Gathering

Nodes and tools

• Walk into a tree, rock, vein or plant to gather from it. Each walk-in is one swing.
• Every node has a skill, a minimum skill, a maximum skill, a number of harvests before it is worked out, and a refill time.
• Mining needs a pickaxe and Lumberjacking needs an axe, equipped and not broken. Foraging needs no tool.
• Tool tiers: Hatchet/Pickaxe 0, Iron 1, Copper 2, Silver 3, Gold 4, Mithril 5, Star Metal 6.
• Every swing wears your tool down by 1.
• Success chance: the standard curve (20% at the node's minimum, rising to 95% at its maximum), plus 2% per tool tier. The total is capped at 98%. The tool bonus doesn't apply below the minimum.
• Some nodes have a maximum skill above 100: Gold Vein 105, Ironwood Tree 120, Mithril Vein 125. Even a Grandmaster doesn't reach the top success chance on these.

Working beyond your skill

• You can swing at a node below its minimum skill, but you will mostly fail.
• A failed swing below the minimum ruins that harvest. You get "rubble" or "splinters", and the node loses one use.
• A lucky success below the minimum still yields normally.

How much you get

On a successful swing you get the node's normal output, plus extra of its main material. The extra is:

min(0.6, (skill − node minimum) / 80) + richness bonus + 0.06 × tool tier

The whole-number part is a guaranteed extra. The fraction is the chance of one more.

Hidden veins

• Ore veins and coal seams are hidden. They all look like a plain "Ore Vein" until you strike something out of one, and their info panel shows only the skill, not the requirement.
• Your first successful strike reveals the vein's real name and richness, for example "Rich Copper Vein".
• The vein stays revealed, even after it refills.
• Revealing a Rich or Bountiful vein shows a banner: "A find worth coming back to".
• If a hidden vein needs more skill than you have, a failed strike says so: "This rock holds metal beyond your skill (Mining N)".

Richness tiers

Every tile has a fixed richness, worked out from its position and the world seed, so a rich spot is rich again every time it refills. Tiles further into a zone, away from its entry, lean toward richer tiers.

• The harvest count is rounded, and a node always has at least 2 harvests.
• Rich and Bountiful nodes get a gold or highlighted frame on the board.
• Depth also changes which nodes appear. Further into a zone, nodes that need more skill become more common. Each node's spawn weight is multiplied by 1 + depth × (its minimum skill − the zone's lowest minimum for that skill) ÷ 25. Depth is 0 at the zone's entry and 1 at its far edge.

Rare finds

• Each successful swing has a chance at a rare find: (0.8% + 0.03% per skill point) × the richness rare-find multiplier. Practice spots have no rare finds.
• The find is drawn by weight from the items your skill allows. A node can only give finds whose required skill is no more than 60 above the node's own minimum, so the best gems still come from the hardest veins.

Refill

• On the surface, a worked-out node stays where it is ("Mined out", "Cut back", "Picked clean") and refills completely after its refill time. Rich and Bountiful nodes take longer: the refill time × their harvest multiplier (×1.6 and ×2.6).
• Underground, a worked-out node crumbles away for good, so tunnels never stay blocked.

Guardians

• Each harvest from a node with a guardian has a 0.8% chance to wake it:
  • Iron, Copper, Silver, Gold and Mithril veins wake an elemental of that metal.
  • Pine, Oak, Willow, Yew and Ironwood trees wake a warden of that wood.
• A guardian only wakes if its level is no more than 6 above your character level, and never within Havenbrook's safe radius + 4 tiles.
• It appears beside you, notices you from up to 8 tiles away, and leaves after 4 minutes on the surface.
• Guarded riches: every Rich or Bountiful node in the wild gets a monster spawn point next to it. The spawn point uses the zone's two toughest creatures allowed there, up to 2 levels above the area's usual cap. It refills like any other spawn, so the guard is back when you return. Nodes within the safe radius + 2 tiles aren't guarded.