Harvesting

Overview

Harvesting refers to the process of destroying environmental elements, extracting resources in the process. Various environmental elements can be harvested, including trees, rocks, plants, animals corpses, and blocks.

Harvesting is essential for gathering the resources needed for crafting items, constructing buildings, and surviving in the game world.

Subtypes of Harvesting

While Harvesting is a general term for the extraction of resources from environmental elements, there are several subtypes to which reference is often made:

• Mining - The harvesting of resources from earth-based and metal-based blocks referred to as Ores.
• Butchering - The harvesting of resources from the corpses of both natural and undead Animals.
• Salvaging - The harvesting of resources from mechanical-based or electrical-based blocks.

Harvesting Tools

While some resources can be harvested using bare Fists, equipping an Appropriate Tool significantly speeds up the process and potentially increases resource yield. There are many Tools from which to select.

Using an appropriate tool will prevent the reduction in Block Damage done to a block that occurs when harvesting using a tool or weapon not well-suited for the job. The speed at which a block is destroyed does not reduce the total resources obtained while harvesting.

Using an appropriate tool will in some cases result in additional bonus resources harvested:

• Butchering provides bonus resources only obtainable by using a Butcher Tool.
• Salvaging provides bonus resources only obtainable by using a Disassemble Tool.

Also, all clubs, hammers, and spears have an inherent 75% loss of all resources when used to harvest. Even considering that some of these weapons may have high block damage to take down various objects and blocks, it's best to use an appropriate tool for the job if you want to obtain the resources efficiently from those blocks.

Harvesting Efficiently

The following tools are commonly used for efficient harvesting:

• Stone Axe: Basic tool for chopping down trees and harvesting stone. Much better than your Fists.
• Pickaxes: Essential for mining ores, stone, minerals, and metal blocks efficiently.
• Fireaxes: Ideal for harvesting wood from trees and other wood blocks at a faster rate.
• Knives: Used for skinning animals to obtain meat, bones, and hides.
• Shovels: Necessary for digging soil, sand, snow, and other soft earth.

Additionally, a tool can be even more efficient with the following:

• Mother Lode (Perk) will increase the amount of resources you harvest from ore blocks, stone blocks, terrain blocks, or trees.
• Miner 69er (Perk) increases your Block Damage and decreases your stamina degradation when hitting blocks while using Mining Tools.
• Certain Mods installed on your harvesting tool can increase its Block Damage against specific types of materials.

While an Auger or a Chainsaw can be the most efficient in terms of speed in destroying blocks and obtaining resources, they generate a lot of Heat, making them a high risk and high reward tools.