The realm is littered with free stuff, if you know where to kneel. Every biome grows, buries or swims something worth taking — and all of it feeds the crafting benches.

Certain tiles contain Gathering Points, marked with a green * on the map. When you stand on one, a Gather link appears. Gathering yields a resource specific to the terrain type.

Resources are stored in your personal resource inventory and are consumed by the Crafting system. Gathering Points respawn after a short cooldown. Plan your route to gather efficiently on the way to hunting grounds.

Sundered Reaches Materials

Gathering nodes across the three new islands yield the new material tier instead of the usual tile resources: Star-Iron (Tundra snows and coasts), Spine-Stone (Worldspine mountains) and Vitrified Shard (Wastes desert and glasscrag). The fourth material, Umbral Residue, has no nodes at all — the creatures of the Underworld's Umbral Deep shed 1–2 on death.

The Gathering Professions

Beyond open-ground gathering (which yields 1–5 of a terrain's resource, respawning after a few minutes), six skilled professions work dedicated nodes:

• Mining at ore veins, Logging at timber stands, Fishing at fishing spots, Farming in open fields, Hunting along game trails and Foraging in herb patches — each skill runs 1–50, unlocking richer finds as it grows.
• Farming works Land, River, Shore, Jungle and Snow; Hunting works Forest, Woodland, Land, Snow, Jungle and Wasteland; Foraging works Forest, Woodland, Marsh, Jungle, Land, Snow and Blight — so the open country that fed no profession before now feeds three.
• Their hauls brew at the Alchemy bench: herbs and fungi become the Forager’s tonics, meat and hide the Hunter’s table, and crops the Farmer’s table.
• A node holds 3 charges, rising to 6 as the skill grows, and recharges after about 60 seconds — camp it or circuit several.
• How much you bring back depends on what you find, not which profession you work: a Common comes up 3 at a time, everything rarer comes up singly. Commons are what the low crafting bands buy in bulk, so the bench asks 4–6 of them against 2 of a Legendary; the rarer tiers stay scarce through their find rate instead. Skill milestones and artisan tools each add a further +1 on top.
• Profession hauls feed the bench: ores power the Miner's tonics, timber the Logger's brews, and fish the cookery recipes (see Alchemy).
• Shore Shells gather on shore tiles — several Culinarian pet-food recipes call for them.
• The 3.0 frontier biomes carry their own materials: Volcanic Cinder (Ashfall Caldera), Phantom Ash (Echo Wastes) and Void Crystal (Blighted Expanse) — the fuel of Frontier Alchemy and Rune Catalysts.

Gathering in the Sky

Above level 3,000 the islands gather themselves — sky nodes are auto-collected as you step, no Gather link needed. Each Reach yields its own material, climbing with the altitude:

• Wind Moss and Cloud Silk in the lower Reaches;
• Aether Crystal and Sky Kelp through the middle climbs;
• Star Shard and Sun-Metal in the Firmament and Empyrean — the fuel of the recipe bands that run all the way to level 20,000.

Skill Milestones

Every profession skill runs 1–50, and the payoffs land at fixed rungs. Each row below is a step up from the one before it:

Skill also shortens the action itself: the strike cooldown falls steadily to 25% shorter at the cap. The extra-unit chance here is a separate roll from the artisan accessories’ own, so both can land on one gather.

Gathering in the Underworld

The Underworld has its own nodes — about 250 of them, seeded in Patch 4.8 where before there were none. They yield the materials the Underworld already uses, so nothing new needs a bench:

Achievements

Every profession — Mining, Logging, Fishing, Farming, Hunting and Foraging — carries five achievement rungs at 1, 50, 200, 500 and 1,000 gathers, worth 10 / 30 / 75 / 150 / 300 points from Common through Legendary. From the 200 rung onward the realm hears about it in chat.