From DarjaniWiki

Resources

Resources are the materials necessary for crafters to create items. You need bone and hide to make camp, metal to make a sword, and so on.

Resources are organized as a tree; all resources, for example, are categorized into either organic, inorganic, or power. Inorganic resources are further classified into mineral, chemical, gas and water. Mineral resources are further classified, so on, down to a type of material, such as steel, or iron, or carbonate ore.

Furthermore, each type of material comes in specific classes. Iron, for example: there's Kammris Iron, Axidite Iron, Doonium Iron, Plumbum Iron, Dolovite Iron, Bronzium Iron, Colat Iron, and Polonium Iron. These classes are set, and you will not see new classes emerge.

Furthermore, just as we consider Alpine water to be different from stream-gathered freshwater, each class of material comes in specific, NAMED instances. Today, there might exist a Carbonite Steel called "Akade" on Corellia. Tomorrow you might discover a new kind of Carbonite Steel available on Naboo called "Loka" or such. This is the most specific it will get- there are no sub-classes of Akade steel, ALL Akade steel is identical.

Steel is classified as Inorganic > Mineral > Metal > Ferrous > Steel. As such, it can be used to make any item that requires any of the above. Generic, simple items might only require, for example, 10 units of "Inorganic." A small stimpack, for example, only requires Inorganic; any kind of Inorganic will do. High-end items will require specific resources, down to a type of material. Power Hammers, for example, not only require Iron, but Kammris Iron. With me so far?

So the classification of ANY resource goes like this:

Type (such as Inorganic) > sub-type (such as mineral) > ... > sub-type > class (such as Carbonite Steel) > Specific resource (such as "Akade"). The name is unique and random, so it completely identifies the resource. You can say Akade, and every unit of Akade will be exactly identical, even Akade from different planets.

Harvesting

Different resources are collected different ways.

The most different are the animal resources- bone, hide, and meat. These can only be collected from killed animals, and only by Scouts (and their Ranger brothers). Milk can be gathered from certain live animals by Scouts/Rangers. Seafood is collected manually, with a harvesting tool. Eggs are collected from lairs, also manually. These are all much more difficult to gather in LARGE quantities, so they tend to be more expensive.

All other types of resources are collected either manually by an Artisan, or by anyone using a harvester of that type of resource.

To collect manually, you must have Novice Artisan skill, which grants you the command /sample and /survey.

There are several different kinds of resource harvesters: mineral, chemical, gas, water, floral, solar, wind and radioactive.

Gas, water, solar, wind harvesters each collect only their namesakes. A gas harvester only collects gas (but are capable of collecting ANY type of gas). A water harvester collects water vapor, but any kind of water. Solar and wind harvesters collect solar and wind power. A radioactive harvester collects radioactive power.

Mineral, chemical, and floral harvesters collect the rest. Obviously a mineral harvester can collect any kind of mineral (that's not gas or water). Floral harvesters collect all floral resources.

Note that since radioactive is considered a mineral, mineral harvesters can also collect that.

In addition, many of the harvesters come in different sizes. Wind, solar, and radioactive harvesters come in one size only- the radioactive harvester is misleadingly called a "fusion generator." The others come in 3 sizes: personal, medium, and heavy.

Naturally, the larger size harvesters collect more than smaller sizes.