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Hunting / Animal Husbandry balance discussion

TaiisienTaiisien Member, Alpha Two
I love to gather and craft in nearly every MMO, and Ashes offers more than most games. Currently I am attempting to play / test as many artisan classes as possible and I feel that the Hunting and Animal Husbandry classes are out of balance compared to others. Here is a list of what I have seen that seems off...

Hunting - Spawns are much more spread out compared to other gathering skills such as Mining, Lumberjacking, and Herbalism.
Hunting - Collection grants the same xp per harvest as other gathering skills despite having less spawn locations.
Hunting - Collection grants 1 harvested item per spawn compared to other skills giving 2-5 per harvest.
Hunting - Selling harvested items sell for the same price per item to a vendor as other gathering skills, despite less spawn points and less harvested items per collection.
Hunting - Collection has unknown resource produced, you can gather either an animal used in husbandry or a carcass used in cooking and leatherworking, but you don't know which you will get until it has been gathered. No other gathering skill does this. If I mine granite, I know I will get granite, If I collect daffodils I know I will get daffodils.

Husbandry - Processing gives a 50% / 50% chance at receiving a Beast of Burden or a Mount. Lets be honest, most people that are attempting AH are trying for mounts 99% of the time.
Husbandry - Processing takes 30 mins and grants 500xp compared to other skills roughly 2600xp (@Roshen did talk with the team and this should be adjusted).
Husbandry - Processing takes a minimum of 55s for one 30 minute process, this greatly exceeds other 30 minute processes and again only in husbandry this can still result in an unwanted item.
Husbandry - Processing does not take into account animal rarity. If I process rare (blue) wolf into a mount, I would expect different stats on the mount because the resource was rare.
Husbandry - Processing grants only one item for the 30 minute process, other skills take far less time for a single process, 30 mins is only when batch processing.
Husbandry - Processing is one and done, the end result of the process cannot be used in any other process to allow for continued xp, this is the only skill like this. For example, If I collect a wolf carcass I can use the tanning station to process this into wolf hide, process again into tanned wolf hide, process again into wolf leather, each time gaining xp for the tanning process.

Currently, my only form of Husbandry xp has a 30 minute timer attached, I would really like to see this at 10 - 20 minutes max. At current xp levels (getting to level 10 skill takes 40,000 xp) that's 80 processes which equals 40 real life hours and at the lowest cost of 55s per process equals 440 GOLD. If the xp gets raised to say 3000xp per process, level 10 skill still takes 14 processes or 7 hours or 77 gold minimum. If the xp gets raised say to 3000xp per process AND the timer were reduced to ten minutes, level 10 skill would be 14 processes, 2.5 hours (5 hours if time was lowered to 20 mins) and 77 gold minimum. Now this may sound too quick, but the xp required per level is drastic, at level 20 it looks like this (xp needed is 160,000) that's 54 processes, 9 hours (18 hours if 20 min processing time), and 297 gold, it only goes up from there.

Overall I am enjoying the process of finding animals, collecting the animal or carcass and then turning that into useful things, I just think that there needs to be a balance pass to bring everything in line with other gathering and processing skills. As it stands right now, Hunting and Husbandry receive the least xp and the least coin, will take the longest to level, and cost ~10 times as much or more. I want to continue to enjoy the process and continue with these two skills, at the moment though, its rough. @Roshen could you please have your team look into these other issues as well.
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