Gathering Resources

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Healing leaves

Cut healing leaves from medicinal bushes with a knife on random encounters in treelines, snowfields and abandoned hamlets. Fully harvest the bush for at least one leaf; random extra yield can give more. Foraging abilities are not required for an ordinary bush. Each leaf weighs 20 g.

Healing leaves can also appear at resource and tech traders. Stock is random, so a particular seller may have none.

Metal

New treeline, snowfield and abandoned-hamlet encounters each have two metal piles. Work them with a functioning shovel or pickaxe. The player who finishes receives one guaranteed piece of metal and extra salvage; abilities can improve the extra finds.

The supply is shared by all players. A worked pile stays depleted: it does not refill on a timer or when you leave and return. Fresh piles appear in new instances of encounters; existing maps are not automatically replenished. Faction standing and the hidden-cache ability are not required.

Whenever a tech trader’s stock is generated, it includes metal and electrical tape. Players can buy out that supply before the next refresh, so availability at every moment is not guaranteed.

Resources in Last Frontier don’t sit in chests — they’re part of the world: a beast’s carcass after a fight, a roadside rubble pile, the wreckage of old machinery, an ore vein, a frozen mechanism. To get something useful out of them you need the right tool, a bit of time, and room in your backpack. Let’s break down what’s gathered where, with what, and for how long.

Gathering is a process

A resource source is an object or a dead creature with a special “harvest” property. You can’t pick it up “by hand”: every successful use of the right tool pushes the work forward, building up progress. Until the work is finished, a counter in the form of “remaining/total” floats above the target — you can see how many more actions are needed and decide whether it’s worth lingering right now.

Each source has its own difficulty bar: a simple find is taken apart quickly, while a dense rubble pile or a complex object will take more actions. When progress reaches the threshold, gathering completes — the game awards the loot and experience all at once.

How to gather

You start from the target itself, and your character picks the tool.

• The gather button in the action ring. Right-click a carcass that can be butchered, or a resource point: the ring has a gather button showing the tool the target needs — a knife, a pickaxe or pliers. The button is there even if you carry no such tool, so you can see at once that the target can be worked. In combat it is gone, just like searching.
• A click on a resource point outside combat starts gathering right away. An ordinary click on a carcass searches it; you butcher a carcass with the button in the ring.
• The tool is chosen for you: a suitable one in your main hand; if there is none, in your second hand; if there is none there either, the most productive suitable one in your backpack. A broken tool is never taken. A tool in your hand wins over a better one in the backpack: taking it in hand was your choice.
• One command to the end. Your character repeats the attempts on their own until the carcass is butchered or the point is used up. Each attempt takes as long and wears the tool as much as using it by hand. The work stops when a fight starts, when you give your character another command, or when no suitable tool is left.

If you have no suitable tool at all, a hint pops up over your character saying which one is needed — for example, “A mining tool is needed for extraction.” — and the work does not start.

Three types of gathering and the tools for them

The type of source determines what you work it with. Tools can’t be replaced by your bare hands: a carcass, ore, and old electronics can’t be “gathered” the same way.

• Mining — mining tools: shovels, pickaxes and the like — for deposits, rubble piles, ore nodes and old junk. Traders sell the pickaxe and the shovel — resource traders, hunters and general-goods traders, while bandit traders carry them among melee weapons. A trader never lays out the whole range at once, so a particular seller may not have them; settlement traders restock about every half hour. Dmitry Lavrentiev in the ED-17 workshops also hands out a shovel, if you have none, during the quest “Close Contact: Universal Tool”.
• Hunting — hunting tools: knives for butchering dead creatures. First you have to kill the target, and only then can you extract materials from the carcass.
• Electric — electrical tools for mechanisms, electronics and machinery wreckage.

You can also apply a tool to a target by hand, through the backpack in the action ring. The game then explains a refusal just as plainly: a tool of the wrong type gets “A mining tool is needed.” (or a hunting or electrical one); a broken tool or a living target gets “Cannot apply.”; a point that is already used up gets “Resource is depleted.”

Not every body can be butchered. A human or, say, a Stone Wanderer has no gather button in the ring, and a knife applied to such a body by hand gets “There’s nothing here to butcher.” A coyote can be butchered.

Time and pace: the stronger the harvester, the faster

Each use of the tool adds an amount to progress that depends on the tool itself and on the character’s skill. Roughly speaking, the progress per action = the tool’s “yield” plus your harvester bonus. That’s why a specialist with trained gathering clears the same node in fewer actions than a beginner using the same tool.

Gathering has no fixed timer — you “pay” not in seconds spent on the spot, but in the number of successful attempts. Still, real time on the work is needed either way: if a fight breaks out nearby or the group is in a hurry, you can leave a node half-stripped and come back later. Some of the specialized harvester bonuses also trigger at the moment of an attempt or a reward and can spend stamina, so a good gatherer plans not just the tool but a reserve of strength too.

What the find’s class tells you

Visible nodes on the map are highlighted with an outline and a short class label — this helps you “read” a place even before the reward:

• Salvage (SALV) — the basis for recycling, trade and simple crafting.
• Tech (TECH) — rarer loot for repairs, crafting and complex items; frozen technical sources belong with it too.
• Winter resources (WILD) — useful in the cold and on the long road.
• Hunting materials (HUNT) — the result of butchering creatures.
• Trails (TRAIL) — hints for routing and careful exploration.
• Minerals (ORE) and medical components (MED) — resources for specific tasks: from crafting to healing.

Gathering quality and reward

The very same source gives a different result depending on the character’s preparation. On completion the game picks not only the set of items but also its level: a small, medium, or more valuable payout. Gathering bonuses raise that level and can add extra reward “rolls” — a developed gatherer doesn’t just finish faster, but carries away more.

Frozen sources have a separate reward path: they get an increased chance of additional finds, but that doesn’t cancel out the risk of cold, weight, and a long trek back. A compact tier label floats above completed gathering — HARV T# for regular gathering or FROZ T# for frozen — and if several finds dropped, a multiplier in the form of xN is added to the label.

Butchering creatures can additionally yield guaranteed base carcass materials (for example, meat and hide) — these are always awarded, even before the quality rolls.

The source runs dry

This isn’t your personal bottomless stash. After a successful harvest:

• a creature’s carcass spills its contents onto the ground and disappears;
• a node object changes its appearance to “emptied” — you can’t pull the same thing out of it anymore.

Experience is awarded specifically for finishing the work, not for each strike, so gathering supports your character’s growth, not just your inventory.

In short: what to bring when you go for resources

• The tool decides everything. The wrong or a broken tool will ruin the harvest before any reward.
• Budget the time. A node takes several actions; a specialist handles it faster.
• Bring room in your backpack. Loot is useless if you can’t carry it.
• Don’t be greedy. If there’s a fight nearby or the group is overloaded, sometimes it’s better to mark the spot and come back prepared.