Foraging: Bug or just balance? Edit: Appears potential bug/savefile inspection

[Markus Reese]

I chatted with a channel moderator about this earlier. Prior to that, I had bug reported so didn't want to spam or re-file a bug report. However it is something that has really started to get to me in play and because of the time it takes to go through a couple weeks of play to test my theories, can get frustrating.

Summation: Where is the forage items? They are needed for quests and other progressions, but so rare that one cannot enjoy being a forager/fisher player. It did not seem that way when I started playing though on release. I have three spring starts that I have been mentally comparing.

1. Casual play start with much socializing, figuring out mechanics and map. Seemed to find reasonable quantities of forage goods just in random travels.

2. Restart cause I wanted a better start to how I ran the farm. Had a dry spell without rain after first week. Roaming to forage, couldn't find anything. Other difference from first play (potentially relevant) is that I cleared the town/forest and north of weeks, rocks and deadfall.

3. Restart from frustration of not getting a dandilion the whole spring aside one at start which I gave as a gift to an npc. Did not want to buy at flower festival since that went against my roleplay attitude considering I daily did a forage run.

In the third play through, I have even resorted to save scumming. It has been a wet season throwing out rain affecting on top of a developer commenting in a thread that rain does not relate to forage goods. However, finds still extremely rare. By save scumming, I start the day and just roam every nook and cranny trying to find a forage good. After which, I quit and restart that day, noting where the item was. RARELY I have found one.

Once again, cleared all debris from forest and such.

It is just so different from my initial play, and frustrating is why I wonder if it is a bug throwing out balance. Others in talks have the theory and wondering if something is broken when the lost book says that clearing will improve foraging. I am planning on doing a test file that is nothing but forage and leaving the forage area stuff alone to see if it gets more spawn or if something is off causing it to decrease forage spawns. Will update in a few hours....

[wombat]

Was looking through the bug reports for just this topic, as I'm having similar problems finding forage items. I haven't been as methodical about it as you, but, qualitatively speaking, I noticed a pretty sharp drop-off around the end of spring/beginning of summer (perhaps patch #2 but I can't be sure) and have become increasingly frustrated by it.

I'd be interested to know if the dev and/or moderators have any information on this.

[Markus Reese]

Originally posted by awamsted:

Was looking through the bug reports for just this topic, as I'm having similar problems finding forage items. I haven't been as methodical about it as you, but, qualitatively speaking, I noticed a pretty sharp drop-off around the end of spring/beginning of summer (perhaps patch #2 but I can't be sure) and have become increasingly frustrated by it.

I'd be interested to know if the dev and/or moderators have any information on this.

Test forage report. No clearing forest or collecting of spring onions. Combined totals for dandilions/daffodils/leeks/horseradish (R) for rain day. Note. I am only foraging. No talking/TV/fishing/etc. Sleeping early in day. Start rounds right at 6, and finished roam by 3ish.

Day 1: 5
Day 2: 2
Day 3: 4 (R)

In my play 2 and 3 mentioned, I would be clearing the forest and town by this point of debris

Day 4: 3
Day 5: 2
Day 6: 0 (-:
Day 7: 3
Day 8: 1
Day 9: 0 |-:
Day 10: 1
Day 11: 1
Day 12: 0 )-:
Day 13: 0 D-X<


This is still doing better than the last two springs. Route taken was exactly the same. It is a chance that my first playthrough seemed better because I was not actively searching. It is noted that you can see that there is a falloff happening.

NOTES:
I feel that I am visiting all accessible locations to me at this point in the game
A couple were found behind trees, though I was not actively checking behind every one
Majority were found on north path, town or bus stop.

I backed up opened the save file in notepad prior to running day 13. I changed my forage path to reach town a bit later after egg festival.

Daffodil appears as a stack 7 and a stack 1
Dandilion stack 9
Leek stack 2
Horseradish stack 4 and a stack 1 three times.

Comparing to my later date playthrough file I am currently doing, yet still spring:

Daffodil stack 1 (Chest)
Dandilion (none)
Leek stack 1 (chest)
Horseradish stack 1 (chest) and stack 1 five times

Observationally, I am thinking there is a bug with horseradish? I have backed up both saves if there is a way to transfer them to inspect. I have held my play due to the frustration of these forage goods. Not sure if this carries into other seasons with different goods.

[Sirithre]

I started a new save last night. I have not sold anything but fish
From foraging I have gotten:

2 Leek
8 Dandelion
4 Daffodil
6 Horseradish

I am only on Spring 21 and have not been actively looking for foraging items, just coming across them as I wander about town.

Edit: Oh and 42 spring onions.

This seems normal and not bugged at all.

[Markus Reese]

That is on par with what I found in my pure forage hunt and most of those were not really out of the way. Spring onions I purposefully did not harvest. In my main player playthrough, I had sold or gifted what I had found down to quantity of one.

It does not change the fact that the game file says there is multiple one to be foraged on the field but nowhere to be found. That is indicative of a bug. The fact that a player can spend majority of the gameday multiple days in a row without finding anything is also problematic.

So begs the question, where can they be? I mean if they want, I can copy/paste the savefile info for them. for the crops and it would be interesting to see where they are.

You say is working normal, my game file begs to differ unless they have all hidden somewhere in plain sight in my file. Save file says they are there somewhere, but playing, cannot find.

I go:
Up north out of the farm
East on path north of farm
Go around the tent
Along cliff path south of tent
Across to Adventurers building
Follow the dead river pathway
South along the northern lake
Check both lake islands
Across to Carpenter's shop
Zigzag explore community center
Zigzag explore east side of town's river
Zigzag main body of town
Go through bus area cutting to north side of road as well
Through farm to forest
Go clockwize around forest zigzagging til I reach wizard
Follow west side of forest down and around to mouse hut
Across bridges to spring onions
Zigzag explore spring onions including sewer area
Exit north from spring onions and around the farm
Finish off zigzagging central body of forest including south northern lake portion

Not sure where I have missed?

Without dev tools or coding knowledge, I can tell that there are supposed to be one daffodil and three horseradishes somewhere and cannot find them on test. And I did even check garbage cans. For my main play, there should be five horseradishes somewhere. Need to know how the location system works from a code standpoint to pinpoint.

So where did I miss? Even if I did miss something, this is problematic play from a pure enjoyable gameplay experience that others have mentioned. Plus, RNG. If they are spawning somewhere inaccessible on a rare chance, that could mean you lose your foraging earlier/later such as my second play where after a week I had nothing when searching while play 3, I had found stuff a few more times.

[Sirithre]

It is not a bug. Your first spring you have not yet opened up the train area above robin's house. Things can still spawn there.

You probably haven't unlocked the Quarry yet. Things can spawn there.

You probably haven't upgraded your axe to go to the hidden forest.

You're looking far too much into it and should not be able to access EVERYTHING fresh into the game. The whole point is to keep you wanting to unlock things and upgrade tools and find new things. =/

I don't understand why you're stressing over something so trivial when there's a million other things to do in the game.

Now, before launch things were spawning in off-screen fenced areas there were not accessible at all by anyone. THAT is a bug. Having terrible RNG is not.

Edit: All that being said, I brought it to the dev's attention when you were stressing about rain. He chose to leave the spawns as is.

[Markus Reese]

See, that is an answer in and of itself. The fact that goods can spawn in other unknown areas... From a developer standpoint, that is not a good thing if it means it is taking away initial game products from the players. Players like myself.

It is poor beta testing if you think that something is okay because something else can be done. It is understandable however that it is low priority given the othe bugs, such as crashes or freezing showing up. All said, foraging can be part of how somebody starts to play, somebody like myself.

I start playing, see forage goods. I decide I want to farm, chat and forage as my play. Suddenly half my gameplay time is spent getting frustrated because what was available is now somewhere else unaccessible. I have objective that I see right in front of me and not really getting because what I need disappeared from normal forest and spawned in a hidden forest?

Ergo what you are saying is that over half my time playing has been in error entirely because what was accessible became inaccessible. Time that I was getting frustrated wondering what was going on. Notices about foraging being a good supplement and clearing the junk from forest makes for keen foraging.

They need to ad an adlib that foraging is only somewhat relevant IF you are not actively foraging or if you have unlocked EVERYTHING!

In my view, that still makes it a bug if playing one of the thing the early game promote makes it actually detrimental. The time I spent foraging I could have instead been mining or fishing? Well, that leaves the topic dropped as now what I originally hypothesized is a fact. Whether or not it is accessible in the future does not change what is accessible now. Unlocking new areas should grant you more or different, not just the ability to maintain what you had.

Edit: Which means, once again another restart as this savefile I wasted the entire spring running around foraging for one dandilion.... Sigh...

[Sirithre]

Don't get me wrong, I definitely agree it can be tweaked as far as maybe spawning more often, or having the inaccessible/unpicked ones despawn faster so they can respawn elswhere.

But much like some people's games don't rain as often than others due to RNG, It's not technically 'broken' or 'bugged' ; Saves where it doesn't rain as often won't have as many chances to catch certain fish, for example. Your farm and your resources will be different that another person's or even another save file. This is beneficial for replay value and for variety when watching/talking to other players.

Someone might get lucky and find a ton of forageables and make a ton of money. Someone else might need to spend more time fishing or mining to make the same amount of money.
A sense of randomization is a good thing overall.

In fact, 2 months ago I was able to easily gather 600+ salmonberries one season. CA quickly nerfed that.


But yeah, there's a few more pressing issues at the moment, such as crashes and freezes in certain situations. Foraging will definitely be reevaluated at some point, though.

[Markus Reese]

Thanks for getting me the answer though. As you said in your earlier example, I was getting frustrated at two playthroughs trying to forage with the foraging quickly dying off. While rain is sort of a nice bonus, there was nothing indicating that foraging would end up with deadspells. The in game literature more presented it to be a good thing starting. The TV reports and lost books I found all made it seem like an early game alternative. Farming/fishing/foraging/mining.

Getting the answer and being able to answer the problem better when the forage question comes up will be helpful. In the event somebody cannot find something, can wait a few days then look again. Daily searching when it would be a while before it could show up was making me start wanting to throw hands up in the air. Also means I gotta be sure to get thoses mixed crops going before stuff disappears :3

Have not had any problems at all with how the rest of the game is. Some balance issues if you are a min/max player, but as a roleplayer, that is the only negative I have had. Well, I will get this new character back through spring and frustrations will be gone. Now that I know it is better to spend time in the mines instead of seven game day hours roaming the map....

[Sirithre]

After double-checking, I've actually just been told that each map has it's own internal forage limit.
Which means inaccessible areas are NOT limiting your spawn rate.

Which is interesting, as I've had a dry spell, remembered to go up to the spa area and found several up by the trains, then next day find more elsewhere.
So, apparently coincidence.

Which means if you're low on forageables they're probably hiding behind trees, which could potentially be an issue. Perhaps just reducing the chance of spawning behind trees (but still be possible!) will help it feel more balanced.



(See, I admit when I'm wrong.)

[Markus Reese]

I did backup that test one if they want to future reference. For now I just am changing my playstyle. Alas, while I can interperate for the most part the text file version of a save, I do not know what the co-ordinates mean.

This bit of OCD all started from that second save really where after getting the community center, I went hardcore forage and just never found anything. They wanted them dandilions and that was my game objective :p

TBH, I never really looked at the wild seeds. I thought they would be like the ones from weeds that just grow a random veggie crop until I delved deeper.

Will stop this banter now though ^.^ If quick copying the info stacks for those items from the save file or the save file itself is wanted, just ask.

[Col. of Popcorn]

Twisted, I totally agree and have done tests as you have. I have done a Spring Foraging Package test. For 10 games I was able to complete the package in 14 days within 4 of the games, 3 of the games were later in the Spring and the remaining 3 were not able to be completed.

I've looked at others and there appears to be a definite difference in what people are experiencing. If you've experienced true foraging "drought" it's a game changer. My first two games which I got to summer in, were decent. The second dried up VERY quickly in summer and I was only able to forage 12 items in total during the summer.

I've taken to forums and other ways to find a fix. The only current fix i have found is to uninstall the game, and reinstall, restart the computer, then start up the save. You will get an increased amount of foragable items for some time.

This above method lends some credence to your other theories you've listed above. I appreciate the banter on here, but it truly does matter and is a game changer despite what others have said. This game is amazing and I’ll be waiting for a fix on pins and needles but for now I'll be holding off playing until is fixed. The true frustration in walking around the map for multiple days to find nothing is unbearable when you put that much play time in. I hope for a fix soon!

I'll keep you updated if I find anything different or if a mod out there becomes available. I've been going through save files myself and am actively searching for a solution.

[Markus Reese]

I work in product development and games like these are usually a stress reliever where you can just sorta do your thing how you want. So when something gets frustrating, I like to figure it out. Used to actually beta test back in the day but time is more lacking now, would rather just play, and do early access stuff to help feedback for devs.

There is another potential solution, but I have been hesitant to try it.

Save file edits

I might make and edit a test one to see if I can turn basic common stuff like fibre into forage items if a dry spell exists, but that could be a slippery slope. At least we have wild seeds. Once get them, are set? Have done that as workarounds before.

[Col. of Popcorn]

http://imgur.com/uBE3aMm

Just got a reply from him on twitter! Sounds like it's a known problem and hopefully a fix soon!

[Markus Reese]

Great to hear. That is why I believe in constructive feedback. We all play differently, and as Sirithre said, to him, he had never noticed it. Just played differently a game that has multiple ways to play. It also pays back. Loyal customer base is a very powerful thing ^.^

Off topic, I hope that they can do a Fishing RPG, like legend of the River King. I liked that game more than harvest moon back in the day...

[Sirithre]

Yep, we've been brainstorming ways to adjust foraging tonight. Should be slightly boosted and less likely to spawn behind trees. :3
Thanks for all the feedback!