A few changes to help gardening/herbalism

[Egon the Monkey]

Recently I have been playing an alt with herbalism for a bit, and it reminded me how difficult it's been to grow the herbs you want without someone wiping out the patch, even if you hide them in far flung corners of rarely-travelled zones. Gardens used to be easy, but since the new alchemy system, gathering quests etc, they get raided fast as the system wasn't made when there was this much demand for herbs. The other problem is that since the withered plants got changed, all the normal plants got removed as well and there's nowhere to pick up seeds.

Could it be changed so that instead of causing the plant to wither and die, picking when a plant has no items left causes a penalty to the PC? For example they get frozen in place for a couple of rounds as they "fruitlessly search for produce that isn't there", or are poisoned by a thorn. It would still be possible to destroy plants by smashing the plants, but opportunistically grabbing off plants would be a calculated risk for a non ranger/druid PC rather than "may as well, nothing to lose and nobody ever sees you do it". I know its possible to defend patches, I played a gamekeeper PC a while back trying to do that, but it's a hell of a lot of work and low success.

Failing that, could plant seeds or produce be made available from a  merchant again? It's hard to even find the stuff you want to start planting these days. Yes, the new merchants selling useable ingredients are great, but a lot of recipes rely on a specific herbal reagent, and if you can't grow it, you're SOL.

[The Old Hack]

Maybe if there was a chance that overpicking plants could annoy certain of the more magical ones into acting like this, we would see players become more cautious about strip harvesting? >.>

[Halfbrood]

ShadowCharlatan is the man.

[Drakill Tannan]

You do realize there is no way to protect a garden efectively? If players have their PCs camping the area, the PCs won't do much other than protecting the garden, not my idea of fun, and they are defenceless when they are offline anyway, so even if you dedicate to be near the area, palce the "Alarm" spell and spend 6 hours online a day, somone will come in the other 18 hours of the day and murder the garden.

Or you can place a trap, wich must be either a deadly trap on FD mode (Dobut DMs like it) or a minor/average trap on anything else, wich likely won't stop anyone.

You could also AE dangerous animals and place them in your garden. But your invisible wizard won't be bothered, nor will the high AE ranger/druid or the massive stealth ranger/rogue. Hells, after a reset, once your guardians are gone no one will be bothered because unless you do it just after the reset the protections will be gone.

You can make a post in the public board. And everyone will ignore it.

You can hunt down the PCs who harvest it. Probably the easiest way to protect a garden. You just need to camp for 1 day or 2 and then FD the player. Dobut DMs like the idea though, and it still takes like 12 hours of work -if- the player is in your timezone, else there's nothing you can do about it.

So, solve IC? Not really posible, not unless something is added to the mix.

For example, you could have a "custom grove area" wich people can acces through a secret door-like transition whose location the player chooses. Making groves hard (but not imposible) to find.

You can make a sistem in wich druids and rangers can summon hostile animals in the grove that persist after reset, wich aren't affected by AE.

Spellcasters in general could summon persistent stuff to protect the gardens.

Add to that some way to remove invisiblity and/or stealth.

Or maybe just make a feature that gives you the name of the PC who enters certian area, so you can hunt him down. A "Sentry" that informs you, for example.

Then it is posible to protect the gardens IC, but as it currently is, it isn't. IN fact, i dare shadow charlatan do try it.

[Spiffy Has]

Perhaps a marker can be placed much like the druid groves have where an area is suited to Gardening, X's Garden, and a summon can appear to protect the garden should anyone intrude?

[HaveLuteWillTravel]

If you read what ShadowCharlatan said, a PC who's systematically destroying gardens should be posting that they are, otherwise they're taking advantage of ooc factors, such as PCs who are guarding it being offline. Look at how the Shining Hammer is dealing with this kind of conflict, which is exactly how people should be doing it.

The mechanics of how things work is fine as they are. People should be welcoming the roleplay and potential conflict. Embracing it instead of treating it like an adolescent prank done in the middle of the night.

[Egon the Monkey]

One problem is, there is no roleplay here, no conflict most of the time.  The other problem is that you have to grow certain plants to make certain items (or so the hints claim and I've seen). Not powerful ones, but simple ones like herbs that you get through lots of.

It's  impossible to defend a patch actively IC from poachers because they're undetectable if you're offline or not standing sentry. It's only interesting to face vandals and enemies that don't try and hide what  they're up to. Compare that to Pickpocketing, which is low-grade crime with the potential to create interesting roleplay as you have to be next to the victim. You might say what players "should" do, but if it's not enforced or required, it doesn't happen. Why go out of your way to be a target if nobody else is?

Stopping plants auto-dying or having NPC watched safe areas should create more interesting conflict between PCs by creating areas to fight over and making destroying a garden a clear act of aggression, not accident because your PC's not a Ranger. As a hostile act, you'd need to call for a DM and it would be in the logs. That means the target of it could ask a DM for help in going after you. If repeat overharvesting didn't kill a garden, you could still expand it but it wouldn't be productive. It would be in the same place, and grow as a point of conflict to send your allies to or watch. Then once you've repelled the poacher, the area becomes useful again. If one person does an opportunistic grab on it, it'll recover. As it is, your only reliable defence is to distribute plants everywhere and passively hope nobody finds them all. Placing them in one place so you can actively protect them just makes them a big fat target when you're not about.

I've tried all the tricks Drakill stated when playing Whiskey Bill, even going so far as to plonk down AEed animals with Extended See Invis purely to attack mages. Plus I was working in the Order's territory and they were on the lookout for poachers. We never detected one single PC in over a month. The problem isn't putting IG inconveniences in the way, a group or a solo build can roll over them. It's finding out who's poaching so your PC can pursue them IC himself.

This isn't a wilds PC thing, it's about any char that wants to use herbalism to make specific sorts of items that need specific herbs. Wilds PCs are part of the problem, being both stealthy and one of the bigger consumers of herbs as an NPC currency. Herbs are required for so much that making them this rare doesn't fit with the IC expectation that they get used a lot by NPCs and herbalists. Not to mention the OOC point that you can't buy them from a shop to experiment with either. If you could, there'd be less of an issue as you'd be able to buy them.

The easiest solution would probably be making herbs purchaseable in Mistlocke and Gaeseric's so that plants are an optional way to get free resources or RP, not a requirement to maintain. Or to have plants spawn at random like the fruit bushes do, so you can find seeds and produce by exploring. The more complicated one would be to create a way to allow genuine conflict with PCs that go scrumping from gardens.

TL;DR:
It's easy to free-ride off someone else's plants, so there's competition over who can grab the herb first, but no conflict because they'll never catch you. Without some herbs you can't make quite a lot of herbalism items. These herbs can only be grown, and it's hard to even find seeds. A reliable way to get seeds/herbs would be useful, as would a way to catch people ripping off your plants. Wild herbs turning up at random each reset would be cool.

[Ebok]

Sometimes these things aren't done to hurt anyone. They want a certain plant, they look around until they find it, then they take what they need. Most druid/rangers dont kill the plant, but they drag it down to near death easily enough.

That leaves other alchemists and herbalists that take everything--or just take one or two and it happens to kill a few. Maybe they stop, maybe they don't. I've seen gardens trimmed down to 1 plant per, then five people come along and each kill one plant on accident.  There is no real conflict to be had in these situations. In others, people raid areas looking for 1 plant seed, (from possibly someone's garden, maybe killing it) then plant it else where and think it's theirs.

Unless you can "rent" gardening space inside of mistlocke, or another populated place where npcs make harvesting / destruction a DM required thing, you're not going to get much IC conflict (again most arent actually there to "steal" its not like they are owned, claimed or marked in any way.). I do think it would be cool to have a gardener PC "rent" fenced land, where he can sell the specific items to alchemists (presently there are no areas on this server outside of team wild that can not be reached easily. Almost everywhere is on the road to somewhere.) If an NPC carries the plant, they should not carry the seed, and the cost should be exorbitant.

My main point is that the demand for these plants exceeds the capacity for them for to grow in abundance. Hidden gardens in the wilds for a wizard is laughable, unless you find a place that cannot be reached outside of teleportation (which presents it's own problem).

[HaveLuteWillTravel]

I don't see why it shouldn't be difficult at times to find resources needed. They shouldn't be limitless. Alchemy and herbalism can both create some rather powerful items, so there needs to be some work in making them outside just investing points, and figuring out the recipes.

Also, with the current system, wizards are best served relying on others to help gather, which creates roleplay since they need to buy from others, or hire.

[Ebok]

Separate thought: Part of the issue here is the lack of seed's for conflict in the situation. There are three conflict seeds to be had. You have the

Garden vs the Thief, where wild PC might active trash a wizards "garden" or "steal" from the  garden in order to hassle or impede the wizard. (the wizard being X  where X is anyone with the garden). You'd also have competitors that might have interest in hampering these things. Rare plants, etc, all weigh in.

You have Garden vs the Natural Growth, that is the gardens in an area require all growth outside them to be cut down so you have enough nutrients for your plants, i.e. the max limit of plants per area. Gardens competing for the same areas, etc.

Then you have Claimed Lands vs Wilderness, This is really of more a wildling against the civilized aspect. How dare you "claim land" anywhere. Lands and plants aren't owned, etc etc. The Frontier for one is the home for another. These conflicts would happen most often is places far away from the settlements. Like claiming a section of the Morass despite the Frog Tribe's having used the area for years.
_________________

Current events are underscored by the fact that the pillager and the pillaged do not know who each other are. Not before or after the fact, and there are things that could be done that could increase the chances of these conflicts finding traction.

1.) Add some squared in fences in certain areas (nearest mistlocke) that can be rented. Rents costs gold, so there is an investment. rents also allows you to add a SIGN on the garden with your name of claim on it. This means that anyone entering the area and taking something is preforming a hostile action. (Dm's would at least know who was behind it). This allows people to pick and choose who they sabotage, it allows other alchemists to buy goods from each other, or pay some grunt to burn the competition, someone sneaking in to steal etc. All of these are acts of PvP not merely oh hey plant, I need this one. (mine) You can also trap your area, leave animals there--call it a pig farm, whatever. Conflict between land use would require that the land inside be plant-able. This is a problem in large areas with low plant capacity because a few plants elsewhere makes your garden unusable. Some ingenuity here would need be considered.

2.) If you are taking over the Morass for example, you make a claim and make it big. Say that the area is yours, defliers will be attacked, etc. If the action is public, then you'll attract those that disagree to you. This creates conflict. These are best chosen if the area is being used by another character as well.

3. Have a farmer NPC sell most plants in the market, but for expensive costs. This makes things attainable even in the worst cases. (it also allows an out for people that don't want the conflict, sets a standard price for the plant item for others to compete with, and makes makes some plants even when they are most lean be found BUT with heavy cost rather then the usual FREE)

4. On some of the most garden-able areas outside the vicinity of the mistlocke, you can just put a signh that is rentable (small fee) to write something on. But a (larger fee) to overwrite someone else's sign. Allows vandalism, emphasizes the point of  it's un-enforced claims, and still tells the people around who or what they're dealing with.

[Egon the Monkey]

@HLWT
Again, the specific resources that are a problem are needed to make cheap, simple things like ammo and medicinal herbs that you get through a lot of. Having those available shouldn't be expensive or hard.

Having a go with herbalism, I could make really quite powerful stuff off cheap shoploot, but there was no way to get the items that hints told me would lead to ammo and herbs, both of which were a goal of the PC. If you play a PC who tries to discover the big stuff, you realise the other components are the risk of blowing your PC's head off and the cost of funding failed research.

[Decimate_The_Weak]

You have the entire island to your advantage. Use it. You don't need one garden, or two. Hell, make ten.

[Drakill Tannan]

If you read what ShadowCharlatan said, a PC who's systematically destroying gardens should be posting that they are, otherwise they're taking advantage of ooc factors, such as PCs who are guarding it being offline. Look at how the Shining Hammer is dealing with this kind of conflict, which is exactly how people should be doing it.

The mechanics of how things work is fine as they are. People should be welcoming the roleplay and potential conflict. Embracing it instead of treating it like an adolescent prank done in the middle of the night.

That'll only work if EFU implements DRD's retarded suggestion of banning all noobs. You can't expect all players to be awsome.

Laying claim to the morass won't do a thing either. UNless somone is looking specifically to annoy you, there won't be any conflict. Ways to defend the gardens are needed, or what egon said: making plants appear like random bushes do.

[Divine Intervention]

Tbh I think Ebok has the best idea here, if people are investing money in land then they have more incentive to defend it IG and equally it makes conflict more likely as opposition will attack them where it inconvieniences them.  Every time this gets discussed some people say solve it purely ig and others say it's not possible due to OOC factors.

[Drakill Tannan]

Maybe, but i insist, a placable with a warning won't do a thing. Somone outside your timezone will steal your herbs, and there's nothing you can do about it.