In April we expanded upon the harvesting options, adding in harvestable clusters to go along with the smaller harvestable nodes already present. Harvesting is available as a non-combat option, but it is useful to be able to defend yourself from attacking creatures or even players in the non-safe regions of the world.
The first option for harvesting is using harvestable nodes available in the world. Each node is associated to a specific region within a zone. The amount of nodes in an area are dependent upon how often they are harvested. If you are lucky enough to wander into a region that hasn’t been touched for a while, you can find a lot of resources to extract. If it has been pillaged recently, there might not be a lot available. The location of the regions are static so you can expect a region of harvestable nodes to be in a similar spot each time you visit the area. However, the harvestable nodes within the regions will appear in random spots rather than always appearing in the same place
You will need a simple tool to extract the resources and use the same process to extract from a node as you do from a corpse. There is an automatically assigned difficulty level to any cluster. That level is used to determine the grade of the resource. PvP zones will have a higher difficulty assigned, resulting in higher grade results, but plenty of PvE regions will be available as well for those who don’t want to risk it.
In April we expanded the harvesting options adding the harvester system. In addition to having a number of smaller nodes that spawn at a fairly constant rate within specific regions, we have resource clusters that will randomly appear throughout the world of Rhyldan. The system operates globally, assigning harvestable clusters out to all available areas in the game. The clusters contain a larger stash of a single resource and has a better chance of yielding higher quality results. The clusters are more rare and harder to find as there won’t be a set schedule for spawning them once they are depleted. The clusters will include all major resources available that can be harvested from regular nodes, such as Minerals, Trees, and Plants. They will not include some of the more rare resources that might be found within a high tier node. However, the amount of resources it yields will more than make up for it, especially if you happen to strike the jackpot and discovery a high yield, high quality cluster.
The system right now is fairly straightforward with four available harvester slots for each cluster. Each slot has a maximum efficiency associated with it starting at 100% then going down to 66%/40%/20% respectively. Each player can only have one harvester per cluster, this allows people who discover the cluster later to share in the bounty, encourages groups to explore together, or to give the harvester’s guards a percentage of the resources.
Once the harvester is in place it will extract a set amount of resources from the cluster. The harvester currently has a rate value per hour along with a hopper size. You can return to the harvestable cluster at any time and collect the resources. You must return within 24 hours of the placement on the cluster to collect the resources, otherwise those resources are lost and the harvester is returned to your character via the mail system, this is to prevent players from losing their harvesters due to out of game connection issues. The average time to empty out a cluster will be roughly 2-4 hours depending on yield, harvester type used, and how many harvesters are present. Each player will be restricted to a few harvester slots on their character, one harvester per cluster, and they will not be ‘sharable’ with other players to collect for you.
Resource control should add an interesting wrinkle to the game's PvP mechanics. There will be semi-static cluster points, along with the previously mentioned randomly assigned clusters, in the contested (PvP) regions, which feature higher grades and yield rates to compensate for their more dangerous location. We anticipate these becoming points of conflict for nation's battling to control the resources.
We hope you enjoyed taking a look into both of these systems. If you did not get a chance to check out the Extraction article you
can find it here.
