A Number of Prof Suggestions

I have come up with a number of suggestions for improving professions. I will now apply them in great quantity, similarly to the operation of shotguns. Each of these suggestions is individual.

Miniquests
I have suggested this before. To summarise that suggestion, the current miniquest-board style of miniquests (where you just fetch the resources) should be removed entirely. In exchange, proper questgivers should be applied. They would ask for you to give them a certain product of the Professions system, and pay you in emeralds and prof XP for completing this task. Miniquest tasks would boil down to three categories; harvesting Gathering materials, crafting a significant number of basic Crafted items, and crafting a Crafted item with specific IDs (which would be linked to ingredients in the area). Although these miniquests would be short, the questgivers would have proper dialogue and a reason for needing the item.

More Resource Tunnels
There are currently three areas in the game which fit the description of 'Resource Tunnel', although I don't know if any of them share the actual title. There is one in Maex, one in Olux (unlocked with RoL I), and one in Karoc Quarry (unlocked with Rise of the Quartron). I propose:

1. Unifying the title.
2. Adding more Resource Tunnels.

Some locations where Resource Tunnels could be placed:

• A pit north of Almuj with a large quantity of sandstone could be made into a Resource Tunnel.
• The Emerald Trail copper mine could be given a resource tunnel into the Ravines; alternatively, the Ravines themselves could be given tunnels.

Tunnels seem to be mostly focused on Mining, so you could have equivalents for the other Profs with different names. I don't know what those would be like, but you probably wouldn't need any for Woodcutting.

Profession Camps
I suggest a number of camps located around the world. Camps are focused on one or two Gathering professions and are additionally associated with a certain area. When you visit one, you can complete certain tasks there (such as supplying a toolmaker* with tool-making materials, or rebuilding a broken wall or a watchtower) which will give you a permanent bonus to XP gain in the area the camp controls.
*Camps could have tool merchants which sell tools of higher level than 2. This would probably integrate with the tool suggestion below.

These camps also include miniquest givers (possibly the noticeboard style we currently have) which you can use to effectively convert excess mats into bonus XP. I'm not sure if these should be repeatable or time-based.

Guilds would be able to conquer profession camps. This would yield a large amount of economy-materials, of course - either a flat amount or just straight-up the quantity of materials people are giving the camp. I don't really know how the guild economy works, so I can't suggest anything more specific than this. A guild controlling a camp also means that its members have amplified bonus XP from the camp.

Some example camp locations:

• A woodcutting camp outside Alekin Village.
• A mining camp in Karoc Quarry.
• A farming camp around Maltic.
• Katoa Ranch becomes a camp.
• A fishing camp in a sea island.

Camps would have different names for each profession; camp for Woodcutting, mine for Mining, ranch/farm for Farming, and... fishery, I suppose, for Fishing?

Tasks Actually Interesting
Unfortunately, I don't have any suggestions for how to improve the actual material-gathering process. I don't know how to make it more engaging than sitting and waiting for a tree to be felled or a fish to be fished; I'm only rather certain that, as is, it's not very interesting.

I have a better idea for Crafting, though, which is to simply remove the Crafting delay outright. While hypothetically more realistic, it serves no gameplay purpose and ought simply to be removed.

Alternatively, turn Crafting into some sort of minigame where you take your mats and ingredients and assemble them into the result. The manner in which you do this affects the product. For instance, depending on what order you add your items into a potion, the strength of certain IDs or the potion charges might be affected (you could add water to make the potion weaker but have more charges, or conversely have very little water to make a strong, single-use potion). In this case, ingredients could possibly be assigned to specific points in the process (for instance, with a spear, some ingredients might apply to the binding, others to the shaft, and some to the head); the quality of materials and the type of item you're assembling (a halberd, a hammer, a regular spear) would determine how many materials can be fit in each location.

Just Buff XP Amounts
Simply reduce XP requirements or buff XP gain at higher Gathering and Crafting levels. (Mainly Gathering, since it has less opportunity for improved XP gain.)

Share XP Across Classes
Suggested by some people on the Discord, this suggestion is self-explanatory. All non-Ironman classes (I'd say that non-Ironman Craftsmen should also share prof XP) share profession experience. If you have level 40 Mining on one class, another class has the same level, and leveling Mining on either class will level it for the other. It's extremely basic.

For players who currently have higher-than-1 Prof levels on multiple classes, all their Prof XP from non-Ironman classes would be added together. If the added XP would be above the max for that profession, they can just cry in the corner because they wasted their time on a bad system.

Foraging
I'm not sure if it would be better as a full Gathering profession, but I suggest a slightly more formalised Foraging system. Foraging (possibly toolless) would yield ingredients. They could be current-style ingredients, or they could be some sort of 'generic' ingredient - with flat IDs and a rank system similar to mats. Higher ranks would have more extreme positive and negative IDs, or higher positives and weaker negatives.

Ingredient Lore
For lore fans, add some lore to the ingredients. Might be helpful, might not. Possibly you could just add lore to Foraging ingredients.

Crafting Merges
I suggest certain Crafting professions be merged - namely, Armoring and Tailoring, and Weaponsmithing and Woodworking. I don't know if their respective stations should also be merged.

Advanced Tools
This isn't an original suggestion, but I forget who actually proposed it and where. Essentially, complexify the tool system so that there are multiple tool types with their own effects. For instance, in Woodcutting, you could see an axe which yields more wood but less XP, and conversely an axe which yields less wood but more XP, as well as an axe which yields almost no XP but chops wood at lower levels very quickly.

The sources of these tools could vary. You could see the current tools coming from Dungeons, and some more complex tools coming from the camps or from random merchants.

A Toolcrafting profession could be implemented. In this case, all tools would be given a set of IDs, including the tools you make. Toolcrafting could involve ingredients, or it could just involve assembling a tool from different components.

Multiple Materials
Add multiple materials for each 10-block of Gathering levels. For instance, you could have Willow Wood at level 50 in Olux (with Nemract's wood replaced with Mangrove), and Jungle Wood at level 50 in Troms. Different mats in the same level would result in different effects for the result; for example, Jungle Wood might yield stronger IDs while Willow Wood yields better durability. Molten and Sky-level materials would be merged. You could mix and match materials in the same level range, for example making a spear with Molten metal and Sky wood, which would mix the materials' characteristics as well.

Quests Reward Prof XP
(All Roads to Peace and Aldorei's Secret Part I, specifically.)
I've suggested it in the past on the Discord, I believe. Quests which involve profs, or prof-adjacent gameplay, should yield prof XP. For instance, some All Roads to Peace orc-tasks should yield prof XP for what you do during them. You should get Farming and Cooking XP from AS1 if you don't already.

Rewards for Having Done OG Profs
With profs being reworked to be much easier, it seems that people who went through the unreasonable grind earlier would be left with ephemeral, unprovable and irrelevant bragging rights. The current existence of prof grinders is no reason not to improve the system, but they would need some reward afterwards so as to not feel cheated, such as:

• Having their account Prof XP converted into emeralds. (Not 1:1, obviously.)
• Store excess XP (assuming the level reqs are dropped) for when Fruman resources appear.
• Get some sort of tag or star of some sort which contains information about just how much time they wasted grinding profs.
• For every 10 average prof levels (counting the highest rank in each prof across the entire account, so if you have 50 Woodcutting and 20 Mining on one class and 1 Woodcutting and 30 Mining on another 50 Woodcutting and 30 Mining is counted towards the average) when the update drops, give an exclusive cosmetic which is unobtainable in all cases save having had the requisite levels before the update. If you got your average to 132 (or whatever the new maximum is with Fruma), you additionally get a special prize.

What to give a player who maxed profs on multiple accounts is... I got nothing. I'm sure something could be figured out, but preferably not something too big, since you don't want to insinuate to players that, because they didn't want to grind 14 classes to max profs, that they played the game wrong.

 

honestly i think they should consolidate ingredients ... have less ingredients drop but make the ones that do drop alot more impactful (ingredient pouch gets cluttered really fast)

 

Olux trees look more like Mangroves and Nemract trees look more like Willows.

 

im gonna have to hard disagree with you on that one Gruesome Grue

Nemract trees do look like- wait wait wait

never mind i just looked it up
and turns out
i must be high or something because yeah deus ur absolutely right

now i hope you read this far lol

 

i know my motherfucking trees

 

but what about the ones that f**k fathers?