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 suck compared to other professions.
Senor_Swiper
Member, Alpha Two
in Artisanship
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, buuuut with that being said, I've been disturbed by these three professions in the last few days.
1. Tanning is extremely difficult to get XP in. I skinned 30+ bear carcasses and didn't even get from lvl 6 to 7 tanning, and it took so many hours to complete. Skinning grem carcass gives you so little XP, I skinned 100s of grem carcasses (days of farming) and only got to lvl 3 or 4 tanning. Also, you can't even tan anything (including grem carcass) until you're an apprentice, which is a poor design decision. 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. Additionally, as other threads have mentioned, where does the meat go when I skin a carcass? I think skinning a carcass should grant meat, or 'unproccessed meat' that can be cut properly at a cooking station or something of the sort.
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 over 200 grem carcass, 200 wolves, and ~100 bears over the course of many days. I've never seen a heroic, epic, or legendary carcass, but I can go to the nearest snowdrop pile and get heroic/epic/legendary snowdrop like it's no one's business with lvl 2 herbalism. The drop rate on rare+ carcasses is waaay to 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 reaaally bad. Another thing about hunting is that the trainable animals obtained aren't of any use beyond animal husbandry, 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.
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. I tried to farm Howling Emblems from multiple different sets of goblins for 5-6 hours and only got 2 howling emblems. For the first 2 hours, 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) recipe. 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. Why do the recipes in LW even require carcasses? They should only include hides/leathers/processed carcasses. I might be lvl 10 tanning if I didn't have to save up 180+ wolf carcasses (nearly 1000 wolf hides) for a single set of gear. It should be MUCH easier to get gear from LW imo.
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 much these professions suck. 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. I skinned 30+ bear carcasses and didn't even get from lvl 6 to 7 tanning, and it took so many hours to complete. Skinning grem carcass gives you so little XP, I skinned 100s of grem carcasses (days of farming) and only got to lvl 3 or 4 tanning. Also, you can't even tan anything (including grem carcass) until you're an apprentice, which is a poor design decision. 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. Additionally, as other threads have mentioned, where does the meat go when I skin a carcass? I think skinning a carcass should grant meat, or 'unproccessed meat' that can be cut properly at a cooking station or something of the sort.
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 over 200 grem carcass, 200 wolves, and ~100 bears over the course of many days. I've never seen a heroic, epic, or legendary carcass, but I can go to the nearest snowdrop pile and get heroic/epic/legendary snowdrop like it's no one's business with lvl 2 herbalism. The drop rate on rare+ carcasses is waaay to 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 reaaally bad. Another thing about hunting is that the trainable animals obtained aren't of any use beyond animal husbandry, 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.
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. I tried to farm Howling Emblems from multiple different sets of goblins for 5-6 hours and only got 2 howling emblems. For the first 2 hours, 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) recipe. 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. Why do the recipes in LW even require carcasses? They should only include hides/leathers/processed carcasses. I might be lvl 10 tanning if I didn't have to save up 180+ wolf carcasses (nearly 1000 wolf hides) for a single set of gear. It should be MUCH easier to get gear from LW imo.
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 much these professions suck. I look forward to the coming hunting changes that may help resolve some of these issues.
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