AIONology

Whether you are gathering for a quest or just to level up your skill for future high level items, gathering everything from Rubis to Aether can be frustrating if you are having difficulty locating the item you have to gather.

There are a couple of items available to help with gathering once you have ascended (from level 10 on up.) You can spend some of your hard-earned Kinah (Q) and buy a vitality or aether gathering hat, called a Gatherer Hat or Aether Gatherer Hat.

The Gatherer Hat comes in Novice (Q 5,687) – Experienced (Q 25,289) – Veteran (Q 148,648) and Advanced (Q 962,797) versions. As they increase in price, they also increase in skill level and character level requirements.

Gatherer Hats are available from the Vitality Extraction and Aether Extraction item vendors in the Vitality and Aether Extraction areas of the Artisan’s Hall in Sanctum for Elyos, or the Aether and Vitality Extraction Training area for Asmodians in Pandemonium.

With so many expenses competing for your attention a Gatherer Hat may seem too costly. After all, you still have to expand your cube and warehouse space, pick up some new armor or weapons, and pay to level up your crafting skill.

If you feel that you just can’t afford a Gatherer Hat, there’s hope. Here’s a free alternative: macros.

You can set up macros to help locate, target, and extract vitality and aether. Macros work extremely well for items that may be difficult to see, such as fish in the water. (Think Miraju Holy Ground or the waters around Eltnen Fortress.)

Go to U to open Macros, then Create New Macro, and type in, for example:

/Select Ruko
/Attack

(Make this two separate lines, just as shown, capitalizing the words and adding / at the start of each line.)

A Gatherer Hat, it is true, goes one step further than a macro and tells you what gatherables are available in any given area, but it may be cost prohibitive for lower level characters.  It is also amusing when using macros to put your character on autorun, periodically click your macro, and find your character suddenly veering off to one side and running head-long into a barrier in an attempt to reach the item the macro is set to gather.

So, if you’re feeling the pinch from a lack of Q (kinah,) give the macro solution a try. It is very simple, yet very effective.