Outdoorsmanship skill
Outdoorsmanship is a new skill in DR 3.0 that replaces and combines Foraging and Animal Lore.
Outdoorsmanship is a survival skill used to find items in the natural world, interact with animals, and any number of other pursuits. Foraging and Mining are both heavily reliant on the Outdoorsmanship skill, and there is speculation that material gathering for other crafts will be as well.
Training
Outdoorsmanship can be trained by the following activities:
- FORAGE or COLLECT items.
- Mining for rock or metal.
- Feeding, signaling, and releasing Ranger companions.
- Instructing horses/caravans.
- Tending parasites (bloodworms, leeches, etc.)
- Fishing.
Foraging Strategy
One of the best strategies for training Ourdoorsmanship is to use the COLLECT command. Difficulty of the item being foraged doesn't matter much as the easier item you collect, the more you will get, which grants more experience. Many players simply use COLLECT ROCK.
Healing herbs are the best-known of the foraged items, but one can also forage to find wax for candlemaking, limbs and sticks for fletching, firewood, tea leaves, coffee beans, alchemical catalysts, grass and vines for braiding, branches for carving, or even items that can be used as improvised weapons, such as rocks and logs.
The general rule in training any skill is that the amount of experience you gain per action is a function of how successful that action was. So when foraging you want to go after the most difficult item you can reliably find. A good place to start is the Foraging Compendium, which can be used by referencing your Outdoorsmanship and Perception skill and finding where on the chart you are likely to learn.
It is easier to forage during the daytime as opposed to night. It is also easier to forage in good weather. Heavy rain greatly penalizes your chances of finding something.
Mining Strategy
The release of Mining has proven to be another extremely effective way to train Outdoorsmanship while also supplying materials for Forging and Carving. Using a pickaxe or a shovel, a player can mine special areas for various types of metal and stone. The different types of materials do not affect the total experience gained, but the rewarded experience is quite substantial.
Quantity and quality of any material mined is heavily reliant on Outdoorsmanship, meaning the higher your skill, the higher your success. Keep in mind that material gathering difficulties scale, so you may notice that you get far less of one material yet more of another with the exact same skill. This does not impact the experience awarded as failure to find material still grants the same experience. Different materials that can be mined can be found here.
Training Notes
As of July 15th, 2009, all experience timers have been removed from foraging, and experience gained has increased significantly. This means it is now possible for survival terts to lock the skill without fishing, and easier for everyone to lock it in general. The experience from fishing has not increased. Fishing, however, can also teach Skinning.
Commentary
"Personally I trained by repetitive foraging of sticks, then moving on to dirt when I could find it, then vines. Vines still teach pretty well at 170." - --Khazera 16:53, 23 March 2008 (CDT)
"Still getting mind locked by COLLECTing vines at 150 foraging" - Ithschaade 02:56, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Skill Aids
Things that help boost Outdoorsmanship skill:
- Ranger's raccoon
- Wolf Scent Spell
- Sprout Spell
- Any perception boosting ability/spell
- Any intelligence or wisdom boosting ability/spell
- The Tenebrous Sense spell reduces the night-time penalty to foraging