Life is Feudal Official Forum

[Rickymak]

Step 1, Nature's Lore 30
Nature's lore, is of course the first skill on the tree.
Build it up to 30 by gathering plant fiber.
Right click the ground, and in the natures lore section just choose gather plant fiber. You can do this anywhere with grass or forest. It has a random chance of succeeding, but quality may (I don't know) depend on soil quality.
Give the plant fiber to your forester so that s/he can use it to make traps and primitive tools.
If you don't have a cook or apples you can gather edible taproot.

Step 2, Nature's Lore 60, Gathering 30
The great thing about the next step is you actually can do it while also accomplishing the step after that.
This step works best if you have a separate bag in your inventory to do it. Hopefully you have a tailor who can help you get such a bag.

Right click the ground. Choose search for herbs.
Search for Herbs is setup to auto craft, so you will need to press exit to stop yourself from repeatedly searching.
small stalks with white buds will pop up. Click on those with a sickle equipped and you will gather a small herb into your inventory quality of these common herbs is between 1 and 29. It will fail sometimes, but keep trying.
Your Nature's Lore level will increase, as will your Gathering level.

Step 3, Gather enough herbs to experiment with
This really should have been accomplished just by completing step 2, but it doesn't hurt to continue gathering.
There are 66 herbs that you can possible gather.
You'll want to have 5 or more of each herb if you possibly can.

A helpful hint, at this point you should be able to find fresh herbs. They look like little bushes and have red and white bulbs on them. The quality of fresh herbs is between 30 and 59.

Step 4, discover what the herbs do
Each herb has three effects. The first two are positive, the third is poisonous.
There are 6 negative effects and 12 positive.
There are 11 herbs with each effect.
As far as the positive effects go, there is overlap so that each positive effect has 1 herb with each of the other positive effects.
This means that you will have 11 herbs that make flux. Each one has a different second positive effect. And each one has a poisonous effect.

Step 5, Healing 60
Your herbalism is good now. It will build up just through experimentation and discovering what each of your herbs do.
If you want to move on to Alchemy, you need to boost your healing to 60.
group up in a unit with some friends.
Allow them to fight and right click on their names in your profile.
It will give you the option to heal.
Heal your friends in-between every hit until healing is level 60. It won't do much to actually heal them, but it's just a short grind.

Step 6, Have fun
The only differences between Alchemy and Herbalism is that Alchemy can use catalysts and needs alcohol to make potions.
So, for alchemy you need to work with everyone to get your catalysts. You also need to work with a farmer to get your alcohol. You can only make 3 things without alcohol, flux, naphtha, and food flavor.
Yes you can make all of those through herbalism

The only reason to do alchemy is to make more potent or higher quality products. They have the same effects and same general results as herbalism. After you level alchemy high enough you can get a third effect on a potion, but it's basically useless.

[EricCross]

Thanks for the great guide! I learned a lot!

It doesn't mention the unique effect of each herb being dependent upon who gathered them (correct me if that isn't right).

You might add that you need a mortar and Pestle to mix herbs, however I had them in a bark box with my herbs and mixed right from the bark box, so apparently you don't need it in your inventory, just "open" (please confirm).

Starting our community, while I worked on smelting, someone else gathered herbs for me, and I experimented with them, finding 2 x Raises intellect, 1 Strength, 1 Restore HStam, 1 Lowers Max Stamina, 1 Damages Stamina/Regeneration, and 1 Poison.

When I read about herbs being unique per person, I made a new bark box and put herbs in it that I'd gathered myself. I then started making combinations of them, and in approx. 5 hours of systematic mixing (herb 1 with herb 2, herb 1 with herb 3, etc), I found NO new combinations of the 4,290 possible 2 herb combinations, and am stuck at herbalism = 34.

Also, MY herbs, seem to produce the same results herb by herb, as those gathered by someone else and given to me. Perhaps the rule is just that herbs are unique to the PREPARING individual.

Somewhat unrelated, but it happened to me re: Herbalism: today I can't open my herb box nor the herbalist house! It turned out our guild leader wasn't doing sacrifices correctly, so the monument representing our guild would go away after 2 days, resulting in our losing access to such things! I'm back in after she recreated the monument and invited me back in.

[EricCross]

!!!!! I have spent 5 or so hours trying hundreds of herbal combinations, FROM MY ALPHABETIZED HERB COLLECTION IN A BARK BOX.

They "go through all the motions" but all results are unknown.

BUG? If something is 100% non-functional, such as (1) right click and "equip" from an item in a chest; or (2) combining herbs right out of a box, shouldn't the function not exist?

"Apparently" I have to have the herbs in my INVENTORY, (which scrambles them every time it is opened?) I feel rather devastated after organizing all my herbs in a box and trying so many hundred combos...

Also, I've read quite a bit on herbalism, but I did not notice what one other person told me - that trying 3 at a time is not that you're doing 66x65x64 possible combinations, but rather that you're looking for 2-at-a-time combinations, BUT you can try 3 at once when you do 3 i.e. first with second, second with third, and first with third.

Thanks!

[Shiek4d5]

Here is a question I do not see anywhere on the forum or wiki, "what goes in the mineral and organic catalist slots?" or is that not needed for level 0 herbalism? All I know is that placing two herbs in the mortar & pestle then hitting craft, does nothing...

[Oceantwenty]

I am Nature Lore 60+ and Herbalist 31

I believe what i produce with herbalist is completely useless till i got Herbalist 60 for Flux etc...and alchemy.

In the other hand, the progression after 30 (with 2 plants) seems very very slow compare to pre-30. Any tips there?