Gathering & Herbalism Guide

Everything a Rookery Isles herbalist needs: the Gathering vocation explained, the wild-plant catalog with item IDs, the Gathering-vs-Farming rule that trips up every new player, and verified zones where each herb actually grows.

Requirements

You must be Character Level 52 to gather in the open world on Rookery Isles. Mining, Logging, Gathering, Farming, Husbandry, and Fishing are all gated at character Level 52 (the client enforces this), so you cannot mine, chop, harvest, farm, raise livestock, or fish until you reach Level 52. Bench crafting and processing have no level requirement, but their materials come from gathering. The Anya Vein adds a further gate of 50,000 Mining proficiency on top of Level 52.

Table of Contents

• Requirements
• What Gathering Is
• Gathering vs Farming, The Rule Everyone Gets Wrong
• The Proficiency Ladder
• The Wild Plant Catalog
• Tree Leaves, Sap & Fruit
• Node Tiers, Bundles, Fields & Greenhouses
• What Gathered Mats Feed
• In-Vocation Processing
• Where Wild Herbs Grow
• Replanting From Seed
• A Starter Gathering Route
• On Rookery Isles

What Gathering Is

Gathering is the harvesting vocation for wild plants, flowers, herbs, spices, cotton, mushrooms, and tree leaves/sap/fruit that grow untended in the open world. In ArcheAge 3.0 (Revelation) it is one of the six Harvesting-tab vocations (alongside Husbandry, Farming, Fishing, Logging, and Mining) and is completely distinct from the crafting vocations that turn raw mats into gear.

When you walk up to a wild flower or herb and interact with it, you spend a small amount of Labor and receive the plant. The cheapest wild gathers cost just 1 Labor Point, these are the floor-cost actions in the entire game. Doing this builds your Gathering proficiency, a number that climbs from 0 toward a cap of 1,000,000 and unlocks denser, higher-yield nodes and in-vocation processing recipes as it rises.

Gathering requires Character Level 52 on Rookery Isles. Every world gathering skill carries a character Level 52 requirement, and the client enforces it, so you cannot pick a single wild herb, flower, spice, cotton plant, or mushroom in the open world until you reach Level 52. This is a hard gate, not a bug to ignore: plan to level your character to 52 before you build any Gathering proficiency.

The Labor cost varies by node. The base wild flowers/herbs/cotton/mushroom nodes are 1 LP; bushier plants are 3 to 5 LP; and dense "Bundle," "Field," and special nodes climb to 10, 25, 100, even 250 LP for proportionally larger hauls.

Gathering vs Farming, The Rule Everyone Gets Wrong

This is the single most-misreported fact in ArcheAge resource guides, so commit it to memory. Gathering and Farming are two separate proficiencies. Which one a plant gives you depends on the plant and its growth state, not on the act of "picking something."

The rule, stated plainly:

• Wild flowers, herbs, spices, cotton, and mushrooms = Gathering. Anything growing naturally in the open world that is a flower, herb, spice, cotton plant, or mushroom builds your Gathering proficiency.
• Vegetables and grains = Farming. Crops you sow and tend belong to the Farming vocation.
• Any "Wilted" plant = Farming. Every plant species has a withered, over-mature "Wilted" doodad phase. Harvesting a Wilted Rose, Wilted Cotton, Wilted Clover, or Wilted Mushroom gives Farming proficiency, not Gathering. This is why you sometimes get Farming from a plant you expected to count as Gathering, you grabbed it after it wilted.

These are FARMING crops, not Gathering, do not chase them for herbalism XP:

Peanut, Carrot, Potato, and Garlic in particular are routinely (and wrongly) listed as Gathering plants on copycat wikis. On this server they are Farming, there is no wild Gathering node for any of them. If your goal is Gathering proficiency, skip the vegetable patch entirely. See the Farming & Crops Guide for those.

How to tell in-game: the interaction icon and tooltip on the node tell you which vocation it awards before you spend Labor. When in doubt, hover first.

The Proficiency Ladder

Every vocation, Gathering included, shares the same rank ladder. The number is your cumulative proficiency; crossing each threshold promotes your rank and unlocks the next tier of nodes and recipes. Rank-up is free in this build, there is no purchase step.

Rank 1 is Amateur, not "Basic." Higher rank also makes each gather cheaper in Labor, the exact reduction curve is not exposed in the server data, so treat it as a direction ("higher rank = cheaper gathers"), not a fixed percentage. See the Proficiency & Labor Guide for the full system.

The Wild Plant Catalog

These are the base wild Gathering nodes, the single plant you find growing in the open world. The Labor column is the base cost; the item ID is the gathered drop; the category drives what the plant processes and crafts into (see What Gathered Mats Feed).

The four categories matter. A gathered plant is classed as a Flower, Spice, Herb, or Textile (Cotton is the only Textile in this set). That class decides which in-vocation processing recipe it feeds and which crafting vocations want it. Cotton is the standout, it skips Gathering processing entirely and goes straight to Tailoring.

Special high-Labor collect nodes also exist and award Gathering: Gembloom Petals (Ruby/Citrine/Amethyst variants, gathered via "Collect Gembloom Petal," 30 LP), Goldwort Fern, Tundra Fern, Violet Fiddlehead, Thorngrass, and Petrified Gemshrub. These are premium, high-Labor nodes; their exact Labor cost varies by node and their drops are stored in opaque loot tables, so this guide names them but does not promise specific yields or a single Labor figure.

Tree Leaves, Sap & Fruit

Gathering also covers harvests taken from standing trees, these use Gather Leaves, Extract Tree Sap, Gather Fruit, Find Fruit, and Pick Fruit skills, all of which build Gathering proficiency.

Note on sap and fruit drops. The exact item and quantity returned by tree-sap and fruit nodes is resolved through loot packs that are not readable in the server's compact database. This guide can name the node you click ("Sappy Cherry Tree") but cannot promise the precise output item or count. Treat these as a reliable source of sap/fruit without trusting any specific "X per gather" figure you may see elsewhere.

Node Tiers, Bundles, Fields & Greenhouses

Most plants exist as a family of escalating nodes. Higher tiers cost more Labor but yield proportionally more and are the fastest way to grind Gathering proficiency once your Labor pool can sustain them. All tiers award Gathering.

Grinding strategy. Early on, low-Labor base nodes (1 to 5 LP) give the best XP-per-Labor while your pool is small. As your Labor pool and rank grow, Bundles and Fields let you bank far more proficiency per stop. The Greenhouse and Field nodes are also how you turn your own planted crops back into Gathering yield.

What Gathered Mats Feed

Each gathered item's category determines both its in-vocation processing recipe and the outside crafting vocations that consume it. This is the practical reason to gather, almost every gathered mat has a downstream buyer.

Verified downstream uses (drawn from the server's recipe tables):

• Cotton (8357) feeds 14 recipes across Tailoring and Commerce. Cotton → Fabric → cloth armor is the entire light-armor supply chain. If you wear cloth, you (or someone) gathered cotton.
• Rose (3711) feeds Alchemy (Red Pigment, Small Root Pigment), Handicrafts (Flirtatious Flower and statues), and Commerce (Ynystere Bouquets).
• Cornflower (2178) is a dye/pigment feedstock, it makes Alchemy's Small Leaf Pigment and other pigments, plus Commerce specialty teas/powders.
• Mushroom (14630) feeds Alchemy, Cooking, and Commerce.
• Cultivated Ginseng (3680) feeds Alchemy, Cooking, and Husbandry.
• Aloe (16290) feeds Alchemy, Cooking, and Commerce.
• Pepper (8019) feeds Alchemy, Cooking, and Commerce.

In short: Alchemy and Cooking are the two biggest customers for herbs and spices, Tailoring is the sole customer for cotton, and Commerce wants almost everything for regional trade packs. See the Crafting Chains Guide for what those vocations build.

In-Vocation Processing

Beyond selling raw, Gathering has its own processing recipes that bundle 100 raw plants into a stackable commodity. These are also a strong proficiency-grind sink at higher ranks. Each costs a flat 40 Coin per batch.

The output quantity scales with the input plant's tier. For example, 100 Azalea yields 100 Dried Flowers, 100 Lily yields 200, and 100 Jinn's Tongue yields 450, higher-value flowers give more processed product per batch. The same pattern holds for Ground Spices (100 Iris → 100, 100 Mint → 200, 100 Turmeric → 450) and Medicinal Powder (100 Mushroom → 100, 100 Bay Leaf → 200, 100 Clubhead Fungus → 450).

Higher-tier bundled processing skills (Gather Flower Bundles, Gather Spice Bundles, Gather Medicinal Bundles, at 100 to 250 LP) exist as endgame proficiency sinks. Cotton has no Gathering-side processing, it goes directly to Tailoring as Fabric feedstock.

Where Wild Herbs Grow

These spawn counts come from the live overworld placement data, mapped to zones by bounding box. They tell you where to actually go. Counts are overworld nodes only.

Reading the map:

• Dewstone Plains is the single richest herb zone. Rose, Iris, Thistle, Clubhead Fungus, Cultivated Ginseng, and Poppy all cluster there. If you only learn one circuit, learn Dewstone.
• Halcyona is the flower powerhouse, Azalea (475), Lily (377), Cornflower (106), Lotus (55), plus heavy Mushroom and Clover. It is contested territory, so gather with care.
• Cotton concentrates around Perinoor Ruins (33), which neatly matches its Tailoring demand, set up your cloth supply run there, with Two Crowns, Marianople, and Solzreed Peninsula as backups.
• Arcum Iris owns the aromatic spices, Lavender (238) and Mint (205) are almost exclusive to it.
• Solzreed Peninsula is the best beginner zone for Narcissus, Cotton, and Aloe, a safe Nuian-protected starter area.

Replanting From Seed

You are not limited to wild spawns. Many wild plants can be re-planted from a seed item, for example, an Azalea Seed uses the "Plant herbs" skill to sow a cultivated plant that you then harvest. The cultivated, Greenhouse, and Field versions still award Gathering on their mature/wild phase (and Farming on the Wilted phase, see the rule above).

A common myth to ignore: that gathering a wild crop "drops random seeds you can't buy from vendors." This is commonly reported on public wikis but not confirmed on this server, the gather loot tables are opaque, and no seed-drop-on-gather mechanic is visible in the server data. Get your seeds from General Merchant NPCs (the cheapest start at 150 copper; pricier herb/flower seeds run higher) and treat any "free seeds from gathering" claim as community lore, not a guaranteed mechanic. The full seed catalog with prices and grow times lives in the Farming & Crops Guide.

The "Compact Bush" node is real and does award Gathering, it is a 1-LP "Search Wild Crops" node found across the overworld (most densely in Falcorth Plains and Arcum Iris). What is not server-confirmed is the old wiki claim that it "drops random seeds you can't buy", its drop is resolved through an opaque loot pack, so treat any specific Compact-Bush seed-drop promise as community lore, not a guaranteed mechanic.

A Starter Gathering Route

• Step 1. Level your character to 52 first. World gathering is gated at character Level 52 on this server, so you cannot pick anything before then, no matter your Gathering proficiency.
• Step 2. Head to Solzreed Peninsula (Nuian start) or Dewstone Plains for density. Pick everything 1-LP you pass: Clover, Cotton, Azalea, Narcissus, Rose, Iris, Lavender, Thistle, Mushroom.
• Step 3. Bank Labor by grabbing only the cheap nodes early, 1-LP Clover is the most broadly distributed starter plant (Sunspeck, Lilyut, Cinderstone, Dewstone).
• Step 4. Sell cotton to Tailors and herbs/spices to Alchemists and Cooks, or stockpile for your own crafting. Cotton around Perinoor Ruins is reliable cloth income.
• Step 5. As your rank climbs past Amateur, switch to Bundle and Field nodes for far more proficiency per stop, and start running the Dried Flowers / Ground Spices / Medicinal Powder processing recipes to bank XP and make stackable commodities.
• Step 6. Keep an eye on the node tooltip. If it says "Wilted," it gives Farming, not Gathering, skip it unless you want the Farming XP.

On Rookery Isles

This server differs from canonical ArcheAge and from copycat wikis in a few important ways:

• World gathering requires Character Level 52. Mining, Logging, Gathering, Farming, Husbandry, and Fishing are all gated at character Level 52, and the client enforces it. You cannot gather in the open world until Level 52. Bench crafting and processing have no level requirement.
• Peanut, Carrot, Potato, Garlic, and all vegetables/grains are Farming, not Gathering. Many wikis miscategorize these, on Rookery they have no wild Gathering node.
• The "Wilted" phase of any plant gives Farming, which explains the occasional surprise when a flower you picked counts as Farming XP.
• The "Compact Bush" is a real 1-LP Gathering node (Falcorth Plains, Arcum Iris, and elsewhere), but gathering does not reliably drop seeds, that part is unverifiable web-lore. Buy seeds from General Merchants.
• Exact per-gather yields, proficiency-gain rates, and any "Fortuna"/bonus-proc percentages are not server-confirmed. Where this guide omits a number, it is because the data is stored in loot tables we do not expose, assume nothing more precise than what is written here.
• The proficiency ladder is Amateur → Legend (Master = 50,000), not the old "Basic/Novice/Veteran/Authority/Master" ladder some guides still use.

See also

Farming & Crops Guide · Crafting & Gathering Overview · Mining & Ore Guide · Labor Points & Proficiency · Alchemy Guide · Cooking Guide · Tailoring & Leatherwork · Trade Packs & Commerce · Gearing Supply Chain