Guild Wars 2

Is it better to harvest everything or just the items you need? Or will the ones you don’t harvest prevent respawn of items you do want?

I’m pretty cheap so I don’t want to harvest items I don’t need if I don’t have to and save my uses on my pick/sickle/axe and such =p but right now I just get what I see. Mostly just curious.

I go out of my way to harvest all plants, because they have a chance of dropping dye. I also harvest all mithril / trees that give elder logs, and of course ori and ancient/orrian trees. For the rest, I stopped seeking them out when I had a full stack + full stack refined in my bank. I still hit them up if I’m rushing my daily, but I don’t go out of my way any more.

I always care a mithril and an ori set, and if I remember, I try to grab from my bank / alt an appropriately leveled set of tools if I know I"m going to be spending an extended period of time in a zone.

My personal guidelines go like this:
– if my character isn’t level 80, I harvest everything for the experience
– I harvest anything I don’t have 250 of in my Collectibles tab
– I harvest all root and herb nodes for a chance at rarer ingredients or unidentified dyes
– I harvest all T6 nodes (orichalcum, ancient/orrian, omnomberries, etc)
– everything else I skip

I harvest ALL the things! I store them up in my bank until I hit a full stack of 250, and then I sell it on the TP.

I buy only ori harvesting tools now and only with karma. Since karma is cheap I harvest everything I come across.

If you don’t have access to ori tools yet, a number of venders sell other tools for karma.

I prefer to harvest only stuff that is expensive to buy.

I normally ignore wood and lowbie ores. I’ve learned what herb nodes can give you the rare herbs, and harvest them (for example, find out what drops Coriander Seed, Vanilla Bean etc).

What I was trying to get at is, do you think there are any anti-farm type measures put in the game.

Such as, if I only harvest the ori nodes and nothing else there is a chance that a placeholder node will spawn in place and prevent more ori from respawning? If that is the case then harvest everything is highly recommended as you will only hinder yourself in the long run.

I do know that placement is somewhat randomized and they adjust periodically.

The reason this came up is because I was going around trying to find seasoned wood logs for crafting and I was only harvesting the tukawak trees, but there were inglewood saplings in the area as well. So eventually I started to just harvest everything just in case.

No, nodes are not on diminishing return. There are a set number of nodes on the map and if you harvest them they will respawn after a certain about of time. For the good stuff (rich veins, ori, ancient saplings, etc.) the respawn rate is approximately ever 24 hours. For everything else the rate is much shorter (around an 1hr?).

The positions of the nodes change with each new build.

Small pet peeve, diminishing return is not an accurate use here as things do not get worse with the more I do something. I think randomized placeholder is more in line with what i was asking, resulting in a chance that I cause all nodes to be something I don’t want unless I harvest every node so they have a chance to respawn and cycle through the possible placeholders. Or what ever nomenclature you want to use.

Although on a technicality I guess by reducing the amount of possible “good” harvest and filling them with “bad” harvests I am diminishing my returns? I just don’t think that is the intent of the term is all though.

Regardless, thanks for answers

harvesting is good xp while levelling regardless of what mats you get from it.

:( unfortunately I am doing this on my 80 with 227 skill points he is not using, so not worried about exp.