Guild Wars 2

I think I’ve seen a thread on the topic before, but searching yielded nothing recent. Guess everyone’s busy with precursors

Anyway, gathering tools. The entire system is clumsy, and it’s a stark contrast with most of the game. Everything is streamlined, with less hassle compared to a certain other game – we have material storage (and a way to send items to it from anywhere in the world), TP usage from anywhere in the world, a fast travel system, etc.

In comparison to that, there are the gathering tools. You have to scrap them once you outlevel the zone they are meant for, and that’s not very nice, since while not expensive, they aren’t exactly cheap either. Master tools don’t tell you what their effective level is, or what their bonus chance is. There is no indicator if you can harvest a node with your currently equipped tool or not. Some nodes are all over the place – understandable for iron, which is used for several tiers of crafting. Frustrating for plants, since not only are there more types of them than probably both of the other nodes combined, a big amount of them seem to be as common in level 1 zones as they are in 70-80. Am I supposed to waste a mithril/orichalcum sickle on a carrot, or alternatively, to bring a bronze one and swap to it just in case (I don’t mind doing it for the mithril->orichalcum gap, but it’s crazy with plants)? And while carrots are obvious, there are a few plants that are not tier 1, for which their icons tell me more about what they’re supposed to be than their pictures (zucchini) – for all of those, and many more, I don’t know the appropriate gathering tool grade. There are just too many of them, and the lack of any indicator outside of “try and see if you get ruined plant fiber” is…eh.

Can we get some streamlining? I wish I didn’t have to buy an iron gathering set when helping out a buddy while he levels, or when doing my 100% world explorer, only to trash it at 80 uses. Even if I have to keep doing this, can I at least get an indicator before actually mining that my iron gathering set is enough for this here node?

Perhaps putting this is the suggestions forum would yield consideration of its implementation?

I think those are great suggestions. Maybe this thread does belong in the Suggestions forum, but I’d like to add my 2 cents since I’m here.

I’d really like the tiers of the tools to have an at-a-glance icon colour difference (e.g., give the copper axes, picks and sickles an orange-ish tint). I always carry around numerous tiers of tools and you can’t tell a steel axe from a copper one just by looking at the icon. When you’re in a zone where various levels are around, time really starts to add up as you mouseover 3 or 4 different axes to figure out which one it is you need.

In the meantime, Fadeway, you might find this list helpful:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gathering

It’s not as streamlined as in-game tool tips, but it’s certainly helped me keep things straight.

Its even worse with the plants because the tiers don’t align well. There isn’t a whole lot that a steel one will gather that a steel one wont, so I ended up going straight to darksteel while running steel axes and iron pics (or if I wanted gold steel pics)

Fadeway.3592:

Master tools don’t tell you what their effective level is, or what their bonus chance is. There is no indicator if you can harvest a node with your currently equipped tool or not.

This much at least I agree with. As the OP points out this is especially bad with the reward tools you get from story missions and chests. The tooltip sounds great — extra chance to get crystals from ore, etc. etc. — but it gives no indication whatsoever as to which tiers can be harvested.

It would be nice to have some indication as to whether the currently equipped tool will harvest or ruin the node you have highlighted.

I agree with the OP’s suggestions and complaints. I get that gathering is supposed to be another money sink but changing all tools to become soulbound and unsellable was a bit harsh.

(Although I am pretty sure they did this because you can buy tools with karma and they are SO against karma→gold they’d rather mess up other systems than to allow it.)

This may help some of you:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gathering_tools

Personally, I do not mind using orichalcum grade tools for harvesting everything because 4s per tool really isn’t too hard to get. That way I don’t have to bother figuring out whether they will work on a node ore not. By the time I’ve gathered everything I could with that tool’s 100 uses, I can sell those materials for plenty more than the original cost of the tool if I want to.

As an added benefit, I believe orichalcum grade tools have the highest increase in chance of getting items such as crystals from nodes.

Oh wow, re-reading this thread I had no idea that Master tools weren’t the same as Oric. tools – thanks for the head’s up, everyone! I’ll go dump those now since it’s not worth trying to figure them out and waste high-level nodes.

Since Ori tools are actually only used on Snow Truffles, Ancient Saplings and the rare Ori Node in Frostgorge, I run only mithril tools unless I’m making a specific trip to Orr. Once there, you use only Ori Sickles for all plants, Mithril for Cypress Saplings and Mithril Ore. So I do swap back and forth, but since I only carry one stack of Ori tools and several Mithral tools, pretty easy to keep them straight. If you check my sig, there are documents for each zone and those items needing Ori tools are documented.

I run the exact same setup in my gathering that Fedari mentioned. The only thing that I personaly would like to see is the tools account bound. I have received gathering tools from BL boxes I had to toss, because I couldn’t give them to my alts that could use them for thier appropriate level.

I can’t quote for some reason but yes- as the poster above me said it would be awesome if we could get tools account bound.
I typically only use ori and mithril tools but lately I’ve gotten lazy and just switched to ori tools for everything.
It would have been great if I could have kept all the old tools for alts in stead of destroying them to free up space- as it is I have an entire 12 slot pack just for tools, incase I run out :P