Give horticulture some love

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braket
Posts: 4
Character: Hom

Give horticulture some love

Post by braket » December 21st, 2022, 2:24 pm

Hi.
I’ve been focusing on horticulture and carpentry (rp wise) since day 1 on my shard. I’m still working through all the mechanics but i believe horticulture has a few issues that need to be addressed.
I think all skills should be worth raising at its max (or at least be appealing to do so) but in the case of horticulture it isn't for the following reasons:
1. Benefits end at 70.
Right now there’s no significant bonus to raise skill more than 70 due to:
  • Lack of wood nodes with more requirement than 50 skill.
  • Lack of plants nodes with more requirement than 70 skill.
Bonus above 70 are not significant:
  • Stam reduction has 0 impact in harvesting times because nodes are spread out.
  • Extra rare resources bonus is useless because there are no woods nodes which require more than 50 skill.
2. Overlapping with other skill (Agriculture)
I believe the approach of horticulture is a skill that allows you to gather wild plants (such as wood, flowers or herbs). But there are some plants which can be farmed but do as well grow in the wild in small numbers (wheat, cotton, flax, fruits and vegetables). Those plants require Agriculture to be harvested and at the same time can be farmed with Agriculture. This is an important skill overlap and a debuff to horticulture itself.
3. Design inconsistencies with other gathering resources (this affects too to geology but with lesser impact)
  • Horticulture cant be raised above 100 (but skinning can be).
  • Horticulture has the least perks (same with geology) and half of them (studies and prospecting have no benefit).
  • Studies: is powerful in geology because it allows you to identify where certain types of minerals and ores spawn in a region. But in horticulture it is pointless because you can already see them and identify without the use of the skill.
  • Prospecting: same as above. It only gives you a small flash on the node which could be considered more a QOL than a perk itself.
4. Low impact of the rare (which is already small) resources in other crafting skills applies only to wood).
Right now the benefits of rare woods (which are only obtainable through horticulture skill) are limited only to carpentry (extended capacity of containers and different properties in weapons/bows). Being archery a skill that very few people use and wood weapons are only used for training, harvesting these woods become pretty much pointless in the market.

From here I came up with some ideas to give some love to the skill:
  • Add nodes from rare woods such as heartwood, bloodwood and frostwood.
  • Add more benefits to non regular wood besides properties to weapons/bows and extended capacity of storage. For instance:
-Pioneering structures needing special types of wood (we do have it now for ingots but not for wood). Currently there are structures that require bronze ingots but all require normal wood. That’s a spot to fit for yew/ash wood.
-Any more ideas welcome.
  • Bonus 100 skill with more than stamina reduction (maybe getting x2 normal wood per tree chop).
  • All harvestable wild plants should be able to be gathered with horticulture (delete Agriculture skill requirement for the type of plants stated above which grow in the wild).
  • Change the perk “studies’’ adding some extra function that serves a purpose.
Thanks for reading that far and feel free to discuss or suggestions to my points.

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