Table of Contents
Botanist and Tracker Professions in Stardew Valley
There are many ways to acquire resources and valuable items in Stardew Valley. You can go fishing, mining, and plant what you need. You can also fight and slay monsters for what they might drop; if you are a little lucky, some might even be rare items. Receiving gifts from your friends in the village is also a way to have something added to your inventory. But, one of the somewhat reliable and fewer hassle activities in the game to get stuff is by foraging.
Through foraging, you could collect items by just strolling around the town and chopping down trees. And guess what, like other skills, your foraging skills could also improve. By increasing your foraging skill level, you could have more chances of spotting forageables and on top of that, high-quality ones.
As you make progress in elevating your skills, it is mandatory in Stardew Valley to pick a profession upon reaching Level 5 and Level 10 wherein the choices would depend on the profession you chose on the prior selection. In case you picked a Gatherer profession on Level 5, you are bound to choose from either Botanist or Tracker on the latter level. But, which is a practical choice? Find out more!
Foraging Skills
Among the various skills in Stardew Valley, Foraging Skills could be referred to as the easiest and simplest to level up in. This is because any form of collecting stuff, particularly on the ground, contributes to improving this skill. Cutting down trees also helps gain foraging experience.
At every level you reach, you are entitled to a reward which mostly is either crafting or cooking recipes. On Level 1, you will receive crafting recipes for Wild Seeds (Sp) and Field Snack. Also, at this level, there’s a chance that trees could also drop seeds. On levels 2 and 3, you get the recipe for Survival Burger and Tapper, respectively. At foraging skill level 4, you would also get two recipes: Charcoal Kiln and Wild Seeds (Su) crafting recipes.
As mentioned, at level 5 you are to choose between a Forester or a Gatherer profession.
Reaching levels 6 and 7 rewards you a quite generous amount of crafting recipes which are the recipes for Lightning Rod, Wild Seeds (Fa), and Warp Totem while Wild Seeds (Wi), Warp Totem: Mountain, and Tree Fertilizer for the latter. At Level 8, you get to have the recipe for another warp totem, the Warp Totem: Farm. Lastly, upon improving your skills up to Level 9, you obtain the recipe for Rain Totem and Cookout Kit.
Now onto the maximum foraging level where you are to decide again on a specialty, you would want to pursue, in line with what you had chosen at Level 5. If you picked the Forester profession, the choices for you would be Lumberjack and Tapper. Selecting the Gatherer profession would yield you the choices of Botanist and Tracker in Stardew Valley.
Forester Profession
Revealed earlier were activities that contribute to increasing your foraging skill level; such activities include chopping down trees. From chopping down trees, what is the most expected to be collected are woods.
The Forester Profession provides you with 25% more amount of wood that could be collected by chopping down trees or removing stumps and logs. Picking this profession would greatly benefit you if you have a lot of repairs and construction going on on your farm.
Lumberjack
The Lumberjack profession under Forester, upon selection, gives all trees the possibility of providing you with Hardwood. It is not rare knowledge of how important and how many use Hardwood offers in Stardew Valley so this provides you with a good advantage in terms of hoarding hardwood.
Tapper
The second specialty you could choose under Forester is the Tapper which grants Syrups you tapped from trees 25% more value. This could, in some ways, improve the income you earn from selling syrups.
Gatherer Profession
Although gathering resources from the ground could be considered quite an easy task compared to others, it could be somehow demanding and tedious if you need a large amount of a particular item. For instance, you need a hundred and fifty hardwoods but a single tree would only give you a few.
Economically speaking, it wouldn’t be good to cut down several trees all at once, right? That’s when choosing the Gatherer Profession comes in handy.
With the Gatherer Profession, you are granted with 20% chance for a double harvest. This would, in turn, save you a lot of time in both collecting and finishing the task that requires the item you are stocking.
Botanist
If you have a lot of stuff already in your backpack and don’t have much space, considering selling some of them might be a good idea. Some might pose a nuisance or you might actually have too much of one particular item that you do not quite need, putting such items on the market, too, would be wise.
If you picked the Botanist after reaching Foraging Skill Level 10, the resources you foraged would be 100% high-quality. In this way, you can get more gold from selling items you foraged. Aside from that, it is more likely that recipes that include your high-quality foraged ingredients would produce high-quality ones, too.
Tracker
The Tracker Profession, on the other, is more focused on making your harvesting or gathering easier. After choosing this profession, the location of forageable items in the vicinity is revealed. A small yellow arrow would appear on the edge of your screen, pointing to where forageables and even artifact spots are located. Regardless of the accessibility of where an item lays, the arrows would still point towards it.
Botanist or Tracker?
Honestly speaking, deciding whether Forester or a Gatherer profession is a better choice is already hard as it is. But, say, you happen to choose the Gatherer, you have to choose again, this time between Botanist and Tracker in Stardew Valley.
It is understandable how conflicting it might be in choosing a profession since they both offer such great perks which are helpful both short-term and long-term in the game. With the hope of lessening your burden of selecting, here are some points you should consider.
A lot of people in the Stardew Valley community see eye to eye that Botanist is the better choice between the two because who would not want to that certainly that all your foraged items are all ranging from gold to iridium-quality ones? Just imagine the money you can make by selling them alone and selling the things or foods you can make out of them. So, profit-wise, Botanist really is a good choice.
Tracker, on the other hand, comes out very handy for those who do not have not-so-keen eyes. As in, very very helpful. This would also be very helpful for those players who do not have the whole day to wander around the vastness of Pelican Town. Looking for forageable items, since they have those arrows to guide them where they should head for.
However, in the end, it all comes down to what and how you want to play the game. After all, you do you.
