An Overview of Foraging - by Niami DenMother

Foraging is not technically regarded as a tradeskill. However, since foraged items are used for several tradeskills, I felt it wise to finally say something about it here.

Foraging is an ability that is granted to three character classes (ranger, druid, bard), and two races (wood elf, iksar). Some of these races/classes can forage "zone specials" (see below) and others cannot.

If you have gained the ability to forage only due to your race, you will never see a skill increase in your forage ability. (Racial forage is capped at a skill level of 50 for iksar and wood elves) If you are a ranger, druid or bard, you will be able to increase your foraging by practice, with 5 added points gained per level until you reach your maximum ability. (Bards have a very low forage cap, while druids and rangers have a higher forage ability.)

There are several basic items that can be foraged from almost any zone in the game: pod of water, vegetables, fruit, berries, rabbit meat, fishing grubs. Other than the fishing grubs, these items cannot be sold to merchants, but can be used as drink and food, as well as used in various other recipes. (The pods of water can be brewed into water flasks for use in other tradeskills. The veggies, fruit, berries and rabbit meat can all be cooked, and the veggies, fruit and berries can also be brewed into drinks.)

Many non-city zones have one or more specific items that can be foraged from that zone, but not from any other zone. Some of the special foraged items can be eaten, some can be sold to merchants for cash, some are for quests, some are used for tradeskills (brewing, tailoring, smithing), and some just plain ... perplex ... me. (Like the iksar phalange [dagger] foraged in Field of Bone, and the feathers that are foraged in many Luclin zones.)

While having a character that can forage is NOT a requirement for practicing tradeskills, it makes several of them, especially baking and brewing, much easier and cheaper to accomplish.

Of course, those of us who can forage tend to run out of pack space quickly, as we tend to press the forage button every time it pops, whether we need more food and drink or not. Others tend to leave "druid" droppings all over the place, foraging an item and instantly dropping it on the ground if they don't like/want the item. ... this leads to an interesting way for a non-tracker to find a druid or ranger ... just follow the trail of foraged goodies on the ground. ;)

The fine print: All text on this site is copyright by the respective authors. The game EverQuest is a registered trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. This site is not meant to represent official EQ policy, and we are not responsible for errors/omissions that occur due to changes in EverQuest trade skills.