i've made a series of these type of suggestions during beta and EA, but I've decided for now to make it consolidated into one (big) suggestion. I am starting with the TDLR, in the second post there's more elaboration and argumentation on why I think some things should be implemented or changed.

I think I have most of it in here now. Super TDLR:

• Moonstone shards should drop in addition to regular profession loot, not instead of (Specifically fishing and mining)
• Leveling up should give consistent bonuses throughout all professions:
  • Speed/efficiency bonus per level
  • Extra slots every few levels
  • New areas every once in a while (if applicable) / new recipes unlocked
    • While the last one is already a thing for the professions where this is applicable, this would also need to happen at consistent intervals. All professions that unlock new areas should unlock them at the same levels.
    • Specifically for fishing a few extra areas would be nice. The wait from lv12 to 35 is excruciatingly slow
• All professions should have slots to unlock via purchase
• Unlocking slots via purchase should cost pebbles
• All NPCs should be given useful roles like the farming NPCs
• All professions should unlock something in the campaign (consistency!)
• Fishing:
  • Higher level areas should reward better fish (in terms of stamina and hoardsell value)
  • Fish from higher level areas should be cookable into even better items
  • Wolves should gain xp from fishing
  • Add a smaller daily activity for fishing, like with mining → Forum - Lower "catch fish" activity requirement (lorwolf.com)
  • Idea for NPC use for fishing and idle mode → Forum - Fishing Nets - Add-On For Fishing Mini-Game (lorwolf.com)
• Mining:
  • Remove low level ore from higher level areas
  • Drop unsmelted ore off at furnace, instead of continuously dragging it back and forth
  • Make moonstone shards a bonus drop like with hunting, farming, cooking, and not instead of a regular ore
  • The ability to select a new destination, even while travelling. (So many misclicks :( )
  • Pay NPC to automatically travel back and forth once cart is full/empty
  • Finding ores awards small amount of XP (I mean it is the actual mining that is done there!)
  • Wolf earns xp
• Crafting
  • Ability to queue different items
  • Queue expands with level and purchasable (Pebble!) slots
  • Show amount of items required in recipe in overview page
  • Give excess items/endless crafting a use! Give excess recipe a use (perhaps an alchemy profession/NPC?)
  • Ability to search/filter recipes
• Farming
  • Balance crop payout between no tending on the one hand and manual/paid tending on the other hand.
  • Add more seed variety (short high level seeds, and long low level seeds)
  • Plus it bothers me that lettuce is unlocked before broccoli, but broccoli is listed first
• Cooking:
  • Cooking pot size should determine amount of output, not input
  • Higher level items (that require a higher cooking level, take longer to cook, require more ingredients) should reward higher stamina items
  • Output should always be worth more than the sum of input (jam anyone?)
• Hunting:
  • All required synergies are actually possible to obtain
  • Make difficulty balanced and let duration and level requirements play a bigger part than synergies required
  • Allow unequipped companions to join hunts (perhaps only from a certain companion level)
  • Require less synergies than is possible with the amount of teammates (so a team of 3 should require less than 9 synergies, so you don't have to have exact matches)
  • Remove the RNG element of the available hunts. All hunts (within level) are available to choose, but the amount of hunts we can go on is limited (and can be expanded by purchasing slots and leveling up) (This should also solve my current issue with the wild wolf hunt always showing up, taking up a precious slot. Although ideally I'd see the hunt removed and rather make it into a craftable item that can be used from the inventory)
  • Improve the rewards to balance the requirements and difficulty
  • A hunt requires 25 stamina, in line with other professions
  • Show a wolf's stamina in the team selection screen
  • Search and filter options at least for synergies, but perhaps also name/companion type
  • Wolves already on a hunt don't show up, or are at least greyed out

In italics I've added new ideas since the original posting. Because I am a lazy bum, I won't always add a more elaborate description in the second post..

Moonstone shard drops

Luckily the ability to find moonstone shards have been added to all professions (thank you, staff!) But I've noticed it still feels somewhat skewed. With some professions, like cooking or farming, the shard drops in addition to whatever it is you were creating. With others however, mainly being fishing and mining, the moonstone shard drops instead of what you were trying to get. With fishing this is mostly a slight irritation, mainly because I am fishing for fish, cause I need to food or the daily quest activity. With mining, it is downright annoying. With how mining works, you can only smelt down a metal if you have 5 ores. Getting a moonstone shard immediately forces you to drag at least 4 ores back and forth with you, unable to smelt them. (And that is if you are lucky, cause they all need to be the same ore, but wé'll get to that petpeeve later)

TDLR: So as it stands, some professions grant you a moonstone shard as a bonus, in addition to your regular loot. In other professions it is swapped out for potential loot. I'd much rather if the moonstone shards were always considered a bonus, and therefore always dropping in addition to your regular loot.

Leveling up

What leveling up does right now among the professions feels pretty all over the place, and I also feel it isn't using its full potential. Mainly leveling up helps to unlock things; unlocking new fishing areas unlocking new mining areas, unlocking new recipes to cook or craft, etc. In some cases it adds additional slots (farming and hunting) whereas that usually requires purchasing (a thing we'll get to in a next bit as well) I have noticed that now, leveling up at cooking also grants a bit of a speed bonus (again, thank you!) But this improvement needs to be added across the board. I feel like leveling up adding consistent (as possible) bonuses throughout all professions will make it all feel a lot more clean and well-thought out.

I think in general, leveling up should grant:

• speed bonus for every level (faster cooking, crafting, mining etc.) (for fishing this could be recovery time)
• An additional slot every once in a while (say every 5 levels) (for fishing this could be extra ripples)
• New areas unlocking at certain levels (streamlined across the board) (ofcourse this doesn't apply to professions that don't work with areas; instead for those professions new recipes could unlock at certain levels. With recipes being smaller and more abundant, having smaller level intervals would be most fitting for unlocking those)

Unlocking slots

First of all, unlocking slots should be a pebble-sink! Not moonstones. Considering the very real advantage you gain by unlocking these slots, making them hidden behind a RLC paywall is way too pay to win. Additionally, for example for professions such as mining, expanding is all but necessary to make that feature somewhat manageable, and locking out F2P players or newbies just is unfair. All purchaseable slots should be unlocked with pebbles.

Secondly, again in terms of streamlining things, I think all professions should have slots that you can purchase. For fishing I can imagine extra trips, for hunting, extra slots to choose from, for farming extra plots to farm on. All professions have slots in some way or another. Make us able to expand these slots by buying them (and levelling up as mentioned in the previous part)

TDLR: Unlocking slots should be purchasable with pebbles, and all professions should have purchasable slots, not just some.

Make NPCs useful

Right now the majority of the NPCs is just there looking pretty. The only one that has an actual use are the farming NPCs which you can pay to automize part of your activities. I think all NPCs for all the professions should have such an option. It feels weird that there is currently only 1, and it kind of makes all the other NPCs useless.

Unlocking campaign scenarios

Right now only fishing and mining unlock 2 scenarios each in the campaign when you reach a certain level for that profession. This really should be streamlined. Why only mining and fishing? Make all professions useful and interesting, and have them all unlock things across the campaign.

Then there's also some balancing required within specific professions. We'll go through them one by one.

Fishing

I've managed to unlock the second fishing area this morning, and went to fish. To my initial excitement, but later big disappointment, I found a bunch of new fish that hadn't been part of beta or EA. Yay new items. Bút these fish cannot be cooked. Meaning they only grant 5 stamina, and that is it. While the new area does give you 3 more drops compared to the first area, given the fact that the fish from the first area are all worth more stamina, and can be cooked into items worth even more stamina, the second area actually awards a lot less in terms of stamina (and that's what we're fishing for in the end). So apart from spawning more ripples, the fish need to be worth more stamina, and recipes should be added to cook the fish into food items awarding even more stamina than those in the first area. Otherwise there is no use whatsoever to go to the higher levels.

TDLR: The rewards from high levels should be worth more. Make the fish cookable and both the uncooked and cooked versions of the fish should reward more stamina than the versions found in lower levels

Finally, considering the amount of stamina fishing requires, the wolf that is doing the fishing should also gain some xp in doing so.

Mining

Because multiple types of ore can drop at any given area, increasing in amount as you progress, it gets progressively harder to get a set of five to melt down. Because of that, you have to endlessly drag unmelted ores back and forth, taking up precious space in the cart. There are multiple ways to solve this issue, all of which I think are complementary (so this is not an either-or suggestion, but rather an and-and suggestion).

• Remove lower level ores from higher levels. Copper ore is still dropping in the third area, along with 4 other ores. This should not happen, at some point copper ore should stop dropping. Getting even further, the same should go for iron ore.
• Have a stash of unmelted ore back at the furnace. If you bring back an incomplete set of unmelted ore, these should be dropped at the furnace, to be melted once you've brought back enough to make a set of five. In turns of efficiency in real life, this also would make way more sense instead of dragging unmelted ores back with you whever you go. But even more so considering the amount of ore types available, and their drop rates, it is really difficult, without expanding your cart, to even get a set of 5 of the same, let alone more

Another thing I've noticed is that each trip you make costs you 25 stamina. Even if you go from the second area to the third (something I've done because of misclicking on multiple occasions). I think leaving the furnace should cost 25 stamina, and you can travel back and forth between all mining areas as you please, and going back to the furnace costs 25 stamina. That way misclicking isn't as punishing as it is now, just a tad timeconsuming.

Another suggestion I've seen, which would be much more preferable if the first two parts of the mining suggestion are also implemented, is if the wolf automatically returns to the furnace once the cart is full. But this in my opinion is more of a nice QoL improvement, rather than a necessity for balancing. It might be something that could be done by the NPC in exchange for a price, much like farming.

Finally I feel it is only logical, considering the amount of stamina mining requires, that the wolf that is doing the mining, also gains some xp. Plus that the act of mining gains xp and not just the smelting.

TDLR:

• Lower level ores to be removed from higher level areas
• Stash of unmelted ore left at the furnace instead of dragging it back and forth. To be melted once multiples of 5 have been obtained
• Leaving furnace and going back to furnace should cost 25 stamina. Travelling between mining areas should be free
• Pay NPC to automatically let wolf travel back and forth when cart is full/empty.
• Mining itself (not just smelting) gives xp
• Wolf doing the mining gains xp

Crafting

• The ability to queue different types of items. Right now we can luckily choose if we want to craft 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 items, that will automatically start being crafted once the previous is finished. However, it would be even more awesome if that queue could consist of different items, instead of all the same. much like cooking.
• Give us something to do with excess items. A lot of people are crafting items purely for the sake of experience. But now we are stuck with a load of copper and iron armour apparel, that no one really wants. Give us a way to reduce these items to basic ingredients (either back to the original or to completely new basic ingredients → Perhaps something like an alchemy profession) Similarly, recipes. I keep pulling recipes from the MM, and I can already see the build up of recipes I cannot use in my inventory. Give these items a purpose. Heck, give all items a purpose other than mindlessly vendor selling them. Especially given the low sell price, and the absolute pain it is to navigate the vendor selling feature of the inventory, to me it isn't even worth trying to vendor sell them. Let us exchange or reduce them to something useful.
• Show the amount of ingredients necessary on the crafting page. Right now it shows which ingredients you need, but not how much. It feels like a small change that could greatly improve the QoL of crafting.

Farming

• Balance crop payout. It seems that not tending a crop faithfully often rewards more crops than paying the NPCs to do it for you or manually tending to it (might be bug)
• Add more variety. At this point the high level requirements also take a long time to grow. It would be nice to also have some quick growing high level seeds, and perhaps also slow growing low level seeds, for varieties sake.

Cooking

• Cooking pot size should determine the amount of output items that can be cooked/queued, not the input items
• Higher level items (that require a higher level, take longer to cook, require more ingredients) should be worth more stamina
• Output should always be worth more than sum of input (looking at you jar of jam!)

Hunting

Hunting needs to most improvements in terms of difficulty balancing. There are so many hunts that are simply impossible to do with 100% accuracy because the synergy combinations cannot be made. Plus the jump in difficulty is too hard. You go from 3 synergies from 2 teammembers to 9 synergies from 3 (which means you have to exactly match what is required) in a heartbeat. Make the difficulty that comes with higher level hunts dependent on the duration of the hunt and the level requirement, but at least make sure that the amount of synergies required remains LOWER than the amount of synergies you can get into a team. Getting exact matches, especially with how the companions work, is downright impossible, so even though I am lv18, I am still doing only lv1 hunts, and I'm sure that can't be the intention here.

• Make sure all required synergies are actually possible
• Allow companions that are not equipped to wolves to be part of the party, maybe only if they are above a certain level.
• Require less synergies than is possible with the amount of teammates
• Remove the RNG element of the available hunts. Especially given the fact that the synergies required to hunt successfully are so particular and difficult to obtain, perhaps it would be better if we just had all available hunts to choose from, but the amount of hunts we can go on is limited (and can be expanded by purchasing slots and leveling up)
• Improve the rewards: the rewards are less than mediocre, they need to be improved
• A hunt requires 25 stamina, in line with other professions

Fully Support your ideas! They'd be a massive improvement imo ;o;

All of the professions still need so much balancing, it feels like no user input was actually taken into account during the beta+ periods, even with the extra time taken since the planned launch to polish up.

They could still use tweaking on very simple things, like changing the jam recipe-- right now it takes IIRC 30 energy worth of items to make an item that gives 40, which is all well and good… but it takes up the slots in the cooking pot that you could use to make 120 energy's worth of fish or cooked meat instead. That's just hilarious and goes beyond the scope of a “noob trap”. Either some kind of stacking needs to be allowed in the cooking pot, or that jam recipe needs to give more like 3-4 jam items per craft.

That's just one goofy example of one profession nitpick but… lol.

@Reave even worse, Jam requires 40 stamina points worth of ingredients and is itself worth 40 stamina as well. So apart from cooking experience you gain absolutely nothing from it. And in terms of cooking experience, there are many more efficient things to cook than jam, and as you said, in terms of stamina pretty much everything is more efficient. I hope that the cooking pot size being about output (so with a size of 20 you can coooking 20 final items, regardless of how many ingredients it requires to cookt hem) might help a bit, bit specifically jam does need to be tweaked.

And I agree, kinda disappointing that in terms of consistency and playability, very few suggestions from beta and EA made it into launch

Also @Korvo (I hope it is alright to ping) I noticed that the link specifically to this thread in the Suggestion Index is broken. It leads to an ‘page not found’ page. I tried a couple others (not all) and those seem to be working, so might just be an issue with this one only

Oh wow these ideas are all amazing! Thank you for the comprehensive and fully written out stuff!

@Gaia Just to say that this has been fixed!

@Quiche thank you! Probably should've added it to my previous note, but while you are here, could I bother you to change the title of my thread? I've tried to ignore it, but it bothers me to no end I misspelled professions in the title ^^' Specifically could you change ‘Proessions’ to ‘Professions’? Thank you!

@Gaia You're most welcome and title changed!

Love all of these, would feel very immersive and lively!

Wow, this is a great list! Full support for everything mentioned!