By the time you are level 12, you have the basic skills to cut herbs, mine stones, and collect energy. This is on the assumption that you did do the quests, by which you were able to acquire these skills.

Cutting Herbs

Go to Merchant Geres to purchase a knife for your class. If you are a Rogue and buy a Knight knife, you will not be able to equip it to cut herbs. Once you have purchased a knife then you go straight out the North Gate and you will run into a Herbal Garden. There are two types of bushes there. The regular bush disappears once you have collected 27 Green Herbs or 45 Herb Trunk or 75 yellow leaves. But the magic bush, never disappears.

Anyway, make it a practice to go to the magic bush. Equip your knife and click it on the magic bush. A window appears and click Green Herbs. Then your character will automatically start cutting green herb. You can be here overnight and collect a little Green Herb. If you utilize a tool aid, it will boost the time to cut green herbs. With your inventory window still open, drag the tool aid icon over the equipped knife. A window will pop up saying that you have used the tool aid booster. Then from a few seconds to ten seconds you will then have 27 green herbs. Sometimes, if it takes too long and nothing happens, then you have a glitch. What you do is quit the game and then go re-cut leaves again as this usually clears up the problem. If you know you are experiencing lag, then of course it may take a couple of seconds longer. This is why I have said before NEVER sell your tool aids. Also later on if you decide to make your own armor or weapons, you will need the tool aids to collect the materials necessary to make your armor or weapon.

As far a mining or collecting herbs, you follow the same procedure as you would with a knife. If you get the wrong tool to cut, for example, you can not sell it back. You can sell it in merchant mode or just give it to someone. I like to leave a tool once in a while, as when they are thrown away they stay about 5 feet off ground.

Where to go to cut, mine, or collect

You can go straight out the North Gate to the Herbal Garden if you need to collect herbsinRandol. There is only one herbal Garden in Randol. Next to the Herbal garden to the East is the EnergyCollection Field. There is also another Energy Collection Field as you go out the West Gate. Then further East to the Herb Garden is the Mines. Now if you go there and sometime you may get a "too many people processing" notice, then there is another mine located a short distance to the South.

STRATEGY TIP: If you are low level go out the South Gate of Dratan. Be careful of the monsters now. Anyway, if you travel out the gate then in about 5 seconds you will notice a herbal garden to your right. If you can leave your computer on all night, then cut herbs here but on the Magic Bush. Remember what I said about always using the Magic Bush. If you were to leave your character cutting on the bush and then someone else comes along and cuts on the same bush using a tool aid then the bush will disappear for about 10 seconds to re-spawn. But what happens also is that your character will stop cutting herbs and can only restart when you do so. It does not automatically restart cutting.

You can not start Merchant Mode till you are level 10 and this way you can get a few herbs instead of doing nothing. Once you start getting higher levels you will get more tool aids and find it more profitable to sell drops versus cutting leaves. You can shop around also for tool aids. What I have done is shop around in Sarissa for tool aids and when they are 12k and below I buy them. I have around 900 at the moment. But I constantly buy them because this is one thing that you will always need like Heaven Stones. Besides prices are always going up to.