What Is It For? Gathered and Dropped Items

What are the things that come out of trees, mines, water, fields and monsters good for, are they worth keeping, and who buys them for how much? This page puts it all in one place. In short:

Extra materials from trees

Once your Lumberjacking skill is 100, every successful chop with an axe occasionally gives an extra material next to the logs:

NPCs buy none of these. There is no need to hoard bark fragments, fungi, parasitic plants and switches; do not let them take up room in your backpack. Keep brilliant amber or sell it to a bowyer.

Kinds of logs

The logs each kind of tree gives and the skill needed → Gathering Skills.

• What they are for: logs are turned into boards at a carpenter's or bowyer's; carpenters and bowyers use boards or logs. Bows, staves and wooden shields made from colored wood (oak, ash, yew, heartwood, bloodwood, frostwood) only take that color; on this server they add no properties → Item Quality.
• Selling: the carpenter buys plain logs and boards for 1 gp, colored boards for 2–4 gp. Colored logs are not bought as they are: turn them into boards first → Economy and Vendors.
• Their real value: Trade Orders that ask for colored materials and the colored-material task of Craft Week → Order Rewards.

From the mines

Ore: smelted at a blacksmith's forge into ingots. Armor and weapons made from colored ingots are stronger → Item Quality. The blacksmith buys iron ingots for 2 gp and colored ingots for 3–7 gp; ore is not bought as it is, smelt it first.

Rare stones: once your Mining skill is 100, every successful dig with a pickaxe has a one in a thousand chance for each of six rare stones (about 0.6% in total): Blue Diamond, Dark Sapphire, Ecru Citrine, Fire Ruby, Perfect Emerald, Turquoise. In fishing too, at 80 or more skill every successful catch has a 0.6% chance of a White Pearl.

NPCs do not buy these stones. Their value is in bowyer and carpenter recipes:

Each bow and staff needs one stone (plus 10–20 boards) and 75 skill in Bowcraft/Fletching or Carpentry (63.8 for staves). Recipe scrolls on this server come from the bowyer's and carpenter's Trade Order rewards (a reward item can drop on delivery while your craft skill is 80+; for bowyers and carpenters half of the rewards are recipe scrolls) → Order Rewards. If you keep the stone for a recipe you have learned, it will be useful; if you are not a bowyer or carpenter, you can sell the stone to bowyers at the Bazaar or on the Market.

Dropped by monsters

Gems: amber, amethyst, citrine, diamond, emerald, ruby, sapphire, star sapphire, tourmaline.

• Selling: jewelers and provisioners buy them: diamond 100 gp, star sapphire 62 gp, amethyst, emerald and sapphire 50 gp, tourmaline 47 gp, ruby 37 gp, amber and citrine 25 gp.
• Using: a tinker (Tinkering 40+) makes rings, necklaces, earrings and bracelets from 2 ingots + 1 gem; the gem is set into the jewelry. Rubies and star sapphires are also used in jeweled filigree (Tinkering 70) → Crafting Skills.
• If you are not a tinker there is no point hoarding them; sell them to a jeweler.

Reagents (black pearl, blood moss, garlic, ginseng, mandrake root, nightshade, spiders' silk, sulfurous ash): materials for magic, alchemy and inscription. Keep them if you are a mage → How Magic Works.

Cut from corpses (double-click a knife, target the corpse):

• Leather / hides: the tailor's leatherwork; the tanner buys them for 2 gp. Colored leather (spined, horned, barbed) is worth more → Economy and Vendors.
• Bones: bone armor at the tailor (Tailoring 85–96, together with leather); the tanner buys bone armor for 8–28 gp.
• Feathers: bowyers make arrows and bolts (each needs 1 shaft + 1 feather).
• Raw meat: sell it to a butcher or cook it → Cooking.

What the text on magic weapons, armor and jewelry means → Item Properties.

From the water

• Fish: cut with a knife (4 raw fish steaks from each fish), cooked on a fire → Crafting Skills. The fisherman buys both raw fish and fish steaks for 1 gp; selling them earns nothing.
• Their real value: fisherman orders, Fisherman's Log entries and Gatherer's Week → Gatherer.
• White Pearl: above, under rare stones.

From the fields

Fields and farmer orders → Gatherer.

Selling field produce earns little; a farmer order pays much better (120 gp per order, 160–250 gp for pumpkins).