Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora ingredient rarity, explained

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has a plethora of different ingredients that can be used in cooking and crafting, and the quality of those ingredients directly affects how beneficial the food and items you craft are.

For the most part, the crafting system is intuitive, however, I found there was one element that took a bit of time before it clicked—the ingredient rarity system and which determines if an item is Fine, Superior, or Exquisite.

How does ingredient rarity work in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

Every ingredient in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is classified within one of three rarity tiers—Fine, Superior, and Exquisite. This is true of plants that are harvested by hand as well as meats and hides that are acquired by hunting animals. Naturally, ingredients become more beneficial as they increase in rarity, but it isn’t quite that simple.

As you’ll quickly see, ingredients have two harvesting bonuses that are tracked as met or unmet whenever you harvest something. For plants, these bonuses are Pristine and Conditions. For animals, they are Clean Kill and Merciful.

Whether or not you meet these bonuses doesn’t actually affect the rarity of the harvested ingredient—it just increases the ingredient stats within its current rarity tier. Each tier has three different levels, meaning there are nine total different possible stats for each ingredient. The rarity of an ingredient is predetermined; an Exquisite Viperwolf Tooth is going to remain Exquisite regardless of whether or not you get the Clean Kill and/or Merciful bonuses. However, not all Exquisite items are created equal.

A given Exquisite ingredient will cover a range of possible stats, and these can be seen in the Hunter’s Guide. For example, an Exquisite Sunset Reed will have between 24 to 28 damage when used to craft a weapon. If you harvest an Exquisite Sunset Reed without getting either Pristine or the Conditional bonus, it will have 24 damage. If you meet one bonus or the other, it will have 26 damage, and getting both bonuses will grant the maximum 28 damage. This same system is true of all ingredients across all rarity tiers.

This is why it’s so important you use your Hunter’s Guide to check where the rare variants of ingredients can be found, as a Superior ingredient is always going to have better stats than a Fine Version, and getting harvesting bonuses can never bump an ingredient up to the next tier—only increase stats within the current tier.