I know this is a stupid question but I can't figure out how to gather meat with the new change in the interface. I have the butchering knife but the interface says R only works for fluid collector now. Butchering knife should work by pressing F5, but the command won't be registered by the game, instead my PC tries to change screens everytime I do that. How do I put butchering knife on R again or how do I use it?

Thank you!

you using a tool belt you push F5 to rotate to the tool you want then you will be able to push r to make it collect

Do you by any chance play on one of those silly laptops that require you to hold the function (FN) key down to use F1-F12 buttons otherwise it does the special action on that button instead like swapping active display for example?

If that is the case I'm pretty sure there is an option to reverse how this works so that you can use the F keys normally but holding the functions key for the special actions.

Yes, it's stupid a change from PA, I got to equip the proper tool and then press F5 (or F6) to then press R to gather.

*shrugs*

Get the tool bag or press F5/F6 once per gathering session before you press R a few thousand times.

Objectively one of the best changes made to gathering in this games lifetime.

I would strongly disagree with that. It worked just fine before to swap tools around and was less hassle than dealing with the function keys. It's not like you normally need to be swapping tools around much anyway, since you normally do just one type of gathering at a time. And you have to switch to either the tool you want or your tool bag anyway, since you presumably have your riding crop equipped before you get to the gathering location. So, the tool bag means more switching stuff around, not less. The only real benefit from the tool bag is that you have more inventory space. It also makes dealing with tool durability worse. But even if it were unequivocably better, you can only have one of them, so only one character gets to benefit from it. If it were shared across characters, then that would be huge, but it's not. It's just a bag that contains tools while letting you use them from within the bag but then requires a more annoying UI to deal with selecting the tool you want to use. Of course, for some reason, PA has forced you to use the new UI even when you're not using the bag, which is incredibly annoying, and in that case, you might as well use the bag on one of your characters, but personally, I'd rather have the UI be the way it was before and not bother with the bag. I don't mind that the bag exists for those who want to use it, but personally, I think that the change is just worse - especially since you can't use the old gathering UI even when you're not using the bag.

I rly dont understand this or the other posts in this thread. I feel like you are doing something wrong when pressing an F key is more work than having 7 quickslots with different tools.

The drawbacks are anthills and the benefits are mountains.

I don't bother with quickslots for tools. That would take up way too many quickslots, and I have better uses for them. With the old way, all I had to do once I arrived at the gathering location was open up my inventory and swap my equipped riding crop with the tool I wanted, and then I could just gather without worrying about switching tools around. With the tool bag and the new UI, I have to swap out the riding crop with the tool bag instead of the specific tool and then on top of that, I have to select the specific tool with the new UI before I can gather. It's an extra step, and the only benefit is that I save a few inventory slots. It also involves using F keys, which is much harder to do without pressing the wrong key. It's bad enough that we have to do that with farming, let alone with gathering too. In addition, the tool bag only works with one character, so I couldn't use the bag with other characters even if I wanted to (at least not without a lot of annoying shuffling between characters), and that means that the limited benefit of the tool bag is that much more limited. So, we're talking about adding an extra step into the gathering process just to save a few inventory slots on one character. I can see someone liking that, but personally, I'd rather just save the extra step.

And if the gathering UI had been kept the same for anyone without the tool bag equipped, then I could just say that I didn't care about the tool bag and move on, but given the fact that I now have to go that extra step of selecting the tool again after having already equipped it, I find the changes to be extremely annoying.

If the tool bag had made it so that you shared your tools across all of your characters in a manner similar to the artifact storage, or if you could put the tool bag in the family inventory, then I would consider the extra step required to select the tool after equipping the bag to be worth the benefit, but as things stand, I just want to be able to gather with the UI we had before.