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The only thing that helps that pain is to dig (or to careplan for a master digger) until you no longer have a low Forage level.

Yeah, but digging out DP brings (almost) no xp...

Within the the context in which it was offered ... and that context being "having gear", it makes more sense. In order to "dig for gear", your dig is going to be of a higher skill than your gear, and using your highest skill is the fastest way to lose DP.

But I have to say, I started with the same outlook you have now.
As I have mentioned, I worked my way up to 220 melee and my dig was 20 ... at that point I realized I had erred in my character development choices. I was "stuck" not only choosing between having crappy gear or having to beg for gear ... but was also stuck with having to use melee skill as a means of DP removal. It was not a good choice.

The main reason for that is that getting DP is a very rare thing when grinding skills... when grinding melee / magic skills, in dire need, someone will "girlyman it", come back and rez everyone. And even if team does wipe, sum1 usually around to rez.

When we do get DP, it's generally going to be in one of 3 instances

a) violated the "no typing in chat boxes" while digging rule
b) got eaten in PR while digging
c) Was afk at a hawker and a named walked by

So not only am I already dressed for it, but the main reason I don't switch to melee is .... when digging all I need is focus and that regens after each pull ... when whacking sumthin, I need to sit and regen between every cupla kills.... no auto regen when the mob dies.

In addition, for each death's worth of DP, I walk away with 90 craftable mats ... If I used melee, I gotta kill way more plants, I gotta spend way more time and I walk away with nothing useful as mats are too low to do anything worthwhile with. I thik that's why you'll find that when sum1 comes outta PR after season change w/ 10X DP, there's no rush to go hunting.

Precisely so. Though Lakes dig was my third Master, I found digging to be quicker than killing overall even when my Lakes dig was a full hundred levels lower than my more lethal skills. When you hunt, you need to wait for regen on HP and stam/sap, wait for respawns.... you just wait. Having a healer around solves half the problem, but not the other half.

Sure, I never got 6k XP for digging a spot, but (3+3+3+3+3) > (6+6+0+0+0+0+0+0+0), so if you look at it from an XP/minute rate, digging compares favorably at moderate level and wins at higher levels.

Best I can remember for consistent XP rate... and my mind is set to pre-autocats days .. was about 2865 (x 2 w/ cats = 5730). But was not a big cats user ... back when cats came from Ops they were not in unlimited supply and I used my share on crafting.

I remember climbing to 200 in PR Dig at ToT Kami TP solo digging Magnificent something or other, it and it was almost unnerving at the consistency of the XP.

But with DP, its over 100k credit for every dig so even 10x DP is not a real burden. Kill digging would be a bit less per node but I bet Gidge can knock that off in 45 - 60 minutes

I average a little under 40 seconds per spot, and 15-20 minutes for a bag (400 mats).