NODE HARVESTING
Gathering resources from fixed world points — ore veins, herb spawns, fishing holes, berry bushes — that deplete on harvest and respawn on timers or conditions.
- SOLO-DEV COST LOW
- TIMING REAL-TIME / TURN
- COMMON IN MMO · SURVIVAL · LIFE-SIM · OPEN-WORLD
World of Warcraft's mining and herbalism nodes structured MMO gathering for two decades (and made flight paths into farming routes), survival games scatter harvestable nodes as their economy's roots, and life sims like Stardew Valley put daily-respawning forage at the calendar's rhythm. Designers use nodes rather than area-abstract gathering because points in space create geography: node distributions make regions economically distinct (this zone has iron, that one has silver), harvesting routes become learnable player knowledge worth optimizing, and in multiplayer, nodes are contestable — the race to the vein is emergent PvP without a single combat rule. Respawn timers meanwhile meter the resource faucet precisely. Key decisions: fixed spawn points versus randomized locations (fixed builds route mastery; random forces exploration), respawn timing and visibility, per-player instanced nodes versus shared world nodes (shared creates competition and grief in equal measure), and whether harvesting is instant, channeled, or a minigame. Pitfall: nodes as pure time-tax — when gathering is riskless clicking along a memorized loop, it becomes the genre's most botted activity for a reason; nodes stay interesting only when acquiring them involves some live consideration: danger nearby, quality variance, tool checks, or competition.