We Need to Discuss Herbalism

Gameplay Professions
#1

To quote the immortal words of Nier Automata: “This Cannot Continue”

Let’s face it, it’s a topic that comes up here every single day - Herbalism is in an absolutely horrific place right now.

Several things have led to the perfect storm of nastiness:

  • x5 multiboxing has become the meta for farmers, meaning they can fly around and destroy nodes on contact.
  • CRZ has created a situation where in farm-relevant but quest-irrelevant zones (read: Nazjatar), farmers are constantly sharded together, creating absolutely terrible conditions for Zin’athid farming (and to a lesser extent all other farming routes too).
  • The game’s economy is in an extremely strange state. Supplies are at an all-time high because of the multiboxers, but prices aren’t coming down and use is decreasing instead of increasing as more players quit, leading to a market state where crafted goods are selling under material price on any day except reset day.

So the ultimate question is, what can we do to fix this? From a player side… well, basically nothing. If you’re backed into a corner where you’re just farming for personal/guild consumption, it’s a nightmare - your requirements are far, far higher than what you can gather easily. (I don’t know about y’all, but my raid goes through about 600 potions and 2 cauldrons a night, that’s a hell of a lot of Zin’athid. And that’s per night, we raid x3 a week.)

On the backend though, we need to look at solutions for next expansion (or a patch, but not holding my breath on that). There’s some options:

  1. Personal Nodes. This is the FFXIV solution - everyone’s nodes are personal, visible to only your own character, and respawn dynamically. This means everyone can farm easily, and breaks multiboxers because their characters will have different nodes, meaning they need to be independently piloted. This is a great solution for individual gatherers, and while it may annoy mass farmers, it’ll stabilize the economy.
  2. Higher node tag limits. This is a bandaid solution that won’t work for long. No matter how high you raise the tag, eventually multiboxers will just run enough clients to solo pick them out and we’ll be back at square one.
    (Side note: This is fundamentally the same as increasing spawn rates, which is another suggestion I hear. It might make it possible for individual farmers to get ahead of the multiboxers, but the multiboxer problem will continue to grow.)
  3. Break CRZing. The “Classic” solution - you’re only farming and fighting against your own server. This is why these problems rarely showed up in the past - non-CRZed zones meant much less competition. This would restore us to that state without stepping on too many toes with the other solutions.

Which solution is best? Not for me to say. They all have pros and cons. I’m personally a fan of the personal nodes, but that’d require some unique engineering that I’m not sure the game was built for. Regardless, it’s time the problem was addressed.

10 Likes
#2

Multiboxing is not as big a problem as you suggest.

I’d be willing to agree that CRZ IS though.

We need to go to closed server groups to increase populations but close “loopholes” like this.

#3

While I’d love to agree, I genuinely cannot farm anymore without running into at least 1-2 5x multiboxers fighting over the same nodes. Maybe your CRZ luck has been better, but it’s an absolutely huge issue for a lot of us. (There are a ton of other posts in this very forum on it, it’s not just me.)

3 Likes
#4

Multiboxers are not as prevalent as you think.

#5

They absolutely are. I’ve played across different times of day over the last few months and no matter when I go out, the zones are heavily picked over and I always encounter multiple different chains of bots mass-mining a node.

All of these same problems apply to mining equally, though mining feeds a different set of professions which have a whole other set of very deep problems these days that can’t be gotten into here.

Point being, the lower emphasis on mining because it doesn’t directly fuel the endgame scene doesn’t make the problems outlined here any less relevant.

For my two cents, I would advocate for the idea of personal nodes. We absolutely have the technology already. It was on display at Domination Point back in Legion, where players of different classes all standing around the mage tower would see the area populated with completely different sets of NPCs and other decor. Applying this to mining nodes has zero downsides from a player perspective. IMO it’s the best option to simultaneously break multibox farming and make CRZ irrelevant.

Like it or not, as time goes on I think are going to see CRZ expanded rather than removed. The game world needs to feel like it has more people in it, not less, and personal nodes removes this as a factor.

5 Likes
#6

Yeah, agreed. Mining has its own unique problems because of how it functions - far less useful at endgame currently - but they’ve got some of the same root causes.

I feel like this point is something we all need to accept too. The continued use of CRZ and the expansion of server connections are increasingly likely, and are going to make these problems stand out much more over time.

#7

They absolutely aren’t.

Don’t talk in extremes. There aren’t enough of them around to affect everything that much.

Your anecdotal evidence is just that.

#8

The issues you raise have been around since legion and nobody complained about it then, the difference is that now you have 1 sought after herb in only 1 region that is an outdated zone. If ziln was also available in other zones like uldum and vale then we wouldn’t see this issue

2 Likes
#9

You’re right with the fact that the single zone for Zin’athid is exacerbating the problem, but it still needs addressed.

Lots of folks did talk about the problem in Legion as well, pointing out that some of the very things I said were going to be issues. Nothing was done, and we’re now running into these issues becoming more and more prevalent.

Previous reactions weren’t enough, so we’ve gotta get louder about it.

3 Likes
#10

I’m on blackdragonflight server group. There are 12k zin’anthid on the AH but it’s consistantly 80g per/16k per stack. It’s been the same way since 8.3 dropped. That’s crazy.
The region average is 50g per, which is still insane. 10k for a stack of herbs?

I bet the knee-jerk reaction from most of the wow douchebag community would be:
“farm your own herbs.”
I’m on a medium/small sized server and I’ve literally done all 3 of my companion quests and all of the wq in nazjatar and gotten 18 zin’anthid/4 nodes. There are literally NO nodes

edit:
I just flew from Kelya’s Grave flightpoint in NE to newhome and literally did not see ONE node.

1 Like
#11

I happen to like this solution the most.

Either that or make it so that only one person per group can loot a node.

3 Likes
#12

For more than 12 years, Herbs and Ore in WoW were single-pick. Whoever got to the node first got it. If you got there 1 second later, you didn’t get it. That only changed around 2018, to allow several pickers of the same node – but only within 30 seconds.

5-multiboxers make it like the old rules for you: if they get there first, you can’t pick it. You still can pick it if you get there first, like always.

So going back to the old rules hurts multi-boxers without helping you. A single player could prevent you from picking either way. And you still can pick everything you get to first, and everything that isn’t multiboxed. So the old rules don’t help you at all.

I think prices vary a lot by realm. I play on 2 realms.

On one, Zin’Anthid 44, Anchor Weed 97, the other 6 herbs all 4g-8g.

On two, Zin’Anthid 72, Anchor Weed 90, the other 6 herbs all 10g-23g.

#13

Herb and mining nodes are 10 tap, not 5. The problem is that the shard count was greatly dropped when 8.3 hit. Likely Blizzard re-purposing hardware for shadowlands. They’ve phoned in the end of the expansion. I’m on Area 52. A “full” server, and see lots of players from Whisperwind, Illidan etc. If though think for a second that a multiboxer doesn’t fly around for 10 minutes without seeing a single node, or goes to pick a node and it disappears right as they’re clicking, you’re dreaming. We deal with the same things that other players deal with. But just yelling “Multihaxors cheaters boo!” is easy to do, but it doesn’t really point the finger at the actual problem. At the very least, every server should have its own shard.

2 Likes
#14

Highest lvl herbs and ores should be in the highest leveling zones (lvling ilvl, not clvl at this point) to be gathered while playing. The new Uldum and Vale phases should include Zin’andhid and Osemite just for gameplay purposes. Some might say it doesn’t make sense, those aren’t native to the land. Well Outland has floating land, so we can just set the laws of nature and physics aside.

#15

Are they? I’ve either been particularly unlucky or run into packs of x10 multiboxers then, because I’ve definitely seen nodes just instantly vanish.

Let’s not pretend multiboxing isn’t a problem though, it absolutely is. The fact that even multiboxers are having problems stresses just how bad the situation is, when even the technique used to exploit the situation is struggling.

#16

Maybe identify multi-box accounts, and create a 5 sec CD between each herb gather for those accounts, so it’ll take a 10 account multi boxer 50 seconds to wipe out a node. Just because Bliz allows multi-box doesn’t mean they have to cater to them.

#17

It also means they don’t have to go to any trouble to disadvantage them, considering the mountainous backlog of actual bugs they have yet to fix.

#18

Outland is also a separate planet that has been ravaged by magic.

The fact of the matter is that Zin’anthid is a water dwelling anemonelike plant. How could it survive in a DESERT? At best you would only be able to find it in the water. The Vale of Eternal Blossoms, however, has no access to the sea so how could it support Zin’anthid?

Osmenite is a bunch a seashells embedded in rock. Uldum is a desert and likely has not ever been submerged in the sea. How could such deposits form? Same with the Vale.

#19

Why would sea shells make stronger armor and weapons than say platinum ore? Why can’t we find any Zin’anthid or Osmenite in Vash’jir? Maybe allow Whiptail and Desecrated Herbs be substitutes for Zin’anthid, stuff gatherers come across in the 8.3 zones.

#20

This. This. A million times this.