Quick harvest questions

I played PoE long before harvest, and have come back and am trying to figure it out. 4 questions:

1. Why is it that rarely when finishing harvesting a crop I get zero lifeforce but a couple of items?
2. It's easy to see which color the crop will yield, but not which patch of plants/animals will yield the most lifeforce. I mean I can see the names of the creatures, but not really their rarity or lifeforce yield, especially since sometimes some of them yield ... nothing (see #1 above). any tips? Maybe a link to a not-outdated guide would help?
(Oddly enough, searching Google for harvest explanation guides gives me pages and pages of utterly outdated posts, or guides about crafting. )
3. I'm playing SSF, so I don't need to farm for what others need, only for myself, which I like. But how does one go about finding one of these blossoms? Do I need to get that Heart of the Grove atlas node to get a "Tier 4" monster?
4. Obviously there are 4 tiers of harvest monsters, I can see that from the wiki, but there is no real indication of what that actually means, I'm guessing a lot of that is leftover from when Harvest was a league and you had to plant things with seeds (which I gather from all these outdated guides). So is getting that "crop rotation" node something that will make getting a Blossom impossible?

thanks much. Any tips or a link to something not outdated (not about harvest crafting) would be lovely too.

1) Harvest yield is tied to quantity bonuses. If you run say a blank map, you will get practically nothing.

2) Use the color coding to tell. The darker the color of the name, the higher the yield tier.

3) I'm playing SSF too. You need to spec all of the Harvest nodes AND you need to run a crap ton of harvests to find a blossom. I probably run well over 1000 maps in a league and usually only find 1-2 blossoms total. (About one blossom every several dozen T4 monsters you run into and T4 mobs are fairly rare even with all the harvest nodes specced).

4) The higher the tier, the larger the amount of lifeforce you get.

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TemjinGold wrote:

1) Harvest yield is tied to quantity bonuses. If you run say a blank map, you will get practically nothing.

2) Use the color coding to tell. The darker the color of the name, the higher the yield tier.

3) I'm playing SSF too. You need to spec all of the Harvest nodes AND you need to run a crap ton of harvests to find a blossom. I probably run well over 1000 maps in a league and usually only find 1-2 blossoms total. (About one blossom every several dozen T4 monsters you run into and T4 mobs are fairly rare even with all the harvest nodes specced).

4) The higher the tier, the larger the amount of lifeforce you get.

Thanks!

Re #1: I may have phrased that poorly. I mean: Usually, all harvest encounters drop some kind of lifeforce, but I mean it's unusual but sometimes within one single grove, I will have 3 patches, and 2 of them drop lifeforces as normal and one drops absolutely nothing. Zero. As if that one little patch were totally different.
I NEVER run blank maps, always at least an alch.
I also try to select the "harder" ones, and I guess some names of monsters in that little list are printed in bold, and I assumed those were the rarer or tougher or higher-tiered ones. Is that what you mean? I don't really see darker though. I want to get higher tier, I would just like to know how I can make sure I am selecting these and not sure how.
What do you think of that "crop rotation" node that reduces all plants to tier 1? That doesn't sound good, and would require going through at least one full branch of "reduce color X" to get to.

About patches dropping no lifeforce. All T3+ monsters drop lifeforce. T1-T2 mobs do not reliably drop lifeforce. You did a patch without T3+ then. My take is if a patch does not have T3+ monsters: Skip, do not click. Its not worth the time to do it.

The tiers of monsters T1-T4 are color coded. The colors between T1-T3 however are very poorly coded and can be hard to distinct.

About how to upscale lifeforce yields: I think its: monster_pack_size * f(item_quant_on_map)
The Atlas passives: You need all those that give more lifeforce at least.

Sacred Blossom: It takes ~10-15 (not sure, limited data) T4 mobs to drop one. Every one of these will then drop a 'sacred crystalline lifeforce'(sp?).
Maybe there is a minimum map tier for T4 to appear - dont know. Otherwise map tier doesnt seem to have much influence.

Dont know much about crop rotation. What I have read suggests that:
1) Will cost more time doing Harvest.
2) Will get less lifeforce.
3) Will get more lifeforce of the type you want if you only want one type.
4) May get more T4 mobs, not sure about this though.

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Zrevnur wrote:

About patches dropping no lifeforce. All T3+ monsters drop lifeforce. T1-T2 mobs do not reliably drop lifeforce. You did a patch without T3+ then. My take is if a patch does not have T3+ monsters: Skip, do not click. Its not worth the time to do it.

The tiers of monsters T1-T4 are color coded. The colors between T1-T3 however are very poorly coded and can be hard to distinct.

About how to upscale lifeforce yields: I think its: monster_pack_size * f(item_quant_on_map)
The Atlas passives: You need all those that give more lifeforce at least.

Sacred Blossom: It takes ~10-15 (not sure, limited data) T4 mobs to drop one. Every one of these will then drop a 'sacred crystalline lifeforce'(sp?).
Maybe there is a minimum map tier for T4 to appear - dont know. Otherwise map tier doesnt seem to have much influence.

Dont know much about crop rotation. What I have read suggests that:
1) Will cost more time doing Harvest.
2) Will get less lifeforce.
3) Will get more lifeforce of the type you want if you only want one type.
4) May get more T4 mobs, not sure about this though.

Hey thanks a lot. That's helps.
So I'm still not sure I know how to pick a patch with tier 3 or 4 reliably. I don't see any color difference but maybe I can ask this:
There are usually 4 types listed. The first one usually has about 10ish mobs and the second about 7ish. Are those always tier 1-2? And they are good for basically nothing right? No lifeforce, so just blocking chaff?
Then the third usually has 3ish mobs, and the last one 1 or 2. But it's possible that those are not tier 3 or 4? Maybe I've never seen a tier 4, are those the bosses?

It's more like T2 is white, and T3 is a slightly different shade of white. It's very difficult to tell these two apart.

You can sort of tell from the plants themselves, but that is hard too, and ofc slows you down (for the zoomer addicts out there). GGG should change the T3 colour so it's actually possible to tell it apart, and ideally also add some type of text string or icon so it's easier to tell. Right now it's a really messy situation. And even worse for people who are colour blind.

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onomastikon wrote:

So I'm still not sure I know how to pick a patch with tier 3 or 4 reliably. I don't see any color difference but maybe I can ask this:
There are usually 4 types listed. The first one usually has about 10ish mobs and the second about 7ish. Are those always tier 1-2?

T4 are easily recognizable by the color if you are not colorblind. See image 2 posts above. If there is no T4 then the T3 are always in the last line. The color and the names are distinct from T1-T2. Once you have memorized the T3 names you can just look at the last line and read it and it will tell you if there are T3+ or no.

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onomastikon wrote:

And they are good for basically nothing right? No lifeforce, so just blocking chaff?

They do drop lifeforce but if you are not min-maxing then the amount of lifeforce they drop can be zero or very low.

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onomastikon wrote:

Maybe I've never seen a tier 4, are those the bosses?

See image 2 posts above for how to recognize the T4 "mini bosses". See https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Oshabi for the real boss - needs Sacred Blossom.

Thank you all!

[quote="seaman" realm="pc"]T1 - gray (very small chance or most likely no chance of lifeforce drop)
T2 - white (small chance of lifeforce drop)
T3 - blue (high chance or most likely guaranteed lifeforce drop)
T4 (boss) - orange (most likely a guaranteed lifeforce drop)

[/quote]

Thanks much, invaluable.
I've never seen an orange one like that, so obviously no t4 yet for me. Ok.
Last question: can I do something to get (ever? Reliably often?) T4 creatures? Is it just bad luck on my part or do they only come in t16 maps? (I'm still end of yellow maps, and slow.) I don't see any atlas passives that boost tier level to 4, just ones that improve lifeforce drop.
Thanks tons

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onomastikon wrote:

Last question: can I do something to get (ever? Reliably often?) T4 creatures?

If it would be easy then 'Sacred Blossom' would be less expensive...

There is also an Atlas Memory for Harvest Einhar "of the Sacred Grove" - it gives higher chance for higher tiers. See: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Memory

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onomastikon wrote:

Is it just bad luck on my part or do they only come in t16 maps? (I'm still end of yellow maps, and slow.)

Dont know.

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onomastikon wrote:

I don't see any atlas passives that boost tier level to 4, just ones that improve lifeforce drop.

At least:
'Heart of the Grove'
'Bumper Crop' give more plots so more chance per Harvest.
Maybe 'Crop Rotation' if you min-max for it.