Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Tanning, Hunting, and Leatherworking are very tedious compared to other professions.
Senor_Swiper
Member, Alpha Two
I love playing Ashes because I get to be part of the refining process for a game that I want to succeed. The Devs have done an amazing job so far, but I'd like to let you know about my artisan experience.
1. Tanning is extremely difficult to get XP in. In one instance, I skinned 60 bear carcasses and wouldn't even get a single level from tanning (pre-lvl 10), and it took 13+ hours to complete. Skinning grem carcass gives you so little XP, I skinned 100s of grem carcasses while farming lvls 1-10 and only got to lvl 3 or 4 tanning. I was pretty bummed to learn you can't tan anything (including grem carcasses) until you're an apprentice. Low material tanning like grem/wolf/bear should likely be available before apprentice so there actually ways to level your tanning through tanning. Maybe this would be easier if the rarity of carcasses had a chance at being anything above uncommon. I've skinned 100s of carcasses and spent many days trying to level tanning, but still only sit at lvl 7. I hope the coming tanning issues will address this, as well as the meat disappearing from your carcass.
2. Forget getting carcasses greater than uncommon from hunting. I am lvl 19 hunter having only ever received 2 rare grem carcass with an uncommon apprentice hunting bow. For reference, I've farmed ~300 grem carcass, 300+ wolves, and ~100 bears over the course of many days. I've never seen a heroic, epic, or legendary carcass, which feels pretty lacking compared to the other gathering skills' rarity drop rates. The drop rate on rare+ carcasses is waaay too low compared to the other processing/crafting material drop rates. I hope hunting will be improved to be more like skinning in WoW, as that is a much more pleasurable experience and I should be able to get these materials from any wolf/bear/etc in the wild. Having the hunting mobs be individual spawns that aren't tied to the killable wolves/bears in any form feels pretty bad. However, they do have a prototype hunting bow that was data mined on the PTR so I'm excited for what's to come. Another thing about hunting that many others have touched on is that the trainable animals obtained aren't of any use beyond an animal husbandry gambling game, and feel worse than not finding a hunt-able mob to begin with. I'd love it if you could turn these trainable animals into carcass if desired or maybe have alternate uses in animal husbandry.
3. Leatherworking feels pretty bad right now imo. You can only craft grem initate gear before apprentice. Any adept+ recipe requires a bunch of carcasses as the primary material, and not hides/leathers. The good adept recipes for LW (Howling Wolf set) can't even be crafted right now. Howling Emblem, a requirement for all howling wolf set pieces, seems to have the worst drop rate out of any common in the game. Tried to farm Howling Emblems from multiple different sets of goblins for 3 hours and only got 2 howling emblems. For the first hour, I was beginning to think the item didn't exist on the drop table. Howling emblems aren't on any market, won't drop, and they're used in an adept (low lvl) recipes. I've invested so much into hunting and have no LW gear to show for it, nor will I have any good LW gear any time soon with the current carcass rarity drop rates and carcass requirements in LW gear. Most of all, my biggest Leatherworking gripe is that most recipes require carcasses as the main ingredient (highest quantity requirement) on the item, and not Hides, Leathers, or skins. If Leatherworking required hides/leathers/skins as the highest quantity ingredient, as opposed to carcasses, many problems about the hunting/tanning/leatherworking system would be resolved. In my opinion, they should only include hides/leathers/ and other processed carcass materials like the bones. I'd be lvl 10 tanning if I didn't have to save up 180+ wolf carcasses (nearly 1000 skins) for a single set of gear and it'd resolve most things wrong with these professions aside from the drop rates of high rarity carcasses (and Howling Emblems
).
Take this with a grain of salt, as they are working on changing these systems, but I just had to voice my opinion on how these professions gave me the ick as I progressed through them. Still don't have any gear to show for the many days I've put into it, which is unfortunate. I look forward to the coming hunting changes that may help resolve some of these issues.
1. Tanning is extremely difficult to get XP in. In one instance, I skinned 60 bear carcasses and wouldn't even get a single level from tanning (pre-lvl 10), and it took 13+ hours to complete. Skinning grem carcass gives you so little XP, I skinned 100s of grem carcasses while farming lvls 1-10 and only got to lvl 3 or 4 tanning. I was pretty bummed to learn you can't tan anything (including grem carcasses) until you're an apprentice. Low material tanning like grem/wolf/bear should likely be available before apprentice so there actually ways to level your tanning through tanning. Maybe this would be easier if the rarity of carcasses had a chance at being anything above uncommon. I've skinned 100s of carcasses and spent many days trying to level tanning, but still only sit at lvl 7. I hope the coming tanning issues will address this, as well as the meat disappearing from your carcass.
2. Forget getting carcasses greater than uncommon from hunting. I am lvl 19 hunter having only ever received 2 rare grem carcass with an uncommon apprentice hunting bow. For reference, I've farmed ~300 grem carcass, 300+ wolves, and ~100 bears over the course of many days. I've never seen a heroic, epic, or legendary carcass, which feels pretty lacking compared to the other gathering skills' rarity drop rates. The drop rate on rare+ carcasses is waaay too low compared to the other processing/crafting material drop rates. I hope hunting will be improved to be more like skinning in WoW, as that is a much more pleasurable experience and I should be able to get these materials from any wolf/bear/etc in the wild. Having the hunting mobs be individual spawns that aren't tied to the killable wolves/bears in any form feels pretty bad. However, they do have a prototype hunting bow that was data mined on the PTR so I'm excited for what's to come. Another thing about hunting that many others have touched on is that the trainable animals obtained aren't of any use beyond an animal husbandry gambling game, and feel worse than not finding a hunt-able mob to begin with. I'd love it if you could turn these trainable animals into carcass if desired or maybe have alternate uses in animal husbandry.
3. Leatherworking feels pretty bad right now imo. You can only craft grem initate gear before apprentice. Any adept+ recipe requires a bunch of carcasses as the primary material, and not hides/leathers. The good adept recipes for LW (Howling Wolf set) can't even be crafted right now. Howling Emblem, a requirement for all howling wolf set pieces, seems to have the worst drop rate out of any common in the game. Tried to farm Howling Emblems from multiple different sets of goblins for 3 hours and only got 2 howling emblems. For the first hour, I was beginning to think the item didn't exist on the drop table. Howling emblems aren't on any market, won't drop, and they're used in an adept (low lvl) recipes. I've invested so much into hunting and have no LW gear to show for it, nor will I have any good LW gear any time soon with the current carcass rarity drop rates and carcass requirements in LW gear. Most of all, my biggest Leatherworking gripe is that most recipes require carcasses as the main ingredient (highest quantity requirement) on the item, and not Hides, Leathers, or skins. If Leatherworking required hides/leathers/skins as the highest quantity ingredient, as opposed to carcasses, many problems about the hunting/tanning/leatherworking system would be resolved. In my opinion, they should only include hides/leathers/ and other processed carcass materials like the bones. I'd be lvl 10 tanning if I didn't have to save up 180+ wolf carcasses (nearly 1000 skins) for a single set of gear and it'd resolve most things wrong with these professions aside from the drop rates of high rarity carcasses (and Howling Emblems
).Take this with a grain of salt, as they are working on changing these systems, but I just had to voice my opinion on how these professions gave me the ick as I progressed through them. Still don't have any gear to show for the many days I've put into it, which is unfortunate. I look forward to the coming hunting changes that may help resolve some of these issues.
0