Talent question
 

Please excuse if this is a stupid question, but I'm a complete and total noob with Drakensang . :embarrassed:

I've been trying to gather herbs and berries, I've purchased Plant Lore, even upgraded my plant lore talent by 2 points, but every time I try to pick some plant, I am met by failiure. What does one need to be able to pick plants?

That's not a stupid question at all.
Open the console to look at the dice roll when you pick a plant. This should give you an idea how much more points in Plant Lore you need and if you get a huge malus somewhere. 2 is not much, the maximum should be close to 20 for character classes specialized in it.

Certain tools, a special kind of sickle for example, give you a bonus if put in a quick slot.
It's similar, but not the same, for lockpicking.

You usually find a character with solid animal and plant knowledge in the first chapter, just an hour into the game.

Thanks, yes, there is a lot that my character cannot do (including lockpicking) - I'm feeling rather helpless. :S (I've settled on Elementalist for now)
I decided to just jump in cold and play a little bit, as I'm not familiar at all with the game's ruleset, and although it's not D&D it seems to be reasonably complex.

Thanks for the reply, I might just run around and test everything out, and restart again once I am a bit more savvy.

Thanks for the tips about looking at the dice roll and about the tools -very useful!

You can get infos on formulae and other details if you right click on something on the character screen.

right click on anything you don't understand (a stat, a spell, a value, parry, attack, etc), chances are you'll get an explanation of it.
You'll probably need a 5 or 6 in the plant and animal lore to start seeing successes with some frequency. Another thing that can help is use a stat buff in the lowest of the related stats (I think for plants it's like Intuition, Agility and hmm… something else). I usually buff IN to the amazon when I see a bunch of herbs to try.

Yeah, I've in the meantime read a bit more about the stats - attributes, skills, and talents, along with class bonuses and penalties; and it seems to me I could do this a few ways: first read up all I can, and then try to do the game from a reasonably informed point of view; - but admittedly, all the interrelationships seem just too complex for my little brain to work it out without testing it in practice as I go along.

Of course a good way to learn about most games is simply to play it and learn by trial-and error.

Some people approach it very scientifically and write down results of different combinations on a piece of paper (I've tried it before, especially in turn-based combat scenarios, and it works surprisingly well). It can become tedious, though, because it usually involves reloading gamesaves over and over again, to test different possibilities.

But with a game of this scope, I suspect that at least for some part, I'm just going to have to cruise along and attain some gut-feel for it. Otherwise I might still be reading about it, instead of playing it, until Christmas.
Good thing I've rediscovered RPG-watch, as there seems to be a rich community here for this game. ;)

I should really peep in here more often, - it's become a nice site.
Thank you for all the hints and tips. :)

I agree! Congratulations to everyone involved.

Remember: This is a party RPG, you can control up to 4 characters (your character + 3 NPCs). Your main character does not need to learn everything. Especially for lockpicking (and other social and thievery skills) you will get a NPC who is more talented at it soon (still during the first map).

Also, remember lockpicking without a hairpin or a lock pick gives you a -10. You need to put the hairpins in the quickbar and click on it, then click on the chest, that gives you +1 instead of -10