Salem

I don't get it, anyone figured out how it works? Some huge swaths I troll upon have absolutely nothing.

My understanding from what I've gleaned from different threads is that stumps randomly and slowly accumulate objects. The contents of a stump is independent of whether you look at it. Most stumps have nothing in them, but if you find an area that is especially depleted in stump-findings, it's possible a previous forager cleaned them out.

I know that near my base, I've cleaned out all the stumps, but then one time when I looked again in a stump I was 99% certain I'd looked in it before, I found a WORM.

I think I also read that you can create your very own stump-farm by planting a bunch of trees and cutting them down but leaving the stumps behind.

Well what I find interesting is places with no activity seem to have nothing, does this then suggest that activity is required for accumalation?

It may be, since activity also seems to increase the rate at which grass regrows, and the updating mechanisms might be similar.

I heard that when a stump loads up as someone walks into the area, is when the check happens to see if somethin spawns inside. so if people walk by and dont loot the stump, it may generate items unbeknownst to them. I think this is what happens when you walk into a forest no one has been to for a long while and still just find a few items, if any, since only you have gotten them all to do the "spawn" check.

I can see how logically this would work for the server since it will only spawn things in places where there is activity, instead of all stumps on each map in each server at particular times, but this is just my own supposition.

(hopefully that all makes sense)

My area is pretty quiet, I searched for stumps to the NW emptied them all, then to the NE, then to the SE then the SW, there was plenty of stuff in them, then I found a WSS in a stump right by my house. The stumps I pass regularly haven't regenerated and the ones I first checked are now starting to get some of the more common drops, rocks, chestnuts, snake skins and worms. I would doubt that "radar pings" would cause drops in stumps, then you would get loads of stuff around bases and in my experience you don't.

Scilly_guy wrote: you would get loads of stuff around bases and in my experience you don't.

In my experience, you do, though it depends on how often the inhabitants of that base check their stumps. Unfrequented areas don't get their map tiles loaded and so the stumps don't spawn much. Busy areas get more spawn checks and also more people checking the stumps for spawns. Your best bet is to check stumps in the vicinity of your own base and the bases of others more often than those others check.

Thanks for the info, would explain why I'm having a hard time when exploring certain areas. I've also heard that loading alts into the area would also increase spawns. Dunno how true that might be.

Stumps need the map they're on to be unloaded in order to spawn stuff I believe, so you need activity. If you have a stump farm, I'd advise logging an alt every hour in the area, 30 if you want really fast results.

if you have two characters in the same area, does switching between them unload the chunks, or does only the lack of any human presence do this?