Gathering Favors is Mindless Drudgery (Plus an idea to make it better?)

[Stormfur]

So I have miner, botanist and all my crafters at 60. I get that SE is seriously steering us not to omnicraft in HW but crafting is one of my favorite things about the game.

Gathering, on the other hand, can go pound sand.

This nonsense of running around from node to node like a chocobo with its head cut off is just crazy. I feel more like a contestant in a game of Supermarket Sweep than a miner or botanist.

And to get the really good, high quality mats, I have to pray to RNGesus for 3 of the rare nodes to spawn. And the opportunities that I have to harvest these things at all is stuck behind an invisible wall.

I'm really, really hoping that this airship exploration stuff coming in 3.1 opens up a lot more opportunities to harvest the good stuff, but that's just wishful thinking.

But that got me to thinking...


Why not use the ephemeral system that we already have, which we're already gathering from anyway, to randomly spawn a rare/concealed thing while we're out there gathering the stuff in the first place? So you're out there getting your radiant fire moraine and BOOM up pops a red ooid. OR...you're chipping away at aurum regis sand and suddenly a violet roundstone comes up, but maybe the percentage of success in getting it would be a little lower than it is now.

Basically this would be relying on your mining/harvesting perception and skill rather than having to buy favors, shut up the world for 20 minutes, and have at it.

Your thoughts?