Are you sure it does not increase drop chance from plants and boulders too? And if not how does one should interpret on the ‘drop rate mod.’ on character → profile → motion and action?
IMHO UI, tooltips and skill description is giant mess that need a rewrite and lot of clarification.
Now go chop a tree with and without the epic skill…
The chances are just simply higher that you get something extra, there was always alreay a chance for that ayway, now that chance is much higher. Not sure what the percentages are for chance but they seem to differ for each item you can gather. If I need sap and don’t have it on I can chop the entire tree and walk away with 2 sap, if I do it with it on they keep coming left and right.
It really does work! Also up the luck stat to 8/8 which gives a chance on extra material drops like shimmering orbs from growth…
i use this skill but after i see same amount resource as without this skill i respec. i test it on T3-T4 oplanets on fibrous leaf and waxy earthyam i harvest 250 flora what drop fibrous and 250 what drop waxy without this skill ,and next day with this skill .And with this skill i have 10 more fibrous and 12 more waxy than without him i think for me useless skill.
Hey jiivita what if you used maxed luck and gathering x2 you think that would make a better difference?
I think the gathering epic should be a boon on shovels… and then just delete this skill…
With Luck 8 (no gathering epic), and chopping on a T3 tree, the drop rate is ~20% for sap and ~7% for bark. YMMV
Source: I’ve done alot of tests with tree cutting. I discussed it here as well. A couple other people had similar drop rates. I will be testing the gathering epic soon
A lot of the epics are kinda meh… Unless you want a special feature that only the epic offers, you are usually better off just investing in the base stat skills 
Aye. I agree. I’m still not convinced on the charge or rapid fire epic for the slingbow. The rapid fire really doesn’t seem…well "rapid’ enough. And the load time to get to full damage on the charge epic…well, I can just fire off 2 shots to get similar damage.
I built a glass cannon build with charge shot, and it is a lot of fun. It allows me to be a gatherer…and I just one shot mobs as they get into aggro range with my slingbow.
Using Charged Shot + Forged Emerald Slingbow + Strength Brew, while I walk around on T6 I can one shot Epic Cuttles with HP buff. It is awesome! Ups the drops as well. Personally I like the charged shot for my playstyle.
Yeah, but you get to pick up boulders. 
I one shot most stuff there with just my Iron fist and and max strength+damage epic.
The thing is most “things” does little damage to you, those that do real damage, you can’t one shot with iron fist.
The name is a little misleading, it doesn’t actually increase your fire rate, instead it makes it so you can hold down the mouse to fire with perfect timing the moment you reload. Still useful, IMO, but probably not what you had in mind.
I appreciate the conversational tone in this thread. Maybe we should start all threads with spreadsheets, it seems to weed out the negative-nancies haha
LMAO. I literally just said this a week ago about data driven topics…
PS- If anyone can actually answer that post, would be much appreciated.
I have been farming beans for the past several days. I noticed I always got 1-2 beans per plant. I decided to get the epic gathering skill. I assumed it would give 2-4 beans per plant. Instead, it gave 2 every time (out of around 1000 plants I’d guess). It seemed to me it ended up being more like a 50% increase in beans rather than 200%. I don’t have actual data though, just observation.
I thought this also.
But when I tested it with Bitter Beans, I would still collect 1 bean on some plants with the gatherer epic. That is what caused me to want to create the form and try and figure out if there was a difference in the long run.
the drop chance for an additional bean increases, not the number of beans u get
If the drop chance increases for additional beans, then the number of beans dropped overall should be increased significantly.
So far, I haven’t seen data to show it does. The 15% variance I saw in my small sample could have just been RNG.
Hope a new data set comes out, or the devs speak to it!
You can’t compare samples from two different planets. For just a simple example look at Exotic Earthyams. On Alcyon I’m able to gather over 200 in small area, i have 8 luck, and I’m getting mostly 2 yams per cacti. When I had also gathering epic, I believe I got exclusively 2 yams per cacti (but I did not record results, so can’t be sure I also since then i dropped the epic because I think it’s not worth it). On lower tier planets I don’t remember getting 2 Exotic Earthyams per cacti ever with a toon that has 8 luck. I may be mistaken, but… let’s look now at ores. From T4 I’m unable to produce more than 1 titanium ore per seam. Just can’t. On T5 I frequently get 2 per seam, and on T6 I get frequently 3 yams per seam. Another example is pulsating orbs, I do get 3 per fungi on T6 planets, but I don’t remember to get so much ever on T3 or lower tier planets. T4 and T5 just dont remember.
So in conclusion I think that drops per plant are limited on any given planet, but how much will drop MAX depends actually on tier of the planet. And with higher tier, gathering epic may be a good choice, but… to conclude test you just have to account for planet tier, and most of those test conducted i see don’t really say what methodology was used.