How to Learn Foraging The basic procedure I've found for learning foraging well is to create a list of items that are about at your level and challenge you. Then, you go through the list from start to finish, foraging each item carefully, if you can. Unfortunately, this method is only available to Rangers and Empaths, so all other guilds should forage normally or collect the item. Then once you've reached the end of the list, go back to the beginning and repeat it. You probably won't be above pondering after the first time through, so you will probably have to repeat the list several times to get to the level of learning you want. I'll detail how to create a good list further down. A very important thing to remember is that you need to find the items to learn well from it. If you don't find the item, you pretty much don't learn. To be foraging at your best so you can find things that challenge you, there are a number of things you can do. -The simplest thing is position. Kneelingg is the best position to be in while foraging and it actually does make a big difference. - Another thing is wounds. This is nearlyy impossible for empaths, but foraging when completely free of wounds will make a large difference. When this isn't possible, hand and eye wounds affect your foraging the most, so get rid of them first. - Similiarly, wearing armor while foragingg makes it much harder to do, especially hand and eye protection. Removing all armor is ideal, but gloves and helms should be the first to go. - Also, watch out for burden. If you keepp your burden low, you will have better luck foraging. However, wearing body armor seems to affect foraging more negatively than does the extra burden from putting it in your backpack. - Location matters a lot. If an herb doess not grow there, you will not be able to find it there. You will find that in some rooms there is practically nothing worth foraging for. Other rooms have a lot. - Still more conditions are beyond your coontrol. Foraging at nighttime, in bad weather, and during the winter will all be significantly harder. Some herbs are even not findable at all during the winter season, and possibly other seasons. Creating Your List: The ideal list has six to ten items that challenge you. More is better, but not at the stake of putting in extra items that shouldn't really be there. It is also significantly harder to find items for your list at lower ranks, as it is for those in guilds who cannot forage carefully. (Those in guilds that cannot forage carefully may want to just try out a list that a ranger or empath of approximately the same rank created. Lists seem to translate decently between guilds.) Below I'll list steps for finding items to put on your list, and then a few sample lists I've made that seem to work. Note: Once you have enough items on your list, you can stop going through these steps. The best ones are at the top. Also, while you should put yourself in a state in which you'll do your best foraging, do not accept any outside help. If you do not have the wolf scent spell, creating your list with it cast on you may mean that you have to hunt down someone with the spell to cast it on you every time you want to practice foraging, just to find some of the items. Therefore, it's a much better idea to only use what you personally can do for yourself. 1. Find a general area to forage in and figure out what you can forage there. I've found http://www.olwydd.org/herbs/index.php to be a good website for finding where foragables are located. Some lists may work in multiple places, usually another place of the same climate as the place you design the list for, but as location has a big impact, you should design your list for the area you want to practice foraging. 2. Go through the items you can find in the room, trying to forage each one carefully. Any item that takes more than 10 seconds to forage carefully should be on your list. Items that take 15 seconds are ideal. 3. Try to collect items, putting any that that give you a roundtime of more than 30 seconds to find on your list. Also, any items that you can forage carefully, but cannot collect should be on your list. 4. Collect a pile of something you find very easy to forage. Count the number of items in the pile. Add any items of which you collected a pile of fewer of than are in this 'easy pile' to the list. (Example: You can collect a pile of grass with six tufts of grass in it. If you can only create a pile of five nemoih roots, put nemoih roots on your list.) 5. Finally, add any items which you can forage, but not every time you try to your list. Note that these should be items you may not always find even when in your best state, not that you can forage it when you're healthy, but not with a missing hand. Now a few sample lists for various ranks. The ones for lower ranks are less ideal than higher ranks, and the best luck I've had using options besides foraging carefully has been getting the mind up to muddled. These lists were all designed for the road northeastwards out the East Gate of Riverhaven. My personal list: ebony stick, elm stick, oak stick, willow stick, ebony limb, elm limb, oak limb, willow limb. I have approximately 140 ranks in foraging, and an empath with about 125 ranks also found my list to work quite well for her. I can lock my mind in approximately 7 minutes by repeating this list. For a ranger of about 80 ranks: ash stick, birch stick, fir stick, spruce stick, ash limb, birch limb, fir limb, spruce limb. He got to perplexed after about three run throughs of the list. For a ranger of about 40 ranks: jadice flower, stem, georin grass, limb, log, vine, weed, red flower, blue flower. I don't know how well it taught him, but he seemed happy with it, as was a non-ranger of approximately 35 ranks. For an empath of about 10 ranks: berries, branch, wood chip, bread crumb, grass, leaf, rock, stick, twig, dirt. She had problems learning as well as the above but the percents seemed to go by, so it's probably more a result of learning so quick at these ranks than the list being inapproriate. A young bard of about the same rank tried the list as well, and could not collect berries or dirt, but otherwise had about the luck with learning, if not quite as good.