Foraging

Foraging is the activity of extracting raw materials from revealed sources.

Foraging consists of lining up different actions in order to optimize the trade offs between the quality of the retrieved resources, the quantity retrieved before the source expires and the risks of foraging too hard. The foraging player has an energy bar that limits the power of the actions that can be lined up in a single session. Like all energy bars, it can be regenerated quickly by sitting down and focusing for a short while after a period of intense activity.

Foraging too hard can provoke a number of dangers and undesirable effects such as the emission of gas clouds or explosions from the source, the premature expiry of the source and provocation of the wrath of the local Kamis who nurture the natural environment. The wrath of the Kamis can draw its own dangers such as the spawning of hostile animals or a rain of damaging spells. As skilled players forage they must constantly monitor the state of the source and intersperse their actions with appeasing or protective 'protective' actions that make good the source and ward off dangers.

As foragers progress they can gain the use of a special user interface indicating the locations and content information for the different sources that are accessible to them.

Players will generally develop their prospecting and foraging skills at similar rates, allowing them to play alone. This said, a group of players, of potentially different skill levels, can share the benefits of the prospecting skills of the more advanced group members. While some players focus on prospecting, for locating the raw material 'sources', the rest of the group members can participate in the 'exploitation' of the sources via their individual foraging skills. The work of the foragers must be well coordinated in order for the application of protective actions to be correctly managed as an uncoordinated group is bound suffer the consequences.

The game's most difficult sources, which yield some of the most valuable raw materials, have extremely short exploitation times and cannot be foraged successfully without the initial application of a significant set of preparatory protective actions. These sources cannot be effectively exploited by players acting alone.