Resources

Pre-alpha gatherable mushrooms found in an underground cave.

We want our players to have a reason to explore the wilderness, to travel with purpose, and much of that will be driven by our resource system. Transporting these goods might just be more difficult than gathering them. Our regional market system allows players to participate in creating pocket economies that will reinforce the stability of goods in particular regions.

Gatherable resources (also known as raw materials, gatherables, and harvestables) occur in locations where you would expect them to be organically.

• Lower level resources will be abundant. Higher level resources that are gatherable by Apprentice level or higher artisans will spawn randomly but in places that make sense for that type of resource. Surveying is a mechanic that solo or group players can utilize to track these resources down.

We want to be able to spawn stuff randomly and we want to put it in places in the world that will make people travel and bolster up our local player-to-player economies: have people actually be out in the world looking for stuff and not standing in the same place waiting for a tree or a flower to respawn over and over again. So, we're having the best of the both Worlds where we have our lower tier stuff that will fill out the base look of our world, so that it's always looking good; and then the higher tier stuff, from apprentice onward, will always spawn randomly in places that we've deemed look good and make sense for what that thing is. So, surveying is a way that you can track that stuff down. It will help you find places, will help you find particular resources, will help you find resources at a certain rarity; and so it should be something you could do as a gatherer on your own, or group up with other people to bolster up the power of your survey, or the range or reach of it. – Kory Rice

• Certain resources will only be gatherable for a limited time during specific story arcs.

You want to take advantage of the limited time you have during the story arcs to get some of these rare resources for crafting things. – Jeremy Gess

• Seasonal resources are only gatherable during specific seasons.

• Some resources are only gatherable at specific times of the day or night.

• The location the resource was found can affect the benefits, bonuses, and other characteristics of that resource.
  • Some resources will be one-time gatherables, others will exist as clusters that will last until the vein is depleted.

• Players drop resources and other items upon death, based on their applicable death penalties.

• Resources looted from caravan wreckages become stolen resources.

• Resources do not expire or degrade over time.

We don't want to create an environment I feel where you're having to micromanage each of the resources that are very vast in our game. We have 100 plus material system where you're having to play whack-a-mole with managing those things... I don't see the value in it. – Steven Sharif

• Raw materials (gatherable resources) are not to be confused with crafting materials (processed goods).

Gathering

Gathering lumber in Alpha-2.

The first major reveal is that in Ashes of Creation we have now expanded the resource gathering system to include a great many of what the world is showing you of these resources. So when you see a tree, you can chop a tree. If you see a rock, you can mine a rock. – Steven Sharif

Gathering ore in Alpha-2.

Looking at this this rock here, I don't know what that rock is before I actually complete the Harvest. But after I complete the Harvest I see that I collected basalt in the bottom right hand corner. – Steven Sharif

Gathering is one of the artisan classes in Ashes of Creation.

• Many of the visible resources (such as Trees and Ore) in the open world are gatherable.
  • This is a change from Alpha-1 where a limited number of resource locations were highlighted with "sparkles" to indicate they were gatherable.
• The exact type of resource present within a resource node is not known until the node is harvested.

There's a bunch of different things in Ashes that will be gatherable. We have plants and trees and rocks and fish and animals and creatures that can be tamed; and we're thinking to reach the visual fidelity bar and to have things a little bit more rooted in what we know is that it wouldn't really make sense for you to just see gold all over the world in the same way that you would plants and trees; so we wanted to get feedback on what players think about some of the different gatherable types having different things that you would have to know and expect from them. So rocks are a good example of this, where you can see a rock but until you crack that thing open you don't know if it's full of stone, crystals, rubies, gold. So we wanted to try that out with some of our gatherables to have players have to open this thing up- and that's not to say that we players won't stumble on a nice load, or vein, or geode of gold, but most of the stuff that they would they would find to the world, unless they they look hard enough, would require them to crack that stone open. – Kory Rice

• Gathering is intended to be accessible to both solo and group-based gatherers.
• Gathering requires the creation and use of tools.

• Gatherers who complete the gathering interaction first will gain the resources. Gathering speed can be improved as follows:
  • Higher levels of artisan progression.
  • Better quality artisan gear and gathering tools.

• Surveying plays a key role in helping gatherers identify resources in particular locations.
• Gathering within a node's Zone of influence (ZOI) will contribute to its experience growth.
• Certain low level gatherables will have a tiered progression into higher level crafting.

Certain low level gatherables will have a tiered progression into higher level crafting. So for example if I'm gathering... leaves of the blue petal flower to craft a pigment that's going to be used in the development of a tunic that I can wear at level one, then I may need to collect those in order to craft the pigments to craft a greater pigment that might be present in the in the crafting of a higher level item. So it's going to be a tiered progression so that materials have relevancy throughout the different levels of of crafting; and that's important from an economic stability standpoint. You need to have layered demand from a supply standpoint so that players who are interested in collecting and gathering those materials still are relevant when the later level items are crafted. – Steven Sharif

Underrealm resources

Resources will be different in the Underrealm, including unique species of fish.

• This will affect professions such as fishing, farming, and animal husbandry.
• Since players may only have one Freehold, they must choose their Artisan specializations accordingly if they wish to place it in the Underrealm.

See also

• Gathering
• Farming