Suggestions

I just think that gathering needs a buff... myself and others are all having a hard time keeping large lairs fed, gathering just doesn't seem to scale enough with large lairs. Not more gathering turns per say, just gather more each time. A gathering buff.

In theory the current system of "expanding the gathering pool as you level -> have a chance of getting larger food-point drops" works in theory, but in practice the math is off. Level 40 players are [i]Quantity [/i]gathered also needs to scale properly. I do believe that amounts gathered should scale with gathering level rather than lair size. I'm not opposed to huge lairs needing to work to keep dragons fed especially now that we have the hybden. This is where other suggestions for expanding ways to get food (like a cooking system come in) That being said, I think how gathering works needs a big rework as well, and if it's done well enough a buff might not be needed. Currently FR pulls from a pool dependent on the flight you choose to gather in, and will include / exclude higher level items depending on your own level cap in that skill. The problem is that it doesn't exclude items from the low tiers, and it kind of makes sense - many of these items are gathering exclusive, and could be used in baldwin/hybden/swipp. I think that gathering needs to move to a venue focused approach where as your skill increases, more venues open up to you. Players hunting hybden items could still choose to gather in earlier venues, but players focused on high quantity foods (that wouldn't get swipp or hybden uses) could gather in the higher level venues. Smaller drop-pools that players can choose between make both sides of the coin happy. I'm also tempted to remove the strict elemental affinities of areas. There are only two cases where those actually matter - gathering elemental currency (now defunct - it doesn't matter where you gather during a festival you still get currency drops) and elemental eggs from digging. I'm actually not sure how to handle the elemental egg one tbh, making it completely random seems like a bit of a step back. So yeah the fishing tract might look like new players would only be able to fish in the "Bubbling brook" ([emoji=star size=1], 20 item pool average 2fp/item), a level 15 player might unlock the "Teeming Tidepools" ([emoji=star size=1][emoji=star size=1][emoji=star size=1], 15 item pool 4fp/item average), and at level 35 the "Graveyard Grotto"([emoji=star size=1][emoji=star size=1][emoji=star size=1][emoji=star size=1][emoji=star size=1], 10 item pool 8fp/item average) finally unlocks. Another thing that could help? a functionality that i'm going to call "hunting party". You pick one kind of food (meat/seafood/plants/insects) and start it to spend all of your gathering turns to bring back [b]more than[/b] your level's equivalent in pure foodpoints. (that is, if you would have gotten on average 4 points per item, 5 items per gather, and 15 turns, that's about 300fp. So sending a hunting party at that level would maybe give you 350fp) The fact that you need to click fewer times and get more food is tempered by the fact that you get no actual items (which can be sold, traded, or may have more value as hibden items), just the raw FP. And if it may still be too OP, consider having the ability to send out a hunting party only be available to the flights that placed in DOM (1st, 2nd and 3rd) that week. Idk, it's late and I'm rambling. Food for thought. Pun very much intended [emoji=tundra tongue size=2]

It would also help if always got at least one food item per gathering turn. Some turns I get one item, and its a familiar. You can't eat familiars. Or increase the amount of items you get with levels. Some days I get one item twice in a row and don't have enough to feed my dragons. Other days I have a little surplus. It's very random.

i was thinking about this recently, as well.

it seems to me that as i have maxxed out all gathering levels, i don't really get that much more 'stuff' than i did at lower levels. 3 of this, 5 of that, maybe up to 4 tiny stacks of something?

also the joke of, 'why did i send my dozen mighty dragons out, and they only brought back ONE MOSQUITO!?!?' (which happened years ago.)


shouldn't larger lairs have more gatherers? so it balances out how much stuff (hopefully FOOD) you get to sustain your clan?


maybe i specifically have trouble with this, because i don't do coliseum. i don't care for fighting (and actually, i find it boring).
also i have the (probably stupid) habit of not converting ALL my food horde to food points. (i'm working on therapy for that.)
plus the fact i'm not on the site every day, earning treasure via various other activities. so it's hard for me to keep my dragons fed.


which i guess is to be expected. but even when i was on more often, the tiny scraps of gathered stuff was... disappointing.

i know it's a delicate balance issue, but i hope someone can look into it. ...or if you have, just let us know! :)

It doesn't require a super complicated overhaul. As you gain levels in gathering, it should open up additional gathering "slots" which are always filled with the highest level food you have access to. So you still get your lower level items that you need, but you also get your higher level items. And this also prevents gathering from only returning one single item.

You should have to work for it, because it shouldn't depend on lair size... It depends on gathering level. So if your lair grows too big for your level, you starve or have to supplement somehow until you get your level up enough to support the lair. But the max gathering level should always be sufficient to fully support a maxed-out lair.

Still no support other than nixing the rare 1-item or familiar-only turns.

Avg food points gathered sits about 450-475 a day at max level (using multiple months of collected data), which supports the majority of a capped out lair. Baldwin can turn 4 fp of items into 56 fp worth at level 1, Coli at low levels still provides food, and it can be bought from players (or given via food bank systems)

If you max a lair, it should be done knowing it'll take a little more investment and time spent on the site to upkeep that optional 'feed all dragons to max' playstyle. There's no penalty for not doing it, dragons don't die, and can still be dressed, traded, and customized even with no energy.

You do gain significantly more food from lvl1 to max in gathering, both in average quantity and the fp value of items you can gather. Even saving everything with a use, it's a ~350-400fp average per day (again, coming from months of data) which supports 150 dragons in the lair, without even bringing up the HibDen where you can have hundreds more

Gathering desperately does need a revamp/update/buff of some sort. Support.

support. personally i have no trouble keeping my lair fed bc i can get a large amount of food from the coli, but not everyone can. either for disability-related reasons or bc they're too busy with other irl things to dedicate that much time to fr. maybe both

improving gathering in some way would make it way easier for those who can't or simply don't have the free time to coli grind keep their dragons fed. it would allow them to benefit from the well-fed bonus and retain the ability to do a lot of things on the site at all, since your dragons being hungry means you can't use them for a bunch of stuff

Update on the numbers since I've been logging it daily for a little over 230 days now

The sheet for those curious or wanting to record their own numbers https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HfGHcUXTgijYF2iU3ODTM70ilk56SQGEhluFkfyx0LM/edit

For maxed gathering (about 90% total days done entirely in Plague)
- Average amount of FP gathered is ~530 (~515 when including non-food gathering days)
- Average converted when stashing everything tagged for a feature is ~415 (~405 when including non-food gathering days)

Essentially, as long as you pop in once a day for 2 minutes to gather, you can fully feed basically 2/3 the lair cap without utilizing any gameplay supplement at all. So in summary, gathering is sufficient for the majority of players, provided they're actually gathering for food.

Choosing non-food gathering will severely impact the ability to feed a lair, because the amount generated in a turn is highly variable. Maybe using three turns for scavenging would only make you lose out on 50fp, maybe you'd lose out on 150fp.

Edit: This doesn't include any of the food from microholidays. Too irregular to be added in