Forestry 2, the sequel to Forestry, is a new expansion of Old School Runescape's wood-chopping skills. If you think that something like chopping down a tree is casual, easy, and a good way to pass a few hours, you are sorely mistaken. I'm about to chew on this, but even skimming the surface makes my head spin.

Basically, you get what is called a forestry kit. This contains everything related to forestry. It's like a suit of armor that gives you more XP to cut down trees while you wear it. So far, so easy.

To buy most things, you need anima-infused bark. To get it, you need to do events. As noted in the "New Events section" on the update page, you need to take some special items with you to make these events happen regularly. For example, you need a smoke canister for the beehive event and a pheasant spoon for the pheasant extermination event. Incidentally, these are all things that must be crafted--there are about 10 of them. [10 events, 10 items with recipes, lots of rewards, several currencies, items to enhance the woodcutter's skills, brew tea, activate certain things, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. - so much to process and so much blame from the entire gaming community.

As of this writing, the 2007scape subreddit is full of complaints, suggestions, and people wondering what went wrong. The official update post is only 36% upvoted as of this writing, and the comments are consistent with the overall acrimonious atmosphere. [User TakeYourDailyDose wrote: "Forestry is too complicated. Did we need multiple new currencies? Does skilling really require maintenance of charge items to max out the minimum?" Gameplay-wise, it is just annoying.

B4stick replies: "But what about eating rations to get more leaves to brew tea?" "Passively burning logs to get more exp, only up to a certain tier, and only while wearing an anima-inspired flannel fur-lined jacket to get a whopping 1 percent more exp?" To which another player replies: "I don't know if you're kidding and I'm very curious."

Jagex hasn't done too well on Twitter either." One player writes: "I still have no idea how forestry works." Surrounded by a swarm of comments lamenting, "I just wanted to cut trees, you know what I mean. If nothing else, I think this one comment from the original Reddit thread sums up the cognitive load these poor lumberjacks are under: "Can I use sawmill slips with the board bags? Can I take, say, 27 oak logs and a plank sack (and a voucher equipped with a forestry kit) and put 27 on the invoice and 27 in the plank sack and leave with 54 planks? Also, if one does not own a plank sack, do they have to make a trip of basically 13 logs to be allowed to use the voucher?"

I am not sure what I am seeing here. But given that the entire community is baffled by this mechanism, I think my confusion is more than a matter of brain skills. [I wonder if Jagex will adjust its attitude toward updates in the future, or if Sailing, Runescape's first new skill, will equip a charging hanging glove to create a lobster king's cage, triggering a lobster siege event to trade for a caviar supreme of foam-charged shells, and it will be interesting to see if it is necessary to create an egg bait and trigger that event.