Herb Gathering

Smaug and Rainha had been working for about a week now. Doing miscellaneous tasks and hoping that their employers were kind enough to spare a lunch maybe. Otherwise, they had to spend their entire reward money on food for the day. But, now they have officially made it to the next rank in the guild E rank. They have also both gained a bit of XP for their quests. Including street sweeping and delivery, Smaug and Rainha had both gained 100 XP. while that hadn't pushed them to level 6, it got them closer. This is when they had to start taking quests from the quest board, before going up to the receptionist. 

"Ah, herb gathering. A classic starting quest." Smaug stated smugly.

"And the first to take us out of town to boot," Rainha added.

After waiting in the long morning line, Smaug and Rainha handed the receptionist, a beastkin with dog-like features, the very same receptionist you helped the party who discovered Smaug's dungeon. But Smaug didn't know this. 

After seeing the quest the receptionist spoke, "Ah herb gathering? An out-of-town quest I see. If you want, newbie adventures can borrow guild herb gathering equipment, but it's pretty shoddy."

"Sure, can't hurt."

Then the receptionist pulled a small box out from underneath the counter, when she opened it, there were several pairs of gloves with various shapes and sizes in various states of disrepair. There were also a few trowels that were a lot more standardized, but some still looked more used than others. 

Grabbing a pair of gloves that were folded into each other, he analyzed the item.

[Human style gardening gloves, medium:

Grants no real bonuses to defence or special skills. But these gloves are designed to stop any thorns from pricking your skin. These gloves were created with the human hand in mind, so while most races can wear them without issues, there will be some discomfort for races with different hand structures, and in extreme cases, they won't fit at all.]

Smaug, realizing that these gloves might not work, puts them back and searches for a different pair. After a bit of digging, he finds some gloves in relatively good shape.

[Dragon born style gardening gloves, medium:

Grants no real bonuses to defence or special skills. But these gloves are designed to stop any thorns from pricking your skin. These gloves were created with the dragon-born hand in mind, meaning they might be a bit large on the hands of other races, but these gloves also have fingers to store a Dragonborn's claws without risking any tearing in the fingertips that other types of gloves might suffer from.]

Reading the description of the gloves, Smaug had made his decision to find the perfect gloves for him. "I'd like these gloves if that won't be an issue."

"Not at all, as long as you return them we'll be fine. Even then those gloves are in really good condition because they hardly get used, we don't see many dragon born around hear, so I'm sure they won't be too missed."

After Smaug and Rainha had picked their gloves, they both grabbed a trowel and were on their way. After some time, they had reached the eastern gate of town, where the herbs they were looking for were said to grow. Once they were about to get through, a guard stopped them, when Smaug and Rainha showed him their guild card and herb gathering quest. A quick test with a magic device and a green light later, the guard let them through. Traveling a short distance on the road made of packed dirt from people and carts traveling the same route for who knows how long, Smaug and Rainha walked for a bit before re-entering the forest. After a bit, they saw a small clearing off the side of the road. 

"The quest info says this should be the place." 

Both players then walk through the light brush and find a small field, no bigger than a few hundred square feet, but the entire place was covered in the same plant completely coating the ground. 

[Item identified: bell-skirt (weak)

Bell-skirt is a common healing potion ingredient for low-grade potions. Its innate magical property of encouraging the body to regenerate lost tissue goes great with other herbs which reinforce the body's natural store of energy and nutrients. Bellsikirt is also heavily reliant on the ambient mana in the environment, never growing at all if it isn't dense enough, and even when it does grow, may not reach full maturity.]

[natural magical wonder discovered, can now be purchased and placed in your dungeon and will start to naturally grow, with any effects from your dungeon potentially influencing its growth/effects.]

Smaug looked over to Rainha and in shock stated: "Is this for real? Do you think?"

"I think so, and not only that but there might be more things we can get. My question is a limitation. Do you think these plants need sunlight? Or at the very least a light source that works like the sun? I'd imagine not, otherwise, we wouldn't be able to grow them, I say when we get back to our dungeons, we need to test them right away."

"Sounds like a plan, I've been meaning to check up on my dungeon soon anyway."

Smaug, with a new excitement burning in his soul, went to gather the herbs with every dig he carefully plucked the herbs one at a time trying to keep the roots as intact as possible, as soon as it was free, quickly stored the herbs in his inventory to reduce the chance of it degrading over time. By the time he was done, Smaug had 105 herbs in his inventory. 

[skill unlocked: herb gathering I

You have gathered herbs before, and have some ability to get good enough results

Effect: all herbs gathered have a 10% chance of being of 5% better quality. And a 90% chance to be at the base 50% quality]

"Wait, quality percentages?" 

Checking his inventory, Smaug saw that all but two of his bell-skirt were of 50% quality, meaning they would only be 50% effective. Otherwise meaning, he'd only get 50% of the expected price. The only saving grace was the two which were at 55% quality and would refuse to stack with the 50% plebians. But such a small difference in quality probably didn't do much in terms of the amount of money he'd get since the quest already paid 2 coppers per sprout and at half price. They weren't going to give him .05 coppers for just those two herbs.

That is when Rainha said, "Alrighty then, I have 105 herbs, how about you?"

"Same, but 103 are at 50% and 2 at 55%. I hope they don't reduce the reward money for that." 

"Yeah, but hey, I assume you got the herb-gathering skill to then? Makes sense we got the same amount of herbs with about the same amount of care."

"Yeah, we can always grind out that skill later. But for now, we should cut our losses and let the field regrow a bit and save some for others, that way there will be more plants later so we can repeat this quest." 

Smaug and Rainha started walking back, after a full day of work. They started to realize why in the middle of the day the lines were so short, it was because most jobs take a full day to complete, so the morning line was everyone getting their job for the day and the line at the end of the day was them turning them in all at once.

After waiting in line, Smaug and Rainha were a bit worried, but when they brought out their herbs, they were shocked to find they got them at full price.

"Aren't these kinda low quality?"

"Well, yes but this is also an E-rank quest. We don't expect anyone to give us perfect herbs for just two copper. If I had to guess, these herbs are about 50% effective. If they were 60% or 70% effective we'd give you more coins to compensate for your genuine skill. The only real exception to this rule is high-rank herb gathering for special ingredients like chill-vine and deathly blossoms. Very delicate herbs that make strong potions and elixirs, however, these concoctions tend to be very easy to mess up so for those we only accept 90 to 100% effective herbs, even then at 90% you still only get half the reward money." 

"Wait, herb gathering goes up that high in the quest ladder?" Smaug interjected.

"Of course it does. How do you think we get these rare and precious herbs that are also in extremely dangerous places?" The receptionist responded. 

"That makes sense actually." continued Smaug.