Jan 31
Gatherer rework: Herbs and Spices
Currently, gatherers' main ability (other than crafting research papers) is getting higher yield when they harvest crops. This is so critical to farming that pretty much every farmer is also a gatherer, because while you could hire someone else to gather, it's not much fun to be a paid farmhand on someone else's farm, and it's annoying to coordinate with the growing cycles, etc.
Proposal: to make gathering more independent from farming, add herbs and spices that can only be gathered by gatherers. Other players might only see generic plants that could be harvested for fiber (along the lines of useless plants like heliconia, king fern) but gatherers could extract herbs and spices which could be used for cooking, and pigments for painting. Herbs would also be useful if a medical profession is introduced, or drinks like tea.
Herbs and spice plants would not be farmable using normal farm plots, but could be grown in pots/planters (and later hydroponic shelves) in addition to gathering them from the wild.
Other thoughts:
- Gathering bonus should ideally only apply to certain types of crops like huckleberries, maybe mushrooms, and other delicate crops. Not stuff like wheat, where the yield should ideally be determined solely by soil conditions. This would make it more feasible for someone to only take farming and not gathering. I understand this is a bit tricky from a "explaining the bonus to the player" point of view, however.
- Spices should have narrow growing areas and recipes should call for specific spices, so that spices can become a valuable trade commodity.
Pending
Fully agree! Maybe there could be even more things to collect/gather in the world in an arbitrary order: - seashells - pearls - insects - rare/exotic plants - feathers - meteorite fragments - driftwood - sap - fossilized sap or amber with or without insects inside - wild eggs - wild bees + honey + wax - semiprecious gems near riverbanks - gold nuggets - corals - fossils Some of these items could be useful for crafting decorative items, potentially jewelry, some are for pigments. Sap collecting could be used to make glue or paint to better tie with a carpenter, an engineer, or a potential painter. Some of the items could be used in museums to produce culture.