» Sat Sep 27, 2008 6:02 am
To give you a bit of a backstory, the harvesting of ingredients was used in TES (starting w/ morrowind I believe) but the engine is the Gamebryo engine which is core of FNV (as well as FO3, though harvesting wasn't used for that one). When you come upon a plant that can be harvested, such as the broc flower, you will not only notice that the plant is more colorful than surrounding plants but you can hover your crosshairs (if you use them) over the plant and get a label to pop up identifying the plant. When you get the label to come up, use your activation key to "harvest" the plant. The ingredient will appear in your inventory under the AID tab (where you find food, water, stimpaks, etc). After you get the broc flower to load into your inventory, return to Sunny Smiles and she'll explain the rest.
I hope this helps.