Devs: for the love of crafting/gathering...

What does that have to do wit ANYTING related to actual skill levels? All it means is you are gaining more exp than you are using training?

Don't see the point.

 

Interesting...I have 46 Mining Proficiency, 45 Survey, 45 Swift Gathering and 45 Meticulous, but it only takes 16 sec. to mine a node at 60% chance of success rate. That's a significant time difference! Bug?

 

There are likely a lot of inconsistencies like that for which we don't know the reason, so I'd /bug each and every one if you see it in-game.

But in regards to the boredom of gathering taking too long / not enough reward / etc. this is where that mini-game can help. Perhaps all gathering has a baseline time, make it short like 5 seconds, at whatever your skill dictates for quantity, quality, etc. But use the mini-game to extend that time to also further increase either your success rate, your quantity gathered, its quality, etc.

 

This was always supposed to be part of the design and likely will be in sooner rather than later. They'd always planned crafting and gathering events and hinted at minnigames.

 

Well, this is embarassing...I forgot all about turning off the other mining skills to raise Swift Gathering! Thanks to Aldo's tip, and the increased crystal spawn rate in Owl's Head, I raised it from 46 to 51 in just over two hours and shaved 1 second off the gathering time. With that kind of progress, I can't see any reason to mess with the system, other than continued fine tuning.

 

I think one of the biggest 'problems' right now, is understanding the skills system. We have to go in and turn off advancement of various skills to see reasonable advancement in others.. something not really covered in the tutorial, and I think this level of 'UI control' needs to have an option to be automated, so that newbies can start playing with minimum 'tweaking' required. Then beginner trainer quests can start teaching players more organically in the game of how to do this level of tweaking, at the time that players need it, and are ready to understand it. (after having had selected several skills and understand the basis of how the skill trees are working).

That said, I seem to be having a problem with the current 'tool box' help system. I'm finding myself closing them because I hate popups, and therefore not reading the useful information inside. So even if details on how to setup skills were thrown in there, I probably wouldn't read/understand it at first, if ever. Maybe they could be presented in a way that's more appealing to the player? Is this just me? I'm not sure what would work better though.

This level of hand-holding would not be required, and should be easily turned off so you can start making adjustments from the beginning, but I feel the default should have some level of automatic function that sets new players up better for success.

 

What it has to do is that it is apparently impossible to use up all your producer XP because crafting skills level so slowly, even with everything turned on.

 

Just want to make sure this is sarcasm...

 

This is a sarcasm free zone. The response makes perfect sense and I agree wholeheartedly.

 

Sorry Solstar, that post is as free of sarcasm as a baby's laugh! Your's is an interesting response though...would you elaborate a little plz?

 

I think that because the crafting trees are not in game yet, your XP pool is going to be full. This should change when we get more skills to spend them on.

 

I wish I'd have a skill trainer give me a book that I can read at leisure - once they give me a face-to-face chat on the basics and remind me the importance about reading all the details in the book. So that maybe, maybe, when I venture out and start having troubles, I'll remember about that book (and it can be like that mail packet - can't sell, can't destroy) and take the time to read it. And enjoy one of the finer feature of this game, in-game reading from a book.

 

As long as they let you read it while waiting for the epic time sink that gathering currently is. Good idea though.

8^)

 

Field dressing seems to be the only gathering skill which is not seriously impacted by a long timer. As for the rest, it's quite the undertaking to try and gather at a reasonable speed.

Mining takes ages at higher tiers, but at least in this case you can haul off to a mine and take your time in relative safety. Sure, there are mobs in the mines, but if you're looking to raise production XP, spending a few hours in the little hidden pockets of Etceter Crag Mines is probably your best bet. (Now that I've said that, I'm going to turn off XP gain for mining, and use that method to increase my production XP pool so I can then spend it on Foraging / Field Dressing / Tanning / Tailoring. I'm already GM in Textiles). This might not be working as intended...

I was with a group in the "Southeast of Blackblade" scene, and my ability to forage the cotton bushes in that scene is about 50%. RNG being what it is, I might sit at the same node for five minutes, and in that time the local node protection agency (be it wolves, spiders, bears, or otherwise) have returned to find me in flagrante delicto. What makes things even more sadistic is when I have a success with Meticulous Collection, only to be attacked from an off-screen mob during the 30-or-so seconds of the MC event.

On top of that, cotton is still so rare in comparison to the other resources.

 

@Jack Knyfe I mentioned it earlier but once farming is in, it might be easier to raise your harvesting skills, just like mining. You'd have to grow your nodes though.

 

True. I haven't speculated on Agriculture because we don't have it yet and I don't want to assume anything.

That being said, if farming flax ends up being easier than farming cotton, or if I can grow my own cotton bushes and harvest them faster than I can farm them in the wild, I'll be ok with that.

 

Maybe if you have the patience you can go test it out now? Don't know if it's still there but there was a pumpkin patch that you can harvest using the skill. Has to be the harvest skill because farming skills aren't in yet. Didn't stick around to see if it would raise the skill though - give it a try maybe?

 

I agree with the OP, especially at lower level. .the gathering time is way too long.

 

Pumpkins are foraged just like reagents, with a sickle. (yes, I've already tried.)

 

I agree with this, the current system is too fiddly. If the system could be tweaked so that turning off an upper skill automatically turns off anything else underneath it then that would be a big improvement. It would also help if a turned off skill is greyed out - much better visual cue than a minus sign.