News

Question #1

Is the Forester’s Outfit a Transmog of the Lumberjack outfit? Or are there going to be two different Woodcutting outfits now?

Mod Squid

So the current intention was to just make it a cosmetic outfit without any value bonuses, but it certainly could be a Transmog, similar to the way the Spirit Angler works. If the players want it to have the bonuses and be another type of Woodcutting outfit, we could do that, so do let us know what you prefer. The current intention was just a cosmetic one, but it could be either.

Mod Sarnie

It would be a funkier version than the current lumberjack outfit if we were going down that route; more medieval-ish.

We have nothing to show you yet because we want to - as we said in the blog - gauge all your interests around the actual ideas and stuff before we present experience rates and everything else to you. We want to make sure that that's all in place so then we know what we’re going to be presenting to you.

Question #2

I'm worried about inventory space for all the tools as a UIM. Will the tools be stored, or easily re-obtained?

Mod Squid

So the way that the Forestry Kit will work is that all of those items that were listed in most of those tables - all the event items, anything that's consumable basically - can be stored in the Kit, like the way the tackle box works. So, there’s no concern over inventory space there. It will all go into your Forestry Kit.

Mod Sarnie

If you managed to get the right gear, you don't even need to carry the Forestry Kit in your inventory! You can wear it on your back, which we'll probably touch upon later, but if not, that's something to bear in mind.

Question #3

Is there any info on what rewards would be F2P and which would not be?

Mod Squid

We haven't actually done the pass yet for the permanent rewards, at least; the big ones like the two-ended axes, the outfits - things like that.

The event items - the ones that are required to spawn the events are members only. That means that all the events that don't require an item to spawn are free-to-play while the events that require items are the members' ones. So there's an easy, simple divide there. As for the permanent rewards, that's still up in the air.

Mod Sarnie

I imagine we'll probably be leaning towards some more on just members. Maybe there'll be some of the two-handed axes, but as Squid said, it's very up in the air at the moment in terms of what's free to play and what's not.

Question #4

What slot will the Forestry Kit go in?

Mod Squid

Back Slot - a nice little Forestry backpack with all your tools in it!

Mod Sarnie

For those who missed it in the blog, the intention here is the Forestry Kit, which you can wear on your back, and there's also the Log Basket, which you can wear on your back as well.

Then there’s the Sturdy Harness, and if you use this to combine the Log Basket and Forestry Kit, you can make them into one wearable back slot object. You’ll be able to carry all your forestry goods in one slot on your back, which is a really nice little touch, I think.

Question #5

Does the scaling Group Chopping bonus mean that team (9 alts) Woodcutting will just be objectively better WC exp from now on? Would this scale past 99?

Mod Squid

If you want to make a team of 9 alts, then sure!

Mod Sarnie

I’ve seen multiple players that have so many accounts at the same time, which is impressive. They're definitely out there.

Mod Squid

If you want to do that, then power to you. The exact bonus that you get for Woodcutting isn't final - the intention is for it to scale past 99. In theory, if you want to make 9 alts then you can give yourself the buff at cap.

Mod Sarnie

Other players might come and see your alts, and join in - there's nothing stopping that. Everyone will still get the buffs, it just caps at that point.

Question #6

How will this group bonus interact with Farming Trees and the WC Guild?

Mod Squid

When farming trees, there'll be no difference, because they're individual; you can't chop them as a group. The current intention is just to leave them with their current behaviour.

For the Woodcutting guild; no group bonus there. You already get a +7 Woodcutting bonus. The intention is not to make the Woodcutting guild stronger; the intention is to make cutting outside a bit more viable and more interesting, so there won’t be a bonus in the Woodcutting guild.

Mod Sarnie

That goes the same with events; the Woodcutting guild is a place where events won't happen because a lot of Woodcutting shenanigans already go on there and we feel like it'd be way too much to put it all in one place. Caves too, but that's a given!

Mod Squid

There'll be places that we just can't - physically or technically - spawn events that will be restricted, but for the most part, it will be in open-world areas outside the Woodcutting guild.

Question #7

Currently, Tree Leaves are obtained from curing a planted tree if it's diseased. Will the new leaves be different or will the old leaves gain the new functionality and be the same item? I have been collecting them over the years as a farmer, while it would be sad that my collection would be "easier" to obtain after this update I would also just be glad to get more leaves.

Mod Squid

The idea is for the old leaves to gain functionality, and then to make it possible to gain leaves from chopping trees if you have a Forestry Kit on you. If you're not interested in the Forestry stuff and you don't want the leaves, you can unequip the Kit, leave it in your bank and just get logs.

Old leaves will get expanded functionality and increased options to get them through Woodcutting.

Question #8

I'm confused about campfires, teas and combat. Do they add their bonuses on top of current bonuses? This would mean we'd be bringing teas for most PvM encounters to min/max now, changing the meta.

Question #9

Do the teas give their bonuses the same way potions do? Or will they have less doses per inventory slot?

Mod Squid

The idea was that tea wouldn’t be taken in doses, where you just one-drink a tea. One of the ideas we were discussing was for teas to give their full effect for the entire time and then just stop. Pots degrade - they boost for a bit and then over time you lose that stat until it goes back to what it normally is.

Teas could last for the full time and then just stop immediately - there are options there. As I said before; if they don’t fit into combat and they feel as if they’re competing too much for a space rather than slotting nicely alongside pots then we can just remove the combat effects.

There’s a lot of cool stuff we can do with other effects as well; if we don’t want to add stat boosts but want other combat effects, then we can look into that. We’ll definitely be looking at the survey results there to see what you think.

Question #10

If we are getting Teas, could you please consider making the Tea Flask useful for this? It would be perfectly fitting!

Mod Squid

I did see that mentioned actually, that's quite an interesting one! We could totally do that; you could put combined teas into one inventory slot and give it doses. That'd be quite cool, we could definitely look into doing that.

Mod Sarnie

It will probably be a fine balancing act with three full teas!

Mod Squid

That's the thing; with the way teas will work, will it be possible to apply it to that. We’d have to check that out. Then as you’ve said, we have to balance it.

Question #11

In the newspost, there isn’t a way to speed up the RNG of chopping the tree once, vs inventories of logs needing to be dropped or banked before obtaining the roots. When you pay the farmer could there be an option to just leave the stump?

Mod Squid

I think people want a faster way to gain roots from farming. I'm not entirely sure but I don't think it necessarily relates to Woodcutting - it's kind of a farming update. It could be something that's just taken as a Player Suggestion and as a general update.

Mod Sarnie

Yeah. It feels a bit weird to leave the stumps - how many roots you've taken out before the stump becomes dislodged? Thematically we need to think about these things! This is one that we can add to the Player Suggestion Sheet.

Question #12

If the cut time is longer but the XP drops are higher, are the two-handed axes and normal axes going to be on par at first, but as you train your WC up the two-handed will become more useful to train with? Would make sense as the road from 1-99 includes some logs that aren’t useful. If they are OP then hopefully the two-handed axes are untradeable. Most OP items should be behind some kind of grind.

Mod Squid

I will say - we haven't dug into the numbers yet, so this is all just high-level theory. The idea of the two-handed axe is that you'll get fewer logs overall, but you will get more XP overall. So for each tree; more XP and fewer logs. Basically, every time you get a log, your XP drop’s going to be higher.

I'm not sure about the scaling of effectiveness, because we also want two-handed axes to be useful throughout the spectrum so that lower-level Woodcutters could still make use of them as well. It's something for us to consider in balancing, and yeah, they will probably be untradable - that's also still up for discussion.

We also want to think about how you make them - whether you need to convert a one-handed axe into a two-handed axe, or if there’s some other ratio of one-handed axes into two-handed axes or something else entirely.

Whether it is untradeable - likely untradeable - at the moment I think that's where the leaning is. Again, we have a discussion there.

Mod Sarnie

There are a few things. As we’ve said - we'll probably premise this across the livestream - especially with XP rates and stuff, they aren't final. A lot of these ideas aren't finalised to the point where we're like “Yes, this is definitely how it should work” because this is the whole point of the new Polling process; you want a concept, then we go away and design something and come back to you. That's when Community Consultation happens, which is what we're in right now.

Question #13

How will two-handed axes work with tick manipulation methods?

Mod Squid

Off the top of my head, I don’t know.

Mod Sarnie

I was going to see if I could pick your brain about it, but it's definitely something to consider when we're talking about two-handed axes - if you guys want them, which seems to be the case. It’s definitely something to think about. Maybe we leave it alone; maybe just one-handed axes are the way forward, so you can just slice through your tree-chopping antics.

Mod Squid

I mean, I guess a two-handed axe is more unwieldy. You can't be that quick with a two-handed axe - it's slower. If you want multiple ticks, then it’s one-handed.

Question #14

Can two-handed axes give more logs per successful chop? It’s much better to obtain logs via PvM drops or even Kingdom of Misc rather than cutting trees. Or this could be done with a consumable like Spirit Flakes for fishing - hold a stack of Enchanted Leaves that give you a chance for an extra log.

Mod Squid

The thinking behind the XP over logs was that the XP is genuinely valued more. Logs don’t tend to be worth much these days. We thought XP might be the more likely thing people will want from an axe.

To the point on Spirit Flakes - there is an item in the blog called Nature's Offering, which is a craftable consumable item, which has a chance to give you more logs when you chop a tree - so that works like Spirit Flakes and will work alongside whatever axe you use. You could use a two-handed axe to interact with a Nature's Offering stack and get both.

Question #15

Are there any thoughts on two-handed axes in combat?

Mod Squid

Two-handed axes in combat? Maybe, it’s interesting! We could have a way to modify them, and they do have stats the same way other axes do, but how effective would they be?

Mod Sarnie

Again, all these elements are going to be things that will be discussed when you guys decide if you want these pieces or not.

Question #16

Will the Anima Infused Bark allow for another variety of Splitbark Armour or another source for crafting it?

Mod Squid

It’s an interesting question! I'd say maybe, but my initial thought is probably not worth it to use the Anima Infused Bark for that, unless it was another variant that was actually unique to it. Interesting. We could do it if that's something people want.

Mod Sarnie

This is probably not a focus for us with this direct update, but maybe that's something we can figure out after we've done the core of Forestry. We're gonna get that bit right first!

Question #17

Having the option to use either logs or Anima Infused Bark for a currency seems weird - what's the point of a brand new currency if we can just buy logs and use them instead?

Mod Squid

It's not either, it's both! You need to use Anima Infused Bark and logs. It’s a log sink, that’s the idea. You're going to need logs of all tiers - depending on the strength of the item, logs of various tiers, including base logs.

The idea is to sink some logs because all the items that you need for events are consumable, so there's going to be a constant demand for them and they're crafted using components that you buy through Forestry with logs and the new currency.

Mod Sarnie

We want to make logs great again! That's what we want, but they need a purpose. And this will give a nice chill purpose to them.

Question #18

I’m curious, will 2-tick woodcutting cause the tree to stay up forever with the new, proposed depletion mechanic? Is this intended?

Question #19

Is Forestry being considered as revitalising to Firemaking as well, besides Woodcutting, as these two are in sync with each other?

Mod Squid

Not really - there hasn't really been any specific Firemaking stuff in this. There's the Forester’s Campfires, which might give a bit of Firemaking XP, but there's no specific tie-in.

That's not to say there couldn’t be - the thing about this system is that we can add new events to it in future and expand it, and there could well be something that makes use of Firemaking.

Mod Sarnie

There'll be elements of XP that you can earn across multiple bits, but they're just something that comes in tow with the update. This is a Woodcutting update, after all, the main focus should be Woodcutting. Firemaking is another beast to be tackled at some point, but not now, and that goes for the other skills as well!

Question #20

Could Woodcutting be just one way of doing Forestry? It would be great to have a more engaging activity that you can jump right into. Perhaps have the different forests of Gielinor as hotspots where these events and others could spawn, with multiple possibly active at a time and one guaranteed? These could be things like stopping wildfires, slash and burn to fertilise the ground, removing invasive species etc. Tougher events but more rewarding.