Don’t Knock Wood as a Dead Resource – Mysterious Vine Pet Fad Responsible for Renewed Interest
Divinity’s Reach, Kryta – 34 Season of the Scion 1327 AE – Prices of elder wood logs plummeted by almost 50% in the last two days as numerous adventurers suddenly discovered that cypress and ancient saplings were an optimal growth environment for the rare and previously unknown Foxfire Clusters.
The bioluminescent fungus is proving to be prime potting mix and a flavorful ingredient in piquant plant food for persnickety carnivorous vines.
Said vines are the most recent fad to engulf the five major cities. “Pet rocks are -so- last season,” said a human noble who wished to remain anonymous.
Overheard a charr vendor selling one to a norn: “Why should asura get all the glory of cultivating giant Mordremoth vines on their waypoints? With this potted beauty, you can take home your very own miniature carnivorous tendril. Care for it sufficiently and it will stay with you through all your travels. They’ve been known to happily latch onto your back and never let go.”
A spokesperson from the League of Orrian Lumberjacks (LOL) expressed delight in the new influx of members. “We’ve been outnumbered by the Brisban Wildlands Iron Ore Collective for too long. It is our hope that this will allow more Tyrians to appreciate the colorful splendor that is Orr.
“Uprooted underwater landscapes have always struggled to get past the unfavorable first impression of backing away from a lingering Risen to get crapped on by an exploding undead chicken. ”
When asked if this deforestation of Orr would have an impact on the Pact’s effort to revitalize the landscape, the representative merely hefted a heavy pouch of gold coins in reply and said, “lol”
The Miners, Woodcutters and Assorted Harvesters Association (MWAHA) could not be officially reached for comment, but one affiliate seen running across less traversed regions deigned to stop long enough to remark, “The LOL newbies are idiots chasing after an uncertain lottery. Have you seen the price of soft and hard wood logs lately? We’ll see who has the last laugh.”
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While the third episode in the latest Living Story hasn’t been anything to write home about, I’m full of admiration for how deftly the newly introduced mysterious vine backpiece renews an ailing portion of the economy and redistributes wealth around.
Remember, ArenaNet -wants- to redistribute wealth. They sink gold with Trading Post fees with every transaction. Gold doesn’t stay concentrated in one subset of the playerbase (usually the dungeon runners are the ones producing new gold from nothing, as opposed to getting it from another player.) Gold in new hands has a chance of being spent in some other goldsink. Gold stays valuable and more people think about buying gems to get a quick influx of gold.
This time, the ones getting the direct benefit of the newly created demand for Foxfire Clusters are the gathering subset, often solo-type players willing to waste an hour running around relentlessly pressing F on any node in sight to harvest materials.
Their time collecting this resource is willingly being paid for by other players, who would rather spend 80 silver (currently) on a Foxfire Cluster from the TP than go through the perceived ‘grind.’
Grind, of course, being in the eye of the beholder. I personally would rather run around and collect stuff for an hour in peace than run 2-3 dungeons in sequence with strangers. Same amount of money and time, different levels of enjoyment for each player.
The drop rate though has been… “interesting.”
I spent about half an hour getting a big fat zero in return for my time (beyond accumulating a bunch of not really desirable elder wood.) I was starting to wonder if my Aetherblade Logging Axe was bugged.
It then hit me that neither of my guilds was running a 10% harvesting buff, so I was already disadvantaged from the get go. A base 0% chance to get increased rare drops from harvests = pathetic Foxfire Cluster drop rate.
So I endeavored to get it as high as I could on my own – out came my one and only gathering booster from the bank, popped a gathering banner (and a second one later) from my personal bank guild, and ran around in Orr for an hour making a beeline for Cypress (with occasional stops for omnomberry and saffron and stuff.)
At 43% bonus, I managed around 11 Foxfire Clusters in an hour, with about 263 Elder Wood Logs collected.
This might be a pathetically amateur rate, since I do spend time killing mobs and roaming around for fun, but it was just to test how viable it would be for me to spend my time doing this as an activity.
As a sidelong amusement, it isn’t too terrible in terms of entertainment. I kind of appreciated the impetus to take a new route and revisit areas that I haven’t visited in forever, since elder wood logs are not the first resource I would usually consider worth spending my gathering time on.
I still think Orr is freakin’ beautiful.
I also had a personal revelation that it is far more convenient to get out of my usual Zerker, and put on Cleric stats when gathering. It makes me a little less instantly squishy and able to ignore and run past mobs when I want to, while my usual zerker traits and zerker ascended jewellery are sufficient to fight off a small open world mob when I want to stop and fight.
It’s a new use for my old set of magic find armor that I converted to Cleric stats for the hell of it when they removed mf as a stat. Handy enough.
Not being much of a Black Lion Key farmer, that trial run was pretty much all the gathering boost I had available. Not really being willing to run around at a worse bonus rate than 43%, I took a break and tried key farming for an hour, which is another activity I have been meaning to do for a change of pace but never quite got around to.
It’s been impossible for me to ignore the price rise of soft and hard wood logs as well, so I started collecting then dumping off all my excess logs onto the TP. Ironically, I’m earning enough to buy sufficient Foxfire Clusters to craft the daily plant food. I’ve decided I’d much rather earn 4 gold a day via various other means and then buy the Foxfire Clusters instead from those willing to pretend to be a bot (such bans, so scary!) and chop cypress constantly for the chance of a cluster.
In my round-the-world-trip to visit cypress saplings, I also observed lots of different activity clusters of players.
Frostgorge Sound, besides being the home of the still-surviving champion train, has accumulated a number of players farming the hell out of the Coiled Watch dynamic event chain, as led to it by the Living Story. Still plenty of champions there when the event scales up.
I don’t know if the Mordrem events that never stop in the Iron Marches still have a group of players faithfully following it from Point A to Point B and back again, similar to the one in Southsun long ago. Two days ago, that seemed to be all the rage.
Karka farming was alive and well, with about 10 odd players, when I popped in to chop cypress.
Cursed Shore farming was also thriving, I’d assume, via all the mapchat, though I was mostly running from tree to tree in that zone.
A day ago, I did a sequence of the world bosses – something I generally don’t do often, but now and then rares for ectos or selling rares for gold is sufficient attraction for me to get on that choo-choo train. Boy, was THAT alive and well.
And then for fun today, I did two Teqs with TTS and then went on to try a never-before-attempted role switch to condi with the triple trouble wurm.
Which also went super smoothly and makes me think I should bring my necro more often to the wurm party – it’s a nice change of pace to not have to worry about zerging and burning and just focus on pulling husks away and bleeding the @!#)@(& out of them.
Several days ago, I got crazy enough to join a TA Aetherpath PUG. Again.
As usual, they were asking for EXPERIENCED players, and when I poked my head in, it turned out to be a guilded group of three players, two of which have never attempted the dungeon, one of whom never got past the door with oozes. Said players took one look at my AP, asked if I’d ever run the dungeon before and declared me honorary leader when I said yes. *sigh*
All in all, it wasn’t too bad. There’s a certain enjoyment I get out of teaching and watching a group learn a new tough dungeon, wipes and all. (Even better now that there’s no repair costs.) We lost our second PUG member at the ooze door, and the others managed to pick up a fourth guildie, which suited me just fine. Guildies don’t tend to quit. TA Aetherpath with a non-optimized group is all about not quitting.
Two hours later, we got the thing done. Chalk up one more successful PUG marathon through the meanie dungeon. Some day I’ll find a group that can manage to do it quicker…
Oh, and I’d assume Dry Top is still going, what with the need for geodes for the vine backpiece recipes and the new kites.
I haven’t been there in a bit, but should be revisiting the place soon(TM). Want those kites.
It’s truly fascinating how a couple of newly introduced items can revive interest in a variety of activities.
It’s all good though. Stagnant stuff and habits get boring. Breaking the routine and changing things up keep the game feeling fresh.
Why I Game 