Well, I am certain if you advertise "B>base herbs x-gold/stack mail" you could probably encourage some newbies to patiently pick base herbs from their plentiful personal farm patches, and mail them to you post herb haste. X probably wouldn't even have to be that high, since supply would be up.
I used to not have a wolf, but I already intended to buy a black wolf+persian when they came out to have both day and night WM pets. Side benefit black wolf can herd just as well as gray. :3
That said, a personal farm offering something anywhere near as convenient as emain macha can be after a proper herding session would be excellant for non-nx players and/or simply not interested in a wolf.
It still can be rather fun to herd sheep though. I think that is a nice perk of owning one of those pets... sort of a minigame.
No clue what Rune Factory is, but I do agree the surface only has little scratches on it. Tiny ones. With how amazing it seems the herbs are going to be... I find it hard to really be too pessimistic about things like sheep and spiders... They may end up being far less awesome, but you never know... we could get like one or two sheep per square... don't move around, and hold 50 times as much mp/wool as wild sheep do. Same with spiders.
Maybe... just maybe... we can have snake/goblin pens to get... leather. :3
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