forage (general type) +(specific kind)

[zanthalandreams]

This is definitely one of those low-priority, low impact kind of ideas for code tweaking.  

Would it ever be possible to specify a specific target for your foraging?  For instance, say I am in the business of roasting pink tubers.   I only want pink tubers, anything else is a waste of time.  So, I would type in forage roots pink.  

This shouldn't improve my general success chances at all.   I think in doing such a thing, I would find as many pink tubers as I normally would without the specific arguement.   The difference here would be that any success with the skill that resulted in anything else would be counted as a failure.  

So why?  Less object clutter.  No drop this, drop that, drop this, drop that.  
I imagine this would make for less unnecessary warehouse packing ("Hey boss, we only found one pink mushroom, but lookit all these green furry ones we brunged back!)

[ashjpd]

SKILL_FORAGE                                                   (Perception)

  This skill allows your character to attempt to find things in the area
that could be useful.

  Currently rocks, stones, wood, salt, mushrooms, roots and artifacts  
are available arguments.  Your chance of finding anything is dependent
on the terrain.  
  In the future, more things will be available to be foraged.

  Note: What you may be able to find differs according to both your
character's skill level and guild.  For example, only rangers can
forage for food.

I am pretty sure that it wouldn't matter if you typed "forage tubers pink" or even "forage food". I am pretty sure that you will still get different types of food when you type, "forage food". Such as mushrooms.
As above, it also depends on the terrain. Such as, maybe some areas might have more pink tubers than others or/and maybe pink tubers are rarer then most tubers.

I know this wont help, but hopefully it made a difference. Although, it would be fun to be able to forage for specific things like that.

[Anonymous]

I'm with ZD on this one.  Maybe the failure rate would be set so that it you don't end up coming home with more than what you would normally find, but sometimes when you are just really looking for a big block of jasper it's obvious you wouldn't care about that flint shard.

[Angela Christine]

I would like the inverse, forage with no arguments, or "forage all".  Stones, salts, wood, artifacts, etc., you want whatever is there.   I've found a use, and a buyer, for almost everything I've ever found foraging, none of it is completely useless.  Sometimes from the room description it isn't obvious what sort of things can be found, if anything, and going "forage wood, forage wood, forage wood, forage rock, forage rock, forage rock, forage artifact, forage artifact, forage artifact, forage root, forage root, forage root" just to see if -anything- is foragable there is annoying.  Pulling up a reed might reveal a rock, digging out a rock might reveal a root, and so on.  I find it silly that my character will ignore that diamond shard or chunk of amber because she is mainly looking for roots today.  :roll:  It would be helpful for general scavengers who aren't looking for something specific, just anything at all that might be worth a couple coins.

AC

[Dakkon Black]

I like what AC says there and it's very valid. So what about something like,

forage topics    or forage what

Your look about at the surrounding area

There are rocks here
There is salt here
There are roots here

Now you know what you can forage in that area. It would just make sense that your char would be able to tell what there is there to look for. And it could still work on the forage skill so that if you suck as you wont be able to tell that there are roots here etc.

[X-D]

Don't like that myself Dakkon, in my experience, the room desc is pretty accurate to what you can forage, if it is not, I bug it, normaly it even gets fixed that week.
Forage all, I like, and ZD's I like, should be pretty simple to do also, add a line to the forage script to match the entered item, if the item found does not match, it is never created and the player gets a fail message.

Sure, it will help with item numbers and room clutter and somebody having to junk/drop 6 items in a row that they never would have picked up in the first place.

If I'm looking for a large hairy pink tuber, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to bypass the smooth green root.

Or, if I'm looking for blocky chunks of obsidian, I'm not gonna mistake a small chunk of alabaster for it.

Though, I would not set it up to work on a keyword but an exact match, I would not have it so you can forage brown and end up with brown tuber, brown root, chunk of brown rock, but instead you would have to put in the complete sdesc.

[spawnloser]

That way, Dakkon, would make it too easy, I think.  It would cue people too easily on to what should be found where, and that is something that people should have to experiment with and find out themselves.

[Kalden]

I think both letting people search for specific items and 'forage all' would be good. Very good, in fact.

I also wouldn't have a big problem with letting people know what items are forageable in each room, as many rooms seem deceiving to me, but I don't think that idea will sell very well to this crowd.

[zanthalandreams]

SKILL_FORAGE

Thanks for the help file there, but its a code suggestion rather than a question about how the skill is used.  

I don't necessarily agree that it is "silly that my character will ignore that diamond shard or chunk of amber because she is mainly looking for roots today.   :roll: "

Say I am one heck of a Sandstone Paperweight maker, and I'm out digging around for Round Sandstone Chunks.   That's all I'm looking for.   I might see some clear shiny piece of rock, but for all I know it could be a shard of quartz, a monster of a salt crystal, or a fossilized mekillot testicle.  I'm not a jeweler, so how am I going to know that it is a diamond shard or that diamond shards are worth all that much?.   Well, there is the sdesc that says its a diamond and my own OOC knowledge that diamonds are worth a whole lot down at Kay's Jewelers.   Would (should) my character ignore it?  Yeah.  

Push code aside and digging for diamonds is quite different than gathering mushrooms or collecting branches.  I step out into my garden to (specifically) harvest my turnips and I don't accidentally dig up my garlic,  nor am I likely to unearth the Hope Diamond instead.   :wink:

Perhaps instead of a "forage all" the "forage" command if entered alone would send some kind of hint message like "clean" can.

forage

The soil is very rocky but seems rich enough to support plantlife.  

Various stones litter the area, many of them half-buried by the arid sands.

Deadwood is scattered about this clearing.

[crymerci]

I totally support both zd's idea and AC's.  If I go to an area where both loreshi reed and numut vines are available, and I only want to find loreshi reeds, I shouldn't be uprooting all those vines unnecessarily then having to drop them.  The two items look different enough so that I can't mistake them for one another.

On the other hand, I disagree with X-D's final point, in that you should not need to match an exact sdesc.  If I have my eyes open for alabaster, I may not be able to tell as I start to unearth a particular piece whether it's a palm-sized chunk or a head-sized piece.

Forage without arguments also makes sense, if you are visiting a new region and you're unaware whether the soil's rich with amber, or purple roots, or yellow grass stalks.

[Bestatte]

The forage (without arguement) idea might also be a great tool in uncovering unimplemented areas.

Currently, if you type "forage wood" in a room, you might find wood or you might not. You might have to try a few times before you actually find a vine or reed or twig, if one is there to find. This is fine, however if there aren't any woods in the area, and the room description indicates that there are, then you're just wasting time trying.

I've bugged whole sections of rooms where the descriptions say very plainly that there are numut vines or loreshi shrubs all over the place, and even some rooms that have extra descriptions of trees right there at the bottom of the paragraph, which you can look at. And yet there aren't any vines or twigs or branches or reeds in the rooms. I go back to check every once in awhile, and come up with the same results over and over again.

If "forage" (without arguement) was implemented, it would make life so much easier for me as a player, because I could see that no, there ain't nuttin here, and move on to somewhere else without spending any more time trying to find what SHOULD be there, but isn't.

[Gilvar]

The descriptions of the rooms and the messages received from foraging are well enough determinerers of what can or cannot be foraged in an area. If your in a rocky wasteland you will most likely find stones there if you search long enough. If this rocky wasteland describes roots protruding from the ground here and there you may well find tubers (if your a ranger). If your in the middle of the salt-flats you'll find salt. If your in the middle of the forest you'll find wood. If your in an area described maybe as ruins or littered with ancient artifacts or something you may find artifacts if you search hard enough.

You will be almost specifically told if your searching for something that is not there. Foraging for rocks in a rocking landscape might produce: You look around but can't find anything. Meaning you just couldn't find it. When you try and receive: You look around but find no stones. You actually have realized there are NO STONEs there and should stop looking.
There are probably similar messages on similar forage-attempts, but I'm just too lazy to go searching for them.

Common-sense of your surroundings would work alot better then a smidgen of code that basically spoon-feeds you the applicable foraging options in your current location.

Rocks/Stones seem interchangable, Mushrooms/Roots do as well. Forage alone I have never succeeded (even as an immortal) in finding anything, though you'd think it would be similar to 'forage all'.

While personally, the tedium of picking up several hundred pebbles before finding that bit of super-enchanted steel ore is indeed tedious, I rack it up there with what I'm doing. Instead of typing: forage rocks metal, (to represent my searching solely for metal) I would merely type forage rocks and just toss aside whatever I find, or emote that I knock it aside as I search.

If forage were refined at all, I'd like you to be able to search for roots as a non-ranger. I don't see why you need a hard-coded aspect on you to be able to pick up roots in a grassy-area. I understand that rangers have an assumed background of woodlands-ness, but maybe that should give them the ability to identify the nutritious/poisonous roots, but ANYONE should be able to find them.

[Anonymous]

I've always thought the ability to forage roots would make a dandy addition to a subguild.  Or maybe part of a general 'Outdoorsman' subguild that got that ability, a ride boost, the ranger's abilities relating to the weather and a forage boost, or something.

[Anonymous]

I like the idea of foraging all items.. broadening the search is reasonable.

I am against the idea of being able to narrow it down.  What would that be, really?  Cutting out steps of the process... steps like tossing aside what you don't want.. looking over something and continuing the search.  So why not do just that.  Toss aside the things you don't want.  Play it out instead of letting the code rob you of that realism.  And you don't have to take home everything you find.. or clutter the room with it.  You can junk things.. and play it like they are just being added back into that environment for someone else to find again.

[Gorobei]

Play it out instead of letting the code rob you of that realism.

You can simply emote whatever you want, without finding actual coded items to discard.  That's what the skill delay is for, after all.

[X-D]

On the other hand, I disagree with X-D's final point, in that you should not need to match an exact sdesc. If I have my eyes open for alabaster, I may not be able to tell as I start to unearth a particular piece whether it's a palm-sized chunk or a head-sized piece.

Maybe you will or maybe you will not, the reasoning behind an exact match is more a balance issue then anything.
Unlike a lot of people I normaly attempt to think game balance before offering any type of suggestion.
If it was to be made so that you could look for a specific type, I think it should be in addition to existing methods of forage rather a replacement for, and somebody who is looking for a specific type of rock -should- have a harder time finding that type then they would if just trying to find any old rock.
If you want more then one type of alabaster then you would have to activly -look- for more then one type of alabaster. Sure it would take longer to get all the sizes of said type of rock, but it should, at the same time, it would get rid of the other problem that people would complain about if it was implememnted with keyword only.

So, you are looking for flint, you type forage flint, you get small shard, small shard, flake, small shard, shard, large shard, you wanted large shard, but you still had to sift through the rest, realistic, sure, a real improvment on current method, not really.

Using above string of searches and exact match, you would have failed to find anything 5 times before getting the one your were looking for, but at least you would not have a pile of flint laying there.

Besides, I'm sure it would likly be easier to implement exact match.

But all in all, it would give the player some choices, You could forage each type one at a time or you could simply forage rocks and eventually end up with each type anyway.

[crymerci]

Well, the other problem with exact match is that if you've never found the item before, or you don't remember the exact sdesc, you won't be able to specifically look for it, even if you know what color it is, what general size it is, the texture, the weight, and various other properties, and you know it can be found in that location.

In other words, you know what the item looks like and that it can be found there, you just don't know the specific series of words that are attached to it.

[creeper386]

I think a forage all idea would be a good thing. As, sometimes ICly you aren't looking for anything specific. You are just looking for something that might be valuable. Sure it might give away some things that are foragable there but are harder, but it seems certain items are harder to dig up anyways, so I think the code already handles that.

I have mixed feelings about foraging for specific keywords and such, I see that as being able to unbalance things hardcore. Someone finds a place where they can forage for a shard of metal, and they spam forage specifically for that item. Sure it'll be difficult to find still if coded right but ... It'd be alot easier to just type, forage artifact shard of metal, then to deal with coming up with all that other junk to sort though... Although I could see foraging for alittle more specific things being useful at times too...

[X-D]

In other words, you know what the item looks like and that it can be found there, you just don't know the specific series of words that are attached to it.

Then that is played that you simply don't know the item well enough yet, use a generic form (forage rocks for instance) Till you do know the item well enough.

[Sandstorm Phoenix]

I have mixed feelings about foraging for specific keywords and such, I see that as being able to unbalance things hardcore. Someone finds a place where they can forage for a shard of metal, and they spam forage specifically for that item. Sure it'll be difficult to find still if coded right but ... It'd be alot easier to just type, forage artifact shard of metal, then to deal with coming up with all that other junk to sort though...

The way it was suggested, there is no greater chance for success in finding Object X.   How would that unbalance?   How is that (spam foraging) different from how forage is used now?   The only difference with +specific added is that any success outside of your specific item would be counted as a failure.  Seems like it'd make foraging even harder/less profitable because it takes out the chance of you randomly getting some kind of sweet thang you didn't expect or have never seen before.  

Hardcore?

(edited for softcore clarity)

[crymerci]

In other words, you know what the item looks like and that it can be found there, you just don't know the specific series of words that are attached to it.

Then that is played that you simply don't know the item well enough yet, use a generic form (forage rocks for instance) Till you do know the item well enough.

Apparently I didn't make myself clear.  You, the player, don't know the exact five-word phrase that denotes that particular item, although your character may be quite familiar with the item.

For example, your character can try to find "a head-sized chunk of red sandstone" because your character has found them before and know what they look like.  Unfortunately, you, the player, forget that it's really "a head-sized block of red sandstone" and so, even though you know what you're looking for, and that it can be found there, you'll never find it.

Having to know the precise sdesc will just lead to people keeping ooc charts and logs of the precise sdesc of all sorts of items, which I don't think enhances roleplay at all.

[creeper386]

Well the fact that you don't have to deal with all the other items you can just spam forage for that specific item. Yes, as I STATED it wouldn't be any easier to find said item, but you wouldn't have to deal with any sort of hassle at all except hitting enter and perhaps tossing out some emotes.

As I also said I'd think it'd be useful to. Thats the point of the mixed feelings. If you read the quote, I said all of this within there. It'd still be hard to find, but it's alot easier to just type keep entering 'forage artifact shard of metal' then it is to 'forage artifact' and deal with all the junk you find.

It's the fact that sometimes ... You SHOULD have to dig through other things, and it should be a hassle to find what your looking for. Sure you might miss out on some things but over all probably aren't going to be worrying about those things if your looking for something VERY specific that is VERY useful.

Overall, I don't know. I think it just wouldn't work being item specific, perhaps having some specifics but not being incredibly open, or just one item. Although I am for being able to look for anything rather it be rock, wood or what have you.

Creeper

[Sandstorm Phoenix]

So where does the hardcore unbalancing part come in?

[sacac]

I infact like the plain 'forage' I, however am not in favor of the 'forage specific' type thing
I would like to get a greater chance of finding something then unless I'm looking for a specific thing.. And if you found something you don't want.. just drop it or junk it.. to put it back where it came from.

[Twilight]

Just to comment on a couple of things Gilvar said, stones is the only type that I remember giving a different message.  The only one I am unsure of is roots/mushrooms, not having played a ranger in awhile.  Wood, salt and artifact give the same message if you fail to forage or if the item type is not present.

As for roots, when it was first implemented, everyone and their mother in Allanak would go out foraging for roots, which didn't seem realistic, so it was changed.  Its the IC knowledge to know where to look, in a barren, desert landscape that I think is what made it ranger specific.

With the whole item type thing, I kind of dislike the idea of being able to search for a specific thing.  But its just an opinion, I don't have anything behind that to say one way or another.