Gathering
"Foraging is permitted. The Network retains broadcast rights to anything you find, anything you miss, and the face you make at the clay bank."
Floor 1 fed your workbench through salvage — the floor left parts lying around and you took them. Floor 2 adds a wilder faucet: gathering, working raw materials loose from the land itself. It debuts at the Streamside, which is not a coincidence; the river is where the floor keeps its soft goods.
The gather verb
Stand next to something worth gathering and work at it. That's the whole of it. They are visible features of the bank, and there are a few kinds:
| Node | Where | Yield |
|---|---|---|
| Reed bed | The Streamside riverbank | Tensile Plant Fiber ×1–2, every time. The cordage, snare, and weaving staple. |
| Clay bank | The Streamside riverbank | Redleaf Concentrate ×1, about half the time. The healing reagent, seeping wild out of the survival-medicine clay. Dry passes happen; the bank owes you nothing. |
Each node runs a per-runner cooldown of about thirty minutes — you worked the bank, the bank needs time, and it needs it from you specifically (another runner's pass is their own business). A dry pass at the clay still starts your cooldown. The Network has reviewed the fairness complaints and finds the clay to be within tolerance.
Field versus garden
The honest economics, published so nobody learns them the expensive way: gathering is the convenient source, not the rich one. The reed bed matches your home planter's fiber yield but on a cooldown; the clay trickle sits below a cultivated redleaf bed at home. Gathering exists so a runner mid-excursion can re-provision snares and stims without walking home. The runner who wants volume grows it — see Odette, the garden, and your home's planter wing.
One more source pays out while you walk: a forager companion out with you — the Bramblepig, usually — finds components and feed on its own initiative, closing the pen's upkeep loop from the wild side.
Why the Streamside is good for this
The reed beds are the exception, and they are taught: the Lodge Attendant shows you the twist-and-draw once and winds your first bundle into cord by her fire. After that the bank answers you every time.
The Streamside is the floor's designated calm — the Network keeps no hostile spawns on the bank, the River Lodge is right there, and the resident River Heron is the closest thing Floor 2 has to a colleague. It is the one expanse where "stop and provision" is a plan rather than an epitaph. Getting to the Streamside remains your problem, and the fords remain the weather's.
Component Salvage
The gathering economy's other half is what you get back from your gear. At Survival L30, Component Salvage grants +1 yield whenever you deconstruct trap components — wire, springs, cable, the whole snare-and-trigger family. The trap you built, sprang, and broke down returns more of itself; a working Survival runner's kit becomes nearly circular. (It arrives bundled with Apex Catch at the same level, which tells you what the discipline thinks Level 30 is for: catching the big one, and affording to keep trying.)
Related, for the professionally acquisitive: what Salvage Sense opens on this floor sharpens the taking rather than the gathering — its Level 20 read highlights every container in the room, and at L25 one deconstruction yield in five comes back one step rarer. Different skill, same appetite.
↑ Back to Overview — the Greenbelt, from the top.