After skipping last week's update, the folks behind Atriarch posted the newest update recently:

November 5, 2004 For those who did not read the last update, we did in fact skip last week's update due to a rare phenomenon called: vacation.  Not to worry though, the Atriarch Team did find time for some work.  Ample time was spent "researching" other games.  Yes, it was difficult, but we survived.   Anyway, all is back on schedule and the team revved and raring to go at a feverish pace! Atriarch Development Update new feature added: harvesting resources...  Harvesting resources from plants has always been in the design for Atriarch.  We are happy to state that it is no longer just a design :-)  The engine is now capable of allowing players to acquire natural resources in the world from the alien flora.   Just a few harvestable resources are in the world right now, but many more will be added as we enhance and improve the feature. We have already implemented a resource that will be in high demand.   We have a plant you can harvest that will yield birthing pods. The birthing pod is the resource used to create your characters offspring (aka: "character lives").   There is a limit to how many offspring a character can produce. resource regeneration:  Once a resource is harvested, does it regenerate?  The answer is it depends on the resource.  Each resource will regenerate at a different rate and under different circumstances.  For example, when harvesting Dubo Crystals from the Dubo Plant, you will see the crystals disappear from the pod and show up in your inventory or on the ground. However, the entire plant will not necessarily disappear.  Instead, the crystals will start to grow again.  On the other hand, some rare resources will die off completely. I can harvest the resource from the plant, but not out of my backpack:  Once we add a new feature, we pretty much take it to the extreme, bang on it, make dirty faces at it... basically try to get it to break.  In some cases, it's easy.  In other cases, it is solid as a rock.   In this case, the feature worked very well.  However, after harvesting approximately five gazillion Dubo Crystals (give or take a gazillion), we quickly found some missing features that were not an issue until now.  For example, a scroll bar on our inventory backpack.  We had the resources in our inventory, but just couldn't get to it.  This and other smaller components are being added as you read this :-)