FFXIV Newbie Botanist Harvesting and Botany Guide

Three days ago I covered FFXIV Fishing. I was going to post this two days ago but I was caught up playing “Might and Magic: World of Xeen” and “Might And Magic: Day of the Destroyer”.Good times. And then the next day I found my pictures to be corrupted and I was lacking the time to go get them once again…

Alright, today we are going to focus on the Botanist class in FFXIV. This is the gathering class that will be dealing with trees, bushes, shrubs, ferns, pine cones… You get the idea.

What I like is that the 3 current gathering classes are similar with their “Sweet Spot” game, I also like that they changed the UI graphic look of the game for each class. This way you have 3 different versions of the same game. Even more intuitive is how the UI looks in relation to what your character is actually doing. As a botanist, you will be using the “Sweet Spot” game to chop at trees.

Another thing I like is that depending on what you pick, your character will swing in accordance to it. If you pick high, your character will swing high. If you pick low, your character will swing low. This change in animation can be seen through all 3 current gathering class games. Adds a little bit of immersion to the game, and for me, it’s the little points of detail that matter!

Alright. Let’s get to the meat of this class. All 3 gathering classes play similarly but each gets different items. The difference between the fishing class and the botanist and miner class is that free fishing gets you an unlimited amount of fish while harvesting and mining spots have a limited number of items that regenerate over time. Another difference between fishing and the other two classes is that in fishing, you need to “hook” the fish when it bites/nibbles or you lose your chance to fish, in mining and gathering there is no ”hook-ing”; You just continually try to guess the “Sweet Spot” before your chances run out.

Like the fishing guide…First. Get your damn equipment. Really, go get them. As a botanist you will be using a (funny looking) harvesting axe for your main and a(n) (awesome) scythe as your secondary. Depending where you’re at, most gathering class equipment can be bought at the same NPC shop unless your main city has the guild; you can buy it there instead.

As a botanist, you start with “Arbor Call”. It is a skill to tell you in what direction and how many yalms away it is. Equip the skill first and follow the directions to your tree! Don’t worry about getting lost; it has a really quick cooldown. Your tree should look like it’s got something shiny in it, similar to a hidden background item in most RPGs.

Use the blue exclamation to begin harvesting…Hmm. Does this look familiar? Oh right. Pick the “depth” of your cut. Community guesses that higher up you have a heightened chance of getting things like pine cones and lower on “Depth” will increase your chances of getting logs…Which makes logical sense; however this has not been proven. DISCLAIMER: NOT PROVEN. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

When your done selecting your “depth”, the UI pops up and you take a swing! Its almost exactly like the Fishing UI except rotated 90 degrees and it’s a pointy triangle with a semi-circle bottom for your “Sweet Spot” guesser.

Here are the possible Scenarios.

You feel nothing promising = Nada. Not even close.

You feel something promising = Oh hey, you’re pretty darn close.

You are getting farther from the mark = Compared to your last swing, you’re farther. Boo!

You are getting closer to the mark = Compared to your last swing, you’re closer. Yay!

You are close to something, yet cannot make the final cut = So close, Like on the border of win and fail.

As usual, you have your remainder bar randomly depleting with each swing and the random “Fail” scenario that rears its ugly head from time to time.

Your secondary tool is the Scythe, seen above. Like the Fishing gig and the mining hammer, there is no skill involved in using it. Find a patch of shiny grass and use it. Hit or miss, you will either get something or fail. As usual, you have a limited number of tries before the spot runs out. One thing of note for using the scythe, the location will change. It will be in an area close by, but you will have to move to the next spot continue harvesting.

Currently in Open Beta, there is some SERIOUS server lag with harvesting and mining. Square Enix knows about this and is currently working on it. Hopefully the Retail version will have this fixed… Considering that the beta downloader hasn’t been updated since the end of Phase 2, just the game itself got updated, this is good news.

Finally, we have the Botanist skills…Which are pretty much the same as the fishing and the miner skill…As far as Open Beta is concerned. I will update this Hub if there are any decent changes to the skills. The botanist skills help you search for trees, movement speed if over 200 yalms away, rare item chance up, dodge increase vs a certain type of enemy and chance of increasing the number of times you can harvest from a location… Nothing for offensive battle skills.

Next up, Mining, Guildleves, and the market!

Edited: 10/19/10, update to skill distance.