Beginners Guide to Harvesting

First, you must have Haggling researched. You can find Haggling under the TRADE Branch. This enables you to build the Marketplace and up to 5 Caravans . With further research, you can eventually have up to 70 per city.)

Go ahead and build the Marketplace in your city.

In the Unit Production screen of your Marketplace, type in the number of Caravans you have researched and click "Make". You will need 1 horse and 10 gold to make 1 Caravan. Horses are made in the Paddock.

Once you have a Caravan completed, you can send it to places outside of your city to harvest WOOD , CLAY , IRON , STONE , FOOD and GOLD .

The way to find resources to harvest is to open your World Map, click the Tower in the center of your compass to center the map around your city.

At the very bottom of the World Map screen is a section called "Graphics". Deselect "Terrain" so that it is easier to see resources.

Use the arrows on the compass or click and drag around the map to find wood, clay, iron, stone, food, or gold near your city, left click the corresponding tile. A window will pop up with options of what you can do on that tile. If you have clicked a tile with a resource, it will have the option of Harvest Resources. Select Harvest Resources, and type in how many Caravans you want to send. The further from your town, the longer it will take for your caravan to get to the resource and return home. If someone is already harvesting a resource, you will see a caravan on the tile, and its a good idea to continue looking for other unoccupied tiles.

Next, the caravan(s) will go to the selected tile, harvest the resources, and return without further instructions from you. Your caravan will stay on the resource tile until it’s finished harvesting as much as it can, until interrupted by another player’s caravan or replaced by one of your own caravans.

Your Caravans will start off able to carry 200 of a resource with a harvesting speed of 200 resources an hour. The caravan will take several minutes to reach the resource square, then an hour for each caravan you send to complete its harvesting, then the return time. If you have several resources nearby, sending out 1 caravan to 5 resource squares will get those resources back to your town faster than if you send 5 caravans to 1 resource square. With further research, you will eventually be able to carry 500 per caravan, and harvest 500 resources per hour.

If you’re in a crowded area, you may accidentally send your caravan to a resource square where another player’s caravan got there first. You will get a message that you “rudely interrupted” a certain player’s caravans from a certain town. We call this “bumping” another person’s caravan. The majority of players try to avoid purposely bumping someone else’s caravans, but it happens all the time in crowded spots. No one will comment on it unless the bump looks deliberate. It never hurts for a new player to send a message saying, “I’m sorry” if it happens, though, so do so if you wish to. Don’t send your caravans to a spot where someone else is already harvesting. Doing this on purpose and repeatedly will make your neighbors not like you.

Your caravan may pass over or by an army and your Caravan will not be harmed. If there is a YELLOW, ORANGE OR RED army occupying the resource square you want to harvest, your caravans will die when they reach the square. Don’t send them to that square. With permission, you can harvest resources with GREEN OR BLUE armies. To find out who is in charge of that army, send a Scout, which will give you a Report in the form of an igm (in game message). Then, just send that player a message asking if its ok to harvest.

Some players will place an army on a resource tile to occupy it until their caravans are finished harvesting. If another player accidentally sends their caravan to the spot (since the army wasn’t on the spot on the map at the time) and their caravan is killed, most players will consider this a hostile act. It probably won’t result in a war, though. This is one way players deal with having their caravans repeatedly and deliberately bumped from resources near their city. If your city is still small, no army is needed. Just harvest what is nearby and unoccupied until you get moved into more of a permanent location.

Resource tiles that are within 2 or 3 squares distance from your city are generally viewed as “yours”.
Armies that are not yours that are within the 2-3 squares of your city should be reported to your Alliance Leader, and it will be dealt with accordingly.

Some players will bump anyone who isn’t an ally off of resources within a 10 tile distance from their city (as long as the other player isn’t closer to the resource). They can get their replacement caravan there more quickly than you if you choose to bump them back. If you wish, you can bump back if the bump was obviously deliberate. This tends to make things worse between the two players as each tries to get the other person to respect their caravan rights. If you’re uncertain if repeated bumps were deliberate, you can message the player and ask nicely if there’s a problem. Usually, it’s an accident or the problem can be quickly resolved peacefully.

After your first Caravan arrives, you can send another Caravan to replace it before the first one starts home. When you send a caravan out to harvest, it’s travel time appears under the Movements screen of the Trade menu.

All Caravans have a color. Your caravans are blue, the caravans of your allies (if you’re in an alliance) are green, caravans of players neutral toward you are yellow, and the caravans of players you’re at war with are red.

Each resource square has up to 3500 of the resource. You can repeatedly harvest it until it’s gone. Every six hours (at 0:00, 6:00, 12:00, and 18:00 game time), there is a chance that a new resource will appear at that empty spot or on another “spawn” square.


The Marketplace is also where you build Cotters, Herbalists, Miners, and Traders. Which all requires corresponding research before you can create the units.

Cotters -> Foraging (Enables you to build a Cottage, and therefore a Cotter in the Marketplace Production screen. 1 Cottage = 1 Cotter. With Foraging, you can harvest the generic resources around the map that include herbs , minerals , and hides . With further research of Grape Picking, you can obviously harvest grapes .

The same process for harvesting with Cotters, Skinners, Miners, and Herbalists is the same as with harvesting with Caravans, they just harvest different items.

There are different rules for harvesting with Skinners, Miners and Herbalists. The anatomies (animal parts) on a tile is from someone else killing that npc animal. If you didn't kill it, don't harvest it.

Rare Minerals and Rare Herbs are resources that alliances have gone to war over. If the rare item is not within 10 squares of your city, leave it alone. If the resources IS within 10 squares, get with your alliance leader on what should be done next.

Skinners harvest animal parts and elemental salts only. With 1 level 20 Skinners Guild, you can have 60 Skinners. Animal parts will last 7 days on the map before they disappear.

Miners harvest rare minerals only. With 1 level 20 Miner's Guild, you can have 60 Miners. If a rare mineral is over-harvested by too many Miners, the mineral will disappear until the next refresh of minerals server-wide.

Herbalists harvest rare herbs only. With 1 level 20 Herbalist Guild, you can have 60 Herbalists. Harvesting rare herbs is tricky! First, send a scout to the tile with the rare herb. The report will tell you what the rare herb is, and how many are there. If you send too many Herbalists, and over-harvest the rare herb, it will disappear completely from that tile and respawn randomly somewhere else. So, if the report says there is 19 rare herbs, send 18 Herbalists.