Level 10 forager, botanist or tracker?

[Charlie Friggn Brown]

Which one is the better pick, and how does tracker exactly work?

[I Kinda Fail]

Botanist, because it carries over to things like truffles as well. (Probably a glitch, but it hasn't been fixed since release.)

Tracker just has tiny blue arrows on the edges of your screen, pointing in the direction of the forageables. I don't know if the arrows change size depending on distance or not... I think most people agree it isn't all that helpful as-is. If the arrow changed size and had an icon of what it was, that might be useful. For example, walking into the forest, and an arrow points south with an icon of a spring onion. I'd be annoyed if I walked for an hour only to get a bit of holly.

[Corwin Alexander Gaming]

Botanist: with the latest updates, all the forage items (including those you grow from seasonal seeds as well as truffles) are iridium quality. Finding forage items is trivial, so, to me, tracker is useless.

[Locke]

Botanist, absolutely no contest. Tracker has a little utillity I suppose if you have a hard time finding things to forage, but beyond that it offers basically nothing. Botanist however makes everything you forage iridium quality, and that is awesome, especially with truffles, since truffle quality effects truffle oil quality. Which will make that particular product worth far more. Plus for those who like forage as gift iridium forage will get you more relationship points. So all in all, botanist is far better and in my opinion is the best of all four level ten foraging skills.

[alicat1235]

It depends on what you're going for in the run. In my main file, I'm focusing on getting all the achievements. So I don't really care about getting iridium star foragables - I don't go foraging very often, truffles get made into oil anyways, and I have actual crops that will make me way more money. Tracker on the other hand is great for me! No more wasting time searching for items where there are none. You can just walk into an area and know if there's something and what direction to go in. This is especially great for my search for all the artifacts (never will miss a worm tile!) and utalizing my time more effectively. Time management is a big part of this game and being able to skip over an area instead of wasting 3+ hours walking around it to see if there are any items is a great asset

With that said, on my secondary file where I'm on the forest farm, I'm planning on going with botanist. The upgrade making all items iridium star instead of just gold adds appeal for this perk, and since I have the forest farm I'll be able to find those little money makers popping up right on the farm! Plus, I don't need to search for worm tiles (since I'm only trying to achievements on the main file) so I don't care if I miss them.

So it really just depends on your play style! Although, if you're planning on getting all the artifacts I HIGHLY recommend the tracker. It makes your life much easier.

[Nomis]

Originally posted by Chris:

Botanist: with the latest updates, all the forage items (including those you grow from seasonal seeds as well as truffles) are iridium quality. Finding forage items is trivial, so, to me, tracker is useless.

This.
OP in winter cause you find foragables, make seeds, harvest make seeds and so on until you cant fit more this season. Just so good

[timewar]

Originally posted by alicat1235:

Although, if you're planning on getting all the artifacts I HIGHLY recommend the tracker. It makes your life much easier.

This.

[Mrrshan68]

Tracker tells you worm locations?
Cause if it did then yeah i can see it being waaaay better than botanisnt because really who cares about money when a little min/maxing will give you more than you can ever spend. Those stupid worms on the other hand...

[YetiChow]

Originally posted by Mrrshan68:

Tracker tells you worm locations?
Cause if it did then yeah i can see it being waaaay better than botanisnt because really who cares about money when a little min/maxing will give you more than you can ever spend. Those stupid worms on the other hand...

Tracker shows you the locations of worms, shells, and forage plants which spawn in random locations. Last I used it, it didn't point to Spring onions or berry bushes.

In Winter, there are more worms than usual, although outside of the mountains they're mostly showing the locations of foragables (Winter Root, Snow Yams, and possibly Crystal Fruit too? Can't really remember...) you can dig up. Those extra worm tiles can make finding artifacts more frustrating, but when you know the locations of all the worms it becomes a simple matter to dig them all up.

[Corwin Alexander Gaming]

After another night of frustration searching for truffles in tall grass, I'm starting to lean toward tracker

[Corwin Alexander Gaming]

Originally posted by YetiChow:

In Winter, there are more worms than usual

That's just because all the grass is gone

[Hogweed Blitz]

I have played around with what you can do with Botanist. I dont think Tracker no longer has any real use, except for finding artifacts. Botanist gives Iridium quality for all forage items. Once you find one of each forage item, you can make a seed pack of 10 of them. You get a bunch of packets from the community center as well, you can usually plant a good crop in the 1st week.

All the items you get from planting will be Iridium quality as well. If you keep harvesting and planting, in 4 weeks of any season, you can get at least several hundred plants, many hundreds if you are diligent. In winter this is most important, as you can make a lot of money with that. I have over 750 planted right now, that harvest would give me thousands of seeds if I crafted them all.
I would imagine that would fill the farm completely with plenty to spare. So if you want to make a load of cash, you can go with botanist, as the Tracker is pointless for foraging with such a bounty of Iridium quality forage items you can grow, and is only useful for artifact spots, of which I mostly just get clay and mixed seeds anyway. In winter you can find many more artifact spots, and catch up on items for Gunther.

So I always go Botanist. But I recently read that the other option for getting hardwood is good too, but you wont make much money from that tree.