A Harvesting We Go

 When I first interviewed Sony Dev’s for Beckett MOG about TSO I specifically asked if there would be any incentives to get players out into the older zones. I always disliked how as soon as a new expansion was released, there was 0 reason to continue on through the old content. Their answer sort of confused me, and confused me even more when I actually took a look around TSO and the content offered. 

Quite a few of the dungeons are located in old world zones. This includes Lavastorm, and Everfrost as well as Commonlands. There’s also one huge quest line and while it’s not directly related to TSO it was implemented with GU50 on the same day. 

Of course I’m talking about the fabled cloak for harvesters. I’ve been working on this quest chain (I still don’t have TSO) off and on yesterday and today and I’m actually finding it quite challenging for a few reasons.

Number one, each tier the quest wants you to harvest more and more items and amounts of said items. You start off in T1 harvesting 5 of each item and work your way up stage by stage. I’m on T4 now (Zek and Enchanted lands) and it wants 15 of each item, in each zone. That’s a lot of harvests. 

One life saver while I have been doing this quest has been the gnomish divining rod. This is a tinker made item and it allows you to track nodes, as well as anything else that lays on the ground, shinies and book pages. If you leave the track window open (like regular track) and run around it will show the nodes in the order of proximity to you. So you can leave it up and run around and know if you are at least close to any of the nodes you need. I also used this item yesterday when I was hunting down my carpenter pages. Some liked to hide off to the side and it was getting a little frustrating. 

Aside from the sheer number of harvests you’re required to obtain there is the difficulty in the type of harvests. Don’t have your fishing up quite yet? Well you’ll want to because these quests all require amounts of harvested fish from specific zones. Remember all the times you complained about dens giving out too much meat and not enough pelts? Well now you’ll want those meats and NOT the pelts. Of course they’re no where to be seen. 

It’s nice to see a some what complicated crafter quest. Though I can see how low level adventurers may not be able to complete it since most harvesting areas are populated by aggressive mobs. That could add to the thrill though, having to dodge and duck away from the mean things trying to eat you. Me, I’m thankful that Silhouette is 80/80 already while I attempt this. 

The quest sends you into every tier, and pretty much every old world zone. Last tier I had to harvest from both Nektulos Forest and Thundering Stepps. It’s a lot of fun meandering your way through the forgotten zones and visiting things you haven’t seen in quite some time. Of course there’s still a lot more to go. This quest takes a lot of time and I’m looking forward to that, keeps me out of trouble while I wait for those polar bears to show up. 

The merchant bug from yesterday / this morning has been fixed (thankfully) so people shouldn’t be selling body drops for 3p a shot any more while being gouged on their repair bills. Apparently I was wrong. Checking the MoTD shows that the bug is still in place but is being worked on. I expect that the lag will still be there tonight when the servers fill up but that’s a population thing and I’m glad to see it. I wish there had of been a little more lowbie content to draw some new players into the game, but I can’t be picky. A few people that I know have returned for the expansion, here’s hoping they stick it out this time around.