Gathering and Labour

Reading the work

Mining, woodcutting and skinning no longer use a timing bar. Each blow or cut shows a few spots on the stone, the wood or the hide. One of them shows the clearest sign, such as a crack line, a glint of ore, the split in the grain or the seam of the hide, and choosing it lands the blow. The rest are false signs.

• Rank makes it easier. The higher your tier, the clearer the true sign and the fainter the false ones. From Expert you choose from three spots instead of four.
• Nothing depends on your PC or your connection. There is no marker to chase, and the whole round gives you a minute and a half.
• Slips. A wrong choice is a slip. A few are forgiven; one too many and the round is lost.
• Walking away from a round, or losing it, leaves that seam or block resting for you for two minutes.
• Only a won round pays, and only a won round trains your skill.

Mining

Only a Miner may work ore veins, sea salt deposits and gem geodes. The first time you strike a vein you take up the trade for one point (see The Wheel of Skills). Your Miner tier decides which seams you can work, and a seam beyond you tells you so. Each tier keeps every seam below it. The table lists what the Bruma region holds.

What a seam gives

A worked seam pays more the higher your tier, up to double at Master.

When a seam rests

• A seam you have worked out rests for 30 minutes. Meteoric iron and adamantium, the rarest seams around Bruma, rest for an hour.
• The everyday seams (iron, copper, corundum and sea salt) rest for each player separately, so nobody has to race anyone for them.
• Precious and rare seams (silver, quicksilver, moonstone, gold, meteoric iron, malachite, adamantium and ebony), gem geodes and Geode Veins are shared: one miner works them at a time, and once worked out they rest for everyone.

Sea salt

Sea salt deposits are small and easy to miss, so they glow for Miners while they have salt for you, and go dark while they rest. Now and then a deposit gives up frost, fire or void salts along with the salt.

Mines around Bruma

• The Bleak-Frost Mine, a short walk west of Bruma along its own road: iron and corundum, and a few veins of gold. At the very bottom, three of the seams that look like iron hold meteoric iron. Gold and meteoric iron both need an Adept miner.
• The Bleak Mine: three of the silver veins deep inside are Geode Veins. A miner of Apprentice rank or higher cracks one open for an empty soul gem, most often a small one and only rarely a grand one, never black. Enchanters no longer have to leave Bruma for soul gems.
• Frostiron Mine, by Mountain Watch, is a working mine, not a dungeon, so nobody can claim it. Four of its iron veins give quicksilver instead, for a miner of Apprentice rank or higher.
• The Gutted Mine: three of its silver veins give adamantium ore to an Expert miner.

Woodcutting

Only a Woodcutter may use chopping blocks; the first time you set your hand to one, you take up the trade for one point. A higher tier takes more clean strikes to split the logs, but each split gives far more firewood, and the offcuts give charcoal too.

• A block you have split rests for 5 minutes, for you alone. Anyone else can use it in the meantime.
• The chopping blocks set up at Fort Caractacus and in Bruma work like every other block.
• Smelters burn firewood, and charcoal for the finer metals, so a smith always has work for a woodcutter (see Where it goes).

Skinning and tanning

Anyone can skin a common animal: press E on the body, and your character crouches at it while you cut along the seam. Rarer hides need a Skinner of the right rank, and only a Skinner may use the tanning rack, where hides are worked into leather. You take up the Skinner trade at a tanning rack.

• Skinning and tanning train Skinner once you hold the trade. Killing an animal never does.
• Some beasts give a trophy instead of a hide, each an Apprentice’s work: an ogre its teeth, a boar two tusks and a piece of leather.
• Once the hide is off, or if it is beyond you, search the body with E for the rest of what the animal carried, such as its meat. Every troll now carries its skull.
• Exotic hides tan into leather at the rack as well.

Harvesting

Plants, mushrooms, nests, crops and coin purses are Harvesting nodes. Most things set out in the world, on shelves and tables, are decoration and cannot be picked up: resources come from nodes like these, from containers, crafting and trade. Harvesting has no station. Pick plants and empty purses, and once you have done a level’s worth of work your skills menu (K) offers you the skill.

• A plant you have picked gives nothing more, and teaches nothing, until it grows back.
• A purse you have emptied fills again after 45 minutes, for everyone.

The farm and the kitchen garden

Bruma’s cooks and brewers live on what the farms give. Crops, churns and jugs are Harvesting nodes like any plant, so a good harvester takes more from them.

• Aleswell’s farm is planted with leeks, wheat, potatoes, carrots, gourds and grapes. Since 11 October the carrot plant gives carrots, not leeks.
• Butter churns give butter, and the milk jugs in Bruma’s farmhouses give milk.
• Salt comes from the sea salt deposits (see Mining), and a Blacksmith can render salt rock into salt at a smelter.
• Fields carry no lock: anyone may pick them. Guarding a crop is a matter for guards, patrols and bounties.

Only a Cook may use the cooking pots, spits and ovens that turn this into meals, and an Alchemist can brew drinks from wheat, grapes, honeycomb, juniper and other things that grow or are gathered. Crafting and Trades has both.

Where it goes

• Smelting. Ore becomes ingots at a smelter, the Blacksmith’s station. Every ingot burns 2 firewood. Iron, copper and tin need nothing more, but most metals from steel up need charcoal as well; when you run short of charcoal, 3 firewood stand in for each piece. See Smelting.
• Only the mine gives the rich metals. Quicksilver, moonstone, malachite, ebony, meteoric iron and adamantium never come from loot, ore or ingot: you mine them and smelt them. What you mine is yours to keep, and is never swapped for steel.
• Supply orders. Players post supply orders at notice boards, asking for a number of one item and setting a reward that the board holds. Bring the goods to a board in the same hold and you are paid at once for what you hand in. See Pigeon Post and Notice Boards.