've been at it enough and starts making me fail things. Whilst the time up until that point has varied, the descent into obliterating my gathering has only taken 10-15 minutes.

Thank you for the pointers both of you, I will try some of them out and see if they help. Might need to work on Miner a bit, though, as that's R6 and Botanist is R36.

a second point you may wanna know, SP fatigue is being removed in 1.18 so its a null point at this time.

Let's not go off the point, this is not in anyway about or aimed at SP fatigue.

and yes it can suck when your trying to level....i wont deny it, but we gotta deal with it for now. I personaly dont mind it, and im 40 botony and mining, and i have 50 miner friends who had to deal with it all the way to the top and they didnt much care for it but they understand what happens if it doesnt exist too.

We do, and I will, but it can't hurt to ask them to remove it. =)

[Orcishgrappler]

I think there's a misunderstanding, probably my fault for not clarifying in more detail. When I refer to the fatigue setting in within 10-15 minutes, I mean from the point the game decides I've been at it enough and starts making me fail things. Whilst the time up until that point has varied, the descent into obliterating my gathering has only taken 10-15 minutes.

Thank you for the pointers both of you, I will try some of them out and see if they help. Might need to work on Miner a bit, though, as that's R6 and Botanist is R36.



Let's not go off the point, this is not in anyway about or aimed at SP fatigue.




We do, and I will, but it can't hurt to ask them to remove it. =)

Oh yeah get out that mining pick! It will make you feel so much better! Mining is ALOT of fun and it makes it so much easier to gather. You only need 3 spots to rotate between mining/botany so you can do one mining node and two trees, or to mining nodes and one tree, or one bush, one tree, and one mining node. It makes it so much faster to level! (The best is when you get a mining node, and bush, and a tree right next to eachother, (for the quarry node in treespeak) then you can just get those three in a tiny loop of pure joy!!!

[SeleneVenizelos]

Oh yeah get out that mining pick! It will make you feel so much better! Mining is ALOT of fun and it makes it so much easier to gather. You only need 3 spots to rotate between mining/botany so you can do one mining node and two trees, or to mining nodes and one tree, or one bush, one tree, and one mining node. It makes it so much faster to level! (The best is when you get a mining node, and bush, and a tree right next to eachother, (for the quarry node in treespeak) then you can just get those three in a tiny loop of pure joy!!!

I have often seen people switching between the two recently and wondered how they had the patience to level both. I see that I have clearly missed a beautiful oppurtunity to level both in only keeping with one. I unfortunately did not think to pursue the reasons why they were switching between mining and botany, and just assumed it was to take advantage of nodes spaced very close to each other!

Thank you for the pointers both of you, and until this is either scaled down (hopefully) or removed (wishful thinking), I will take these pointers and try and maximise my efficiency. I think when I'm gathering on Botanist there's going to be a lot of fails on Grade 5 mining spot! I wonder how much a fail at R6 on a Grade 5 will give me...

[SeleneVenizelos]

It is not 10-15 minutes from full to nothing. They way it works is that you get 2500 points in gathering. Every time you gather something you go down 10 points if you get something from it. Every hour you get 100 points back. This means you get to gather 250 itmes per 25 hours before you cannot get anything.

Once you get down to 1000 of your 2500 points it gets a bit harder to get items but you still can.

This is a better explanation than any of the community sites provided, thank you. It makes me realise stopping at a passing grade 1 spot on my way to Gridania to snag a few Cotton Bolls is really, really hurting my levelling. Fortunately I rarely have the time to solidly level every day, and only usually end up levelling in a determined manner as this when I find myself free from work on the better side of a leve reset and have 24 hours of no levies or local levies.

I have been keeping track of my hourly SP rate at Iron Lake and Dragon Head to decide which camp is best. Given that Iron Lake likes to spam my inventory with Tomatoes and Oranges, Dragon Head almost certainly seems to be the way to go. It's not about hourly SP, evidently. It's about getting the most attempts in ratio to how many items you obtain, which means Dragon Head is almost certainly better.

Not so sure about Treespeak at the moment, without Arbor Call V it's exceptionally hard to pinpoint the tree's locations compared to IL and DH.

Fortunately managed to get R36 before this set in today, so I guess I can get a few points back by completing the quest. Thanks again, and yes, I agree, gathering rocks!