I’ve just started the Boundless experience, and I am loving it. I do my best to immerse myself at first and just play as though the internet doesn’t exist, and learn from within the game rather than from outside it. Unfortunately I hit a point where I was frustrated to the point of breaking my self-enforced ‘no internet tips’ rule when I simply couldn’t figure out fibrous leaves.
After reading on these forums about them, I see that it is not an unknown problem, and I know that the devs are aware of it and working on balance in their regard. I’m not here to beat a dead horse, but I noticed that most the topics regarding it are at least a 2-3 months old, so I wanted to share my personal experience as an extra data-point in the developer’s analysis of the problem.
I’m just getting established on a tier 1 planet and I have walked long distances in multiple directions and never found a desert or a yucca plant, so all my fibrous leaves so far have come from foliage. I made a Iron axe with my last sackcloth, and headed to the ground foliage near my house. I chewed through the entire Iron Axe, harvested 500+ blocks, and only got 10 fibrous leaves. I went back and made 2 stone axes and burned both of them to get to 16, so I could make 10 sackcloth.
The necessity of this cloth in the items you need to progress through the journal effectively make this a tedious and difficult barrier to overcome for a new player. This is an alpha, so I hope this doesn’t come off as complaining, but rather adding a voice to the others that are suggesting a change here. I think the depth of the crafting system allows for something as basic as this first tier of cloth to be far less tedious to acquire without damaging the challenge of progression.
More importantly, it’s entirely possible I’m just a bonehead and there’s something out there that alleviates this problem that I haven’t discovered, and if so I hope someone will let me know what that is!
deserts are a nice place to look for desert swords as they stand out more. It may well be worth it to gather something easier, sell it a bit and save up for a diamond axe to harvest foliage with to speed up your fibrous collection rate. Luck skill also goes a long way to increasing the drop chance, although it doesn’t go way beyond 5-6% from foliage in my experience.
Also remember that as your character matures and you get more tool skills and “power” stat, you will need fewer hits to break blocks, and your tools (and so your sack) will last a good deal longer
Interesting. Just to clarify, I’ve not mass-crafted a single tool yet. I was only mass-crafting the cloth itself from the leaves, as the acquiring the leaves is difficult, so that improved leaf-to-cloth ratio is advantageous. You get stone tools very quickly and early on, and then you start to find Iron and Copper in the world. As you continue to progress you develop your crafting machines and unlock the ability to make better tools out of better ores, you naturally want to make tools from these new and improved materials you’ve been hunting for. The stone tools are absolutely functional, but Iron tools in comparison are undeniably superior. You also (or at least I did) stack up a large quantity of iron and copper pretty quickly, and it feels like you can’t use it for much because you’re limited by the cloth requirement instead of the ore requirement, which for some reason feels logically backwards to me, although admittedly that is a presumption and not something that is ‘wrong’ necessarily.
So to answer your question directly, I wasn’t mass-crafting these tools, I just wanted to keep a single iron hammer/axe/shovel in my hand, and since I’m acquiring lots and lots of iron, the limitation to do so being based in a fiber that in real life would be much easier to acquire seems odd? You make a super valid point in that the stone tools are acceptable alternatives, and I shouldn’t just EXPECT to be limited by one thing and not another, regardless of real-world comparisons. It still feels a little imbalanced that I can spend an hour and have enough Iron to make 50 hammers, but I have to spend 3 hours to get enough cloth to make 5 of them.
I’m just trying to share a perspective. And to Prome3us’s point, it sure sounds like I need to find a desert! Thank you for that information.
I also have the feeling that the drops are low for those leafs. I also searched for those plants in deserts, but I didn’t found a spot where it would be even near to the rate I found them in random trees (measured in time I had put in collecting them).
I also don’t want to make TONS of tools, but even to get some of each to go out for a gathering tour I had needed double then trice the time to get the leafs I need then I had to go on ore mining or the other stuff you need for making tools. You also see this “unbalance” if you look at stores how much you have to pay to get some leafs compared to the price of the ores.
I don’t want to make each ore I find to tools so it’s ok to have the feeling to work to get them, but just getting one or two per whole medium tree I cut down is a pain in the … you know what I mean.
So yes, may be we need more drops, no matter if the trees have a higher drop rate or just letting desert swords spawn more often. I tend to the second to make location play a more important side of the game
To me it’s not a problem at all. I always have had three characters. Most of the time each plays just enough to get the daily bonus and finish whatever they are doing. Often it’s just a little mining or hunting low level wildlife. My main home is in a desert and it’s easier to see them there, plus, as they are named Desert Sword it makes sense there are more there. I don’t specifically look for them ever. In 20 - 30 minutes on a character I usually will see 6 - 10 Desert Sword. After playing over a month I mass crafted some sackcloth once. I don’t know how many I made, but, I think I still have over 150 left from what I made a month or so ago. I just looked and the stack in my non-overflow has 424 fibrous leaves right now and I may have some more in my overflow storage. I really don’t see why people seem to need so much though unless they are manufacturing for keeping a shop stocked. I likely get more than I need for three characters. I still have all the sackcloth and have enough leaves to mass craft more. Until recently I had never raised luck. I do find though with two luck I think it is I get more than I used to mostly in collecting leaves while cutting wood.
By the way, a week or less ago I deleted my highest character to start a new character to see how life is for new characters. I’m level 19 now and still using all stone items since I haven’t gotten any of the feats for breaking 10 or whatever the lowest is. So, I have never used a fibrous leaf yet for crafting. I have 88 after playing today that I have collected so far though and I’m not in a desert on that character. I’m on a wooded hill with some grass nearby with basically swamp on the other side. Just running through grass to mine or cut trees I see a few Desert Sword each time I play and I cut a lot of leaves while cutting wood and get fibrous leaf that way too. That character is on Solum.
Serve a very similar purpose they are often times the limiting factor for making tools be it Gem Tools or Less then Gem Tools…
If Fibrous Leaves were easy to aquire then the value of Copper Iron Silver Gold Titanium tools would drop dramatically… Similiarly if Shimmering Orbs were easy to get the value on Gem tools would also drop…
While it may seem to you like things are out of balance. Your looking at it from a perspective that doesnt consider the Market and how it would flood with tools if these two drops were easier…
As it is I find the drop rate to be quite right… Its hard enough but not too hard… Both Leaves and Shimmering Orbs feel just right…
Again I suggest using Stone for all tools other then a Hammer and with Hammer
Your either at the stage of the game where simply buying a Titanium Hammer from a shop is easy! And you will make your money back and then some…
Or
Your at the stage of the game where you can’t afford Titanium Hammers then you should be using a Full Stack of Stone Hammers and have 1 Gold hammer for the stuff stone can’t break…
Stock up your copper and Iron silver gold as it will be far more useful for other things. Or sell it for extra coin…
Use the economy interact with the shops… This is an MMORPG and the shops list things at very reasonable prices…
I do the same with any new game I aquire, I like the discover experience, and I did the same with Boundless, trying not to get any tip from internet. And the first time I came here and my first post was about fibrous leaves
I won’t try to spoiler your experience, so keep trying, use your skill resets, remember that you have one reset per week and you soon will discover that the leaves are not a problem.
This game is similar to others, but is very different in many aspects, so some things are a bit annoying at first.
Have a good Oort life!
Wow. What I’m learning here is that I have a lot to learn. I really appreciate all the friendly feedback! @Sulfurblade that post definitely opened my eyes to the larger implications I hadn’t considered at all. I think I hadn’t quite wrapped my head around the fact that this isn’t a single player game, and there’s an economy to manage.
Wow this game is interesting. I’m off to learn more about travelling and shopping. And to make a lot of stone hammers and one gold one.
Desert Swords are pretty common in some grass terrain next to deserts, and sometimes even away from them too. I think it may be on gnarled grass but not 100%. Keep an eye out as you travel the deserts, note the grass you find them on then check that too. I often find them under shrubs (trees with no trunk) too as I guess others miss them on their travels.
I’ve found Andoweem a good place to look as I levelled as it was slightly less difficult spawns than other worlds so you have downtime fighting less often. Also seems plentiful - not sure it gets a lot of foot traffic so was often finding abundant areas. Try floating islands too, they’re often a good hotspot.
It’s a shame that every tree in the world shows when you put a Fibrous Leaf in an Atlas. It’d be nice to have an Atlas UI that lets you exclude certain nodes, or a specific fix for this.
Edit: If you haven’t already try to max out Agility - you get to the nodes quicker and can flee most battles. I only fight when gathering if there happen to be spawns on a rich area.
When you’re a new player, the grind for fib leafs is real. It is going to be incredibly tedious until you unlock full luck, power, and some energy. At that point you can walk around Solum 1-shotting 3 bushes at once (with a diamond/soon-to-be-forged axe).
It’s like many other progression systems. The start of the game requires significantly more work, but as you progress things get easier. For instance, I get around 300 fib leafs per hour this way. Maybe more, I never timed it.
Changing the drop rates would have a huge impact on the market as @Sulfurblade pointed out.
TL;DR - It’s rough starting out, but things get easier as you progress
And to Prome3us’s point, it sure sounds like I need to find a desert! Thank you for that information.
