Herb Gathering: Surviving the Swamp (Patreon)

The waters weep, the sickles reap 

My hands are cold with sweat 

The eagle screams with frightened wings 

The dust does not forget

In the last part of this trifecta of hunt events we have Herb Gathering; which is triggered by a survivor holding a Bone Sickle in their grid.  

The only other gear items of serious assistance here are the Manhunter Toolbelt; which will let you use the sickle as a very effective weapon during the showdown and the Almanac (Barber Surgeon) which gives you a huge bonus while exploring the Swamp.

During the event each survivor chooses a number of dice to roll (this number is chosen by all survivors at the same time, you do not choose one at a time - that Reddit post on herb gathering numbers is wrong on this matter). You will then roll the dice, total them up and that is your contribution to the herb gathering roll. However, if you roll any doubles, this total is lost and you get a 0. So you need understand how many dice to roll.

This is a pretty simple thing to understand, here are the % chances of success (not rolling a doubles):

• 1d10: 100%
• 2d10: 90%
• 3d10: 72%
• 4d10: 50.4%
• 5d10: 30.2%
• 6d10: 15.1%
• 7d10: 6%
• 8d10: 1.8%
• 9d10: 0.36%
• 10d10: 0.036% 

Beyond 10 dice you will always roll a double.

Now, one could go further and look at the average expected returns on each set of dice (excluding the doubles rolled), however this requires a LOT of work or programming and it's straight up an excessive waste of effort because we can see from the number of dice vs. the % chance of failure that our two sweet spot amounts are 3d10 (Max: 30, Average: 16, 72% chance of success) and 4d10 (Max: 40, Average: 22, 50.4% chance of success)*.

If we want to go to the Swamp, we need to get a total of 75 (65 Post Overwhelming Darkness).  As per the Mineral Gathering article; the monsters worth using to get a cheap Overwhelming Darkness Space are the Flower Knight (L1) and the Screaming Antelope (L2) if you are exclusively farming. However, Herb Gathering is a little different from Mineral Gathering; the primary aim is to get Acanthus, Vermin and Survival. The Swamp (see below) is a different experience and if you are aiming for it, you should be packing multiple sickles and almanacs.

So, if we want the best non-explore the swamp result, 3 survivors could roll 3d10 each and one could roll 2d10, this gives an expected total of approx (16x3 + 11) = 59 and which puts you right in the middle of the 'best' category of 45-74. However, as we can see, this number is on the higher side of that category, and the odds of failing on 3d10 are still 72%.  So it is safer to go 3d10 x 2 and 2d10 x 2 for an approx average total of 54. 

If you move down to 3d10 + 2d10 x 3 you end up with an average that's 49 before doubles are considered. So while you are less likely to get doubles (10% for 2d10), you are also more likely to fail when you roll just a single set of doubles.  It is also worth noting that the average total for 2d10 x 4 is 44, so, if you are post Overwhelming Darkness, you can get away with rolling nothing but 2d10 per survivor and you should on average get the best non-swamp category. 

So essentially; you want to roll some combination of 2d10 + 3d10s when you are herb gathering with the aim of just getting the survival/2 acanthus/vermin. 

However, this changes when you are looking to explore the swamp.

Explore the Swamp

If you are looking to Explore the Swamp then you need to hit a minimum of 75 on your rolls.  This means that you're going to have to move into the 4d10 rolls because they average 22 a piece.  The direct way to try and guarantee this is post overwhelming darkness with 2 x 4d10 + 2 x 3d10. However, this has a greater than 75% chance of failure because 50.4% of the time your 4d10s will generate nothing.  So I'd recommend mostly going for broke and rolling 4d10 with all your survivors.  Generally if you fail, you'll still hit the category below a lot of the time.

In order to go into the swamp, each survivor will need a sickle, so if you are swamping you absolutely want to take 4x sickle in order to explore.  Now you want to consider a few things:

• If you have already eaten the fruit - do not enter. 
• If you do not have survival of the fittest and 1 survival spare - do not enter. 
• Take alamancs because the swamp will beat the heck out of you without them
• SotF rerolls help a lot
• Be insane

A total of 5.1 rolls on the table suck and the best you can hope for is getting either extra senses, worse rewards than the 45-74 range or a random affinity.

Summary:

Overall, I am of the opinion that entering the swamp is pretty bad, so the best way to handle this is aiming for a roll of 45-74. However if you do have an almanac (or several) then rolling this together with mineral gathering (which also likes sickles and almanacs as well as whips) is not a bad thing to do.

One final question for you readers, do you want a look at one of the "optimal" farming parties you can build so you can see how one would pan out? Let me know in the comments!

*Note: These averages do not include the 0 you get for doubles. So adjust that number down a bit in your head.