Gathering Efficiency

“Full wagons move slow, and out here, slow is a way of volunteering.” — The Seamkeeper’s Codex, a salvager’s field notes

Gathering looks like a passive activity. It’s actually the most optimizable system in the game, because the whole formula is known:

haul = (Σ count × 10 × troop-tier mult) × node-tier mult × research mult
       capped by the node's remaining amount

The three multipliers, ranked

1. Node tier (×1.0 → ×11.0) — dominates everything. The jump from a T2 node (×1.5) to a T4 node (×3.4) more than doubles the same march’s haul. Your gathering power grows more by marching one zone-ring deeper than by any troop or research upgrade. Node tiers are set by their zone’s territory tier — see Reading the Map — with one quirk worth knowing: the windows overlap going down (a T4 zone spawns T3 and T4 nodes), so deeper zones also carry mid-tier nodes for mid-sized escorts.

2. Troop tier (×1.0 → ×3.25) — matters at the margin. Higher-tier troops carry more per body, but they’re expensive bodies. For pure hauling, quantity of cheap tiers usually beats quality — five hundred T1 carriers out-haul one hundred T3s (5,000 × mult 1.0 vs 1,000 × mult 1.55). Spend your high tiers on escort risk, not carry math.

3. Research (Laden Carts, March Capacity, War Logistics) — quiet and permanent. Carry-capacity research multiplies every haul forever; march-capacity research raises the troops-per-march cap (base 1,000 + 250/Grove level), which is the real ceiling once you’re sending full columns.

Node economics

• Nodes deplete and respawn (minutes to hours, faster at low tiers). A depleted-looking neighborhood refills over a session — vary your targets rather than waiting on one crystal.
• Haul caps at what the node holds. Sending an 800-carry column to a node holding 5,000 is fine; sending your maximum column to a nearly-empty node wastes the walk. The send sheet shows expected haul — if it’s below your column’s capacity, the node is part-drained; pick another.
• All four resource kinds spawn everywhere — chase tier, not type. If you need Gold specifically, the Alchemist’s Lab is your lever; the map’s job is bulk.

Timing patterns

Marches resolve on arrival — no return leg. This makes gathering a fire-and-forget system with one optimal pattern: send at session close, to the farthest/richest target you’d never babysit. Travel time is dead time only if you’re watching it.

• Session-end marches: deepest reachable nodes (the multiplier pays for the walk).
• Mid-session marches while you’re doing other things: near nodes, short cycles, multiple hauls.
• With three march slots: one combat march active, two gather columns on staggered ranges is the classic deep-game idle state.

The one-number health check

Track hauls per day, not per march. If your daily total isn’t growing week over week, you’re gathering at the same ring you’ve outgrown — go one deeper.