Botany in Eorzea - Comprehensive Grade 1-5 Guide

**Updated!!**
Sorry for the long awaited wait! So what is new with this update?

- Master Item List has been updated
- Addition of Grade 5 maps and resources (work in progress so minimal information compared to other portions of guide)
- Leveling tip for rank 32 botanist and up just before the Master Item List
- All Grade 4 sections have been updated and new maps have been uploaded with more resources



This guide will tell you everything you need to know about Botany, I hope you all enjoy this guide and find it as useful as my linkshell does. The guide now conformed to the notching notation that everyone is used to ^_^.

- Noctis Leonhart of Trabia


Intro to the Guide and its Format
A word to my fellow viewers and LS mates:
I constructed this guide just to give people a general idea of where to locate items through botany without any sort of clue of what can be found. This guide shows locations of certain trees / harvest points that yield certain items and is by no means 100% accurate but pretty close to it :P.
For many of the maps I circled “zones” of where I have found certain items or where there will be a higher percent chance of finding certain items. As for the logging maps, I used letters to represent which tree is found at a certain node. The images themselves have a legend of what the letters stand for as well as here on the master legend:

No = Nopale Tree
M = Maple Tree
Ma = Mahogany Tree
A = Ash Tree
W = Willow Tree
E = Elm Tree
R = Rattan Tree
Ar = Arrowwood Tree
C = Cedar Tree
L = Latex Tree
Ch = Chestnut Tree
Wa = Walnut Tree
La = Lauan Tree
Oa = Oak Tree
Y = Yew Tree
P = Pine Tree
S = Spruce Tree
Ψ = Levequest Tree

Notching
I refer to "notching" very often in this guide so its important we understand what it is that I am saying. Notching refers to the "target phase" that happens right before you begin to actually log. There are 11 spots that you can "aim" your hatchet on the tree - different notching spots can give greater chances in attaining certain items. For example, using Arrowwood Branches, their notch is at 0, meaning exactly half way down the target icon. Also note that notching locations are universal, meaning that for Arrowwood Branches, the perfect notching spot will always be 0 no matter which zone you are in. You will know when you have found the ideal notching spot when you get the message "You sense "X" right where you are logging."



Botany Nodes
There are two types of nodes that a botanist can gather from, logging nodes and harvesting nodes.
Each node also has a difficulty level known as a "Grade" or "Gr" for short. The higher the level of difficulty, the less you can gather from said node (depending on your level and Output stat).



Hot & Cold Mini-Game
Every logging spot will require you to play a Hot & Cold mini-game after you have chosen where you would like to aim your hatchet. In order to obtain the material, you must successfully hit the correct hit zone. After each attempt, your "Remainder" bar will gradually decrease where if it totally is emptied out before you find the right hit zone, you will fail the gathering attempt. With every swing you will receive a message indicating how close you are to finding the item:

"You feel nothing promising." If you get this message, this means you are very far away from the right hit zone.
"You are getting close to the mark." Just like the message says, this means you are getting closer to the right hit zone, keep aiming in the same direction.
"You are close to something but cannot extract it yet." This message basically means you are almost directly on the hit zone, if you try to aim again at the exact same spot, you will obtain the material.



Botanist Stats - Noctis' Theory
From my findings both online and from some testing that I did myself, here are some explanations I've found for the BOT stats:

Gathering: This stat effects how fast your remainder bar is depleted. The remainder bar goes down faster when you are attempting to obtain a rare/difficult material (i.e Mahogany branches/logs at rank 30). The higher your Gathering stat, the more attempts you'll have at finding the correct hit zone to obtain your material. I've tested this by using Mahogany Logs / Branches at rank 30 by doing two separate tests:
1) While lowering my Gathering stat by removing my body piece, whenever I encountered a Mahogany Branch, I would only get 2 attempts before my remainder bar hit zero and for the logs I would only get 1 attempt.
2) With full Gathering gear, while looking for the same items, whenever I encountered a Mahogany Branch, I would get 3 attempts before my remainder bar hit zero (as opposed to only 2 attempts without my body piece and lower Gathering), and for the log, I'd get 2 attempts instead of one.
As for harvesting, I believe that Gathering may simply effect your success rate while harvesting, but this I have not tested.

Output: This stat effects how many attempts you can get at a Logging node or Harvesting node. The higher this stat is, the more you can gather from a node. Here's a small finding I recorded for Grade 4 nodes at rank 25 BOT:
- 65 or higher Output for x4 attempts at a logging node
- 66 or higher Output for x4 attempts at a harvesting node
One other interesting thing that I've found out regarding the number of times you're able to gather at a node is that Output isn't the only stat effecting this so I believe Rank may also play a smaller role in this.

Perception: This stat increases a player's chance to find higher-quality items.

Strength: I haven't done any sort of testing regarding this stat at all so I am not sure on how it effects BOT. My current guess is that it might have something to do with the quality of your yields?

Intelligence: This stat effects the yield of your gathering attempts. With base INT, I was never able to see yields of 5 branches or logs, 4 was the max which was quite rare. Now with 100 INT, I am seeing yields of 5 very often.

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NOTE: While making this general guide, I could NOT get to every tree that is seen on the maps I have provided because the trees that are available to be logged (as well as a harvesting point that I believed to have missed somewhere...) changes from day to day so it is likely that I may have missed an item or two but I believe I have about 99% of the possible items listed =) . And also whenever I say LQ or you see the symbol Ψ, this refers to Levequest trees.

NOTE: For items such as -1~-5 notch, for example, this just simply implies that I haven't found the exact perfect notch yet but it is to be found within that -1~-5 target phase.

HINT: Contrary to popular belief, harvesting points do not have a resupply timer (although I think if you were to log for a couple of hours and then return to the same spot twice in a row that it would be fully resupplied). A very useful trick for harvesting exactly what you want from a certain harvesting point is to fully exhaust the supply first and in order to have it resupply, you must go and exhaust TWO more supplies from somewhere else (this can be two logging supplies, two harvest supplies, or even a log and a harvest supply). After you have done this you can return to the same harvesting spot that you would like to spam and it will be fully resupplied for you.

HINT: Just like harvesting points, logging points also resupply the same way where 2 supplies must first be exhausted before you can return to the same tree. The only time this doesn't work is if the sparkle on the tree fades after getting the message "the tree has been exhausted", this means that the tree won't appear again until it respawns (not sure how long this is, could be a few hours or until other trees have become fully exhausted).