How to get Pristine ingredients in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has a deservedly intricate ingredient acquisition system—both for hunting and gathering. When gathering ingredients, you will notice that sometimes they are labeled as Pristine, but you may not know exactly what you did differently to earn that label.

This guide will explain what Pristine ingredients are in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, why they matter, and how you can consistently harvest Pristine ingredients from Pandora’s jungles.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora: Pristine ingredients, explained

Every time you harvest ingredients from Pandora, two factors determine the quality of those ingredients. One of those factors is simply the conditions that the ingredient was harvested under—night, day, rain, dry, etc. Each ingredient will reveal what its best harvesting conditions are when inspected.

The other factor that contributes to ingredient quality is how much expertise it was or wasn’t harvested with. If you complete the harvesting mini-game without error, the ingredient will be labeled as Pristine, which will directly increase the quality. Pristine ingredients translate to better gear or more beneficial food, depending on how you choose to use that ingredient.

If only one of two harvesting conditions are met, the ingredient quality will be Fine. If both are met (Pristine and the correct environmental condition), a Superior ingredient is much more likely to be acquired. Your level is the final determining factor of ingredient quality. While environmental conditions can sometimes be out of your control (you cannot decide whether or not it’s going to rain), there is no reason that you shouldn’t always be harvesting Pristine ingredients.

How to harvest Pristine ingredients in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

Harvesting Pristine ingredients is as simple as understanding how the mini-game for harvesting works. Once you have it down, you will be able to get Pristine ingredients every time. Here is how it works:

• Plants must be pulled at specific angles for a Pristine Harvest.
• Vibrational (controller) or visual (MKB) feedback will inform you of the correct angle.
• Once the correct angle is achieved, you can pull the ingredient.

When harvesting ingredients, a small blue circle will appear on your screen as your character takes hold of the ingredient. If you gently pull in any direction on MKB, a small portion of the circle will be highlighted. This is the direction that you must pull when foraging to get a Pristine ingredient. On controller, the same rule applies, only the correct angle will be marked by stronger vibration instead of a visual highlight. This makes harvesting Pristine ingredients easier on MKB than controller, but neither is meant to be difficult, and you should be able to get Pristine ingredients consistently.

If for any reason you cannot or do not want to complete this mini-game when foraging, you can adjust its functionality in the Gameplay menu by adjusting the Gathering Complexity setting. You can set Gathering Complexity to Default, Low Difficulty, or Off. Low Difficulty will increase the area that grants a Pristine harvest, while Off will remove the harvesting mini-game altogether, but will also remove the Pristine bonus.