Guild Wars 2

I need advice.

With my current W3 build, I rely heavily on a certain food for might stacks and endurance regen. The problem is one of the ingredients for one of the ingredients of Orrian Truffle Stew requires Rosemary Sprigs on a 1 for 1 basis.

The issue is price and availability, the latter having a rather large influence on the former obviously. Rosemary only comes from Mature Herbs or Young Herbs, both of which have a 1 in 12 chance of being Rosemary when gathered. Given the randomness of herb patches in general, as well as the kitten resource nodes in W3, it’s almost pure luck to come across Rosemary in the world.

As such, it is currently selling for 7-8s per sprig. That’s about 1g for 12-15 sprigs. Is there any way to get these easier or cheaper? I spend about 80% of my time in W3 and actually lose money there since I don’t run with the zerg. The only thing I can think of is to use Karma somehow. I’ve played almost 3k hours of the game, have over 2 million Karma + jugs, but only like 10g to my name. Is there a way to use my Karma to get these??

Given that I regularly go pick up 25+ coriander seeds in an afternoon (a similar herb patch item that only appears in 1/4 of one zone that I know of), I’m pretty sure if you figure out how to harvest these -properly-, you’ll never go to the TP for them ever again.

Figure out which zone it grows in. Walk around the area once with a well-geared 80, finding all the herb patches. Then hit it again with every character you have that’s that level or higher moving directly from patch to patch rather than screwing around the way you have to during your scouting run to get the lay of the land. If there’s no server resets you can even use that knowledge 2-5 days in a row. Boom. Anticipate a dozen in less than an hour.

Being an Herbal specialist in this game actually means something right now and the market is reflecting that a LOT harder than it originally did 8 months ago. I think it could really stand to be sped up greatly though. For instance if they gave us Functional mounts that actually broke 66% travel speed (instead or the useless e-kitten mounts that other MMO foist upon their players for needless grind)… Then they wouldn’t have to just go to the straight up Wellfare of making Herb nodes so common than they lost all value…

But in general: Those of us who need niche food, have a duty to “RP the Durmond Priory” by memorizing what herbs typically “grow” most in which zones. Rosemary for example I’ve found quite a few of in the more “rugged” ~40/50 zones… Lower Lornars, Blazeridge(Along with Dill!), Dredhaunt, Timberline, & Iron Marches. If you have multiple characters all parked in the same zone, you can hit every node in rapid succession on each one until it’s time to start over and then the nodes will all have respawned again within an hour…. (nike just said the same thing first, and better than I could). Needless to say, if one of those zones finds you on a hot-streak of the Herb you’re looking for then there’s no reason to go to any of the other ones, and VisaVersa for when you’re having bad luck…

Well yeah…I was hoping to accomplish this while in the Borderlands. :P But if I must spend time to pve so I can pvp so be it. Thanks for the locale tip irl.

Just in case, anyone have any numbers on herb patches in the W3 zones?

If Irl is finding them in 40-50 PvE side, then the corresponding hunting ground is going to only exist in the eternal battlegrounds. The borderlands harvest nodes never get above tier 3 that I know of. Right around Stonemist is T5, so you probably want outlying areas of EB. Look for platinum, then look for plants near it.

The herbs in the southeastern part of dredgehaunt return rosemary at a very high rate.
It’s definitely better than 1/12. Different zones specialize in different herbs so even though young/mature herbs can return 12 possible types of herbs you’ll only see a few different types from each zone.

Park a character in that area, every time you log in and log out do a bit of harvesting… in a few days you’ll get all the rosemary you need.

Oh… I just looked at the food you wanted to make: the Orrian truffle and meat stew… where do you find the sage for that? I believe sage is found in the eastern Charr lands, but I haven’t been able to find a consistent source for it.

Sage definitely seems to have a wider level range. Maybe even ~27 & up…

Nike.2631:

If Irl is finding them in 40-50 PvE side, then the corresponding hunting ground is going to only exist in the eternal battlegrounds. The borderlands harvest nodes never get above tier 3 that I know of. Right around Stonemist is T5, so you probably want outlying areas of EB. Look for platinum, then look for plants near it.

That’s precisely what I thought too when he mentioned WvW…
(boy, borderlands really need some work… stinkin ghost towns)

Sage Leaf? I seem to get a ton of them from harvesting Young Herbs in Kessex Hills. I’m almost at a full stack after running through the map on all 5 of my alts.

Wiki says Sage comes from Herb Sprouts, Verdant Herbs, Taproots, and Young Herbs. So yeah, easier to find. Thanks Lord Kuru for the specifics on Dredgehaunt.