Hi, so i've been trying to level harvesting for future crafting, but it's a huge pain. I've been told by everybody that it's always a pain to start out with (especially with the god awful silan starter quests) but that it actually gets fun later, especially on ML

So I did the silan quests (with a helpful guide) and got my harvesting up around level 20. My problem was that I had trouble leveling it up because whenever I would use the tracker, prospecting was a bitch to bring things up. Fortunately I found this lovely little island on silan that has super easy prospecting, and I grinded there until level 30 and got mat specific trackers and 40 degree angle prospecting. Harvesting is still a total bitch

Now that I have mat specific tracking, it drains my focus like mad. By the point I get within 1-2m of the deposit point, I only have a little over a 100 focus left. It wouldn't be a problem if prospecting brough up  nodes everytime, but it doesn't. Sometimes it will bring up oil nodes, and i'm told that mats overlap so i'll need to pop a bark tracking stanza in my prospection. Then that brings up nothing. Moving back to make sure i'm not standing brings up nothing. Moving 360 degrees brings up squat. Moving around the area doesn't do shit. Then you have to wait for focus to regen only to waste it again, searching with a blindfold on....fun!

Also i checked out the market for focus jewelery, and the focus improvements that I could find seemed so minimal that it wasn't even worth buying

so basically I want to enjoy this game but it keeps kicking me down and spitting at me. Can anyone tell me what i'm doing wrong so that I can actually pull stuff out of the ground efficiently?
 

Hi mate :)

First and foremost, you should know that, even when you do some mistakes choosing what actions to buy, that'll slow you down a bit only, so no need to worry.

That said, your biggest 'mistake' has been...staying at Silan, followed by buying material specializations at your low level since they're pretty expensive. I don't remember exactly what's the quality cap of the dug mats in Silan, 25 iirc, and if that's true, it means you've been getting very low xp from your dig, and that you've spent many hours to reach that level 40. Also, it's way easier to get focus gear at mainland, either on vendors or asking for it to be made.

About material specialization, it would have been way faster and better to go to mainland and ask for a digger to show you material spots near the city you choose, that way you don't have to spend any points in material specs so early. Later on, with some more experience and points under your belt, you can pick the specs you think are needed, but even then you can check some reference sites to know approx. locations so they're not really a must.

So yeah, digging becomes way better, but it seems you've been a bit misguided. No worries though, when you jump to mainland and follow those simple steps above, you'll be set in no time :)

If you feel like receiving some basic lessons once there, feel free to contact me ingame, name's Setha and i always enjoy to help newbies around :)

Frankly digging on Silan is Horrible I've tried it on several chars and everytime it got harder to start over again. On the mainland you track once, dig often. You mark your dig spots on the map, or in some cases just follow the diggers :P, and then go there untill you've outleveled the area then the search is on again...

as to focus management the only time you'll have to worry about focus is when looking for new sources once you've located a spot use can usually dig until your bags full without much down time. if you sit down to regen after you've popped the source you get full focus back after your dig...

some tips :)

1) get off silan

2) make sure you have the max quality level you can, as the q you dig up will affect your xp gain the most

3) as soon as possible train prospecting 'up to choice' not choice only. this means you will pop basic, fine and choice when you prospect greatly increasing your chances of finding mats. You will want 'choice only' as well but its best to use when you have mapped out some resources

4) you shouldnt have any focus issues until at least lv50, no real need for focus jewels or la before then but ofc they are nice to have. thing to do here is to train the focus self heal, its fairly cheap. So now you can burn all your focus getting to a node, then regen and start digging.

5) use gentle quality, gentle speed, harmful rate. this works well for most source mode types

more generally about trackers, they will lead you to the edge of an area of mats not, and this is point a lot of peope miss, to within 1m of an actual node you can pop. So there can still be some (frustrating) wandering around trying to find. However you only need to have found once and made a map marker. will always be there (weather, season permitting for excellent above ground and everything underground)

Just outside each of the capital cities you are ported to after leaving Silan are lots of mats. Just ask in region and i guarentee a helpful digger will show you.

feel free to drop me a /tell ingame if you need any more help. And what people have told you is true harvesting is meh to start with but brilliant once you get going ;)