Today we're going to cover Harvesting and Crafting, the non-combat side of Saga of Ryzom. First, however, I'm going to need enough skillpoints to learn the abilities...


Yes, you read right, I've moved up to Weanling Yubos. I can also defeat a few other non-carniverous creatures (such as the bull-like Bodoc). Anyway, I save up 20 skill points (that's two levels of Fight) and go to the trainer


As you can see, I can now learn Basic Extraction and Matis Crafting Start -the two basic Actions I would have had I picked Harvesting and Craft as action packs.


One thing is that you need a Pick equipped to harvest. Since I didn't have one to start, I needed to purchase one for 1000 Dappers. The same goes for the armorcrafting kit later. If you have a pick equipped you can't attack monsters, by the way, but you can use magic.


The world of Atys is covered in harvesting spots (and even more can be found through Prospecting). By using you Harvesting action, it slowly increases the quantity (by decimals) and quality of the items. Once you run out of time, it'll give you every fully formed item you've found, at the quality you got up to.


Raw Material Sources have five gauges. The first is Avaialble Extraction Time - how long you have to harvest the spot. The second is Source Content, how much stuff is there. The third is the source life, which goes down more if you use more aggressive techniques. Fourth is the Extraction Risk, and five is Kami Tolerance. Presumably if you try to get low Kami Tolerance spots then the Kami will come get you (and the NPCs indicate that their cute apperanace bely their ruthlessness)
It's worth noting that you can get actions which extract at different speeds with different effects on the gauges.


Eventually I saved enough points in Harvesting to learn Matis Crafting Start. Crafting is handled a lot different then other actions. You sort of have to provide the positive Stanzas every time you use the ability.


When you use crafting, you get a window with a bunch of blank spots for items. Each item lists what it can be used for - Capryni hyde fragments can be used for "Clothes" and therefore can be used in the Clothes part of making a pair of Wiva Boots. Each item effects how the resulting item looks and how good it is, so it's a good idea to find the best items to make things with.


Here are my brand new boots (the first pair I created). Not bad, a little green, but they have good stats.


I may have been less lucky with my component choice and made these - these boots ended up having a zero protection factor!


As you level up in Crafting you can get new crafting plans and create new items (including weapons and the ever-expensive ammo for guns). If you want you can play entirely without fighting, but it'd be tough to get between areas to get the good extraction points without some combat skills.

Well, that's it for day five! I know it's a little short on pictures, but this one took me a lot of extracting in the middle (and I didn't want to include 8 screenshots of me getting more bowls of sap) and I think the informational content makes up for it.
Tommorow's the last day of this diary (followed the next day by my overall thoughts on the game from playing it for this) so be sure to stop by! We'll visit the mainland and see the sights!