Chyos
I'm playing from the beginning once again, and here are few of my observations. Probably more in the future.
1. Hunting
I think hunting, which are sneak-kills with skill-checks (if hunting skill is not high enough), should be rewarded better if comes to experiece, especially for wolfs. Also it won't remove hunting as useful and valuable experience area. Read me out.
For killing either a deer or rabbit MC recive only 30 exp and 50 for a wolf, which is basically nothing beyond 10 level.
Also it is better to not hunt but fight a wolf for two reasons.
1. instead of 50 points MC can get up to 250 pints and additional piece of meat as a drop.
2. Hunting wolfs in Darkwood don't give MC experience, only those in hunting area.
In my opinion it would be great to reward player for properly hunted animal, but also increase second (skinning) skill-checks to not give it too much loot too easy.
Example:
1. Rabbit: 40 exp for hunting ( 'cuz they're small, hard to hit, targets). 20 experience for skinning, but only 1 additional meat (because rabbits are small).
2. Deer: 30 exp for hunting (because they are big, easy to hit, targets), 40 experience for skinning ('cuz they big).
3. Wolf: 100 experiece for hunting ('cuz you avoided big sharp teeth of big bad wolf), 50 experience for skinning. Important, no option for skinning if MC fought wolf in combat. Animal is now cut to bloody mess.
1,5. Traps
I understand the idea of alive rabbit carry limit to force player to check traps, but... It feels wrong. It's unnecessary backtracing without much of a reward for it. It's not a rocket science how to use a rope. And I'm sure MC could use it to tie together more than two or four rabbits and do not worry about them runnig away or at least until they bite through ropes.
So I would propose to just use one rope to tie two or three rabbits instead of carry limit. As long as player have opes he can carry as much as he wants. Also, ropes aren't so cheap and infinite to buy, so it's also balance how much player can carry, as long as he has ropes to use without backtracking. And a small experience bonus of 50 exp (for catching this small creature and using rope on it) would be nice.
2. Farming
You put your seeds right there, deep into the wet holes... in the ground. But while farming is nice, it's also demanding, especially of repeating it, mostly watering, it soon may become boring, because there is not so much of a reward for doing so. I know, wheats means bread, carrots and cabbages means cooking food or selling, but there are far more better ways of earning gold and soon gold is not so much needed anyway.
It would be nice if MC could revice small amout of experience, let's say 10 points, for planting, watering and gathering. 10 points is not much, but multipied by the numbers of fields it surely some experience bonus, enough to consider farming once in a while.
Also, it would be nice to buy seeds from Lucius or for Penny to give seven seeds of each type to make each row on MC's field in one day.
Edit 1.
3. Emily food quest.
Providing food for girls is nice quest. Nice in terms of reminding player people struggle to pay taxes so much they don't have enough coins to buy food.
But in terms of reward, well... It's just 30 points of experience. I mean yeah, also a meal and place to sleep, first storage room and later in storyline acess to bed. But meal and bed (and also having daily bread) are provided just by talking to Penny.
In my opinion 30 points of experience are not worth repeating this quest, because 30 points is, like I wrote in hunting, basically nothing on 10 lvl.
My idea would be either to increase daily experience reward depending on food source or/and give player a option to donate multiple pieces of meat for a meal, but only once a day.
1. Vegetables: 50 exp for quest or each vegetable. Player can donate up to 4 vegetables. Basically 1 vegetable for 1 person. (Doesn't affect the scene, Emily used lefovers from the previous meal/donation). After reliving Emily of taxes she gives MC 2 copper for each vegetable.
2. Rabbit meat: 85 exp for quest or each piece of meat. Player can donate up to 3 pieces. After reliving Emily of taxes she gives MC 5 copper for each piece.
3: Roe venison: 150 exp for quest ir each piece of meat. Player can donate up to 2 pieces.. After reliving Emily of taxes she gives MC 10 copper for each piece.
4. Rabbit pen: Nothing changes. You just moved rabbit to a different location. Emily had to kill it and skin it, so she gets all the experience.
Will it affect the gameplay early on?
I don't think it will affect it very much, because early in game it's not easy to aquire huge amout of vegetables or/and meat without spending time and energy on hunting and farming. I would call a fair trade. A bit of grind for a bit more experience. Later on, of course, player can easier aquire meat and vegetables, thus easier donate higer numbers of food for higher experience reward, making it a not so boring and experience worth quest even in the mid and late game.
Edit 2.
4. Talent points
Player can aquire quite a lot of skills during gameplay. But the only way to increase them further is by spending talent points, and those are aquired by leveling.
I know there are also few actions where player can get a point in certain skill for almost free, but there is but a small amout of quests or actions rewarding player with those and leveling to up 100 level to fill most of those skills is really time consumming. Yes, it isn't necessary to have all skills maxed, but adding few points here and there could surely decrease grind to achive talent points if there would be a reward for picking up a certain skill path. Also, few skills are more or less personal, like hunting and thivery. Player is somewhat forced to put few points there if he want to not repeat those skill-checks ten times as he is the only one capable of hunting and opening locks. And I'm not saying player should easly passed each skill-check, but player should have enough point to distribute to not stay so far away to other party members.
I would like to suggest a reward system for players using those skills in the way they are somewhat meant to use. Examples:
Hunting: 1 point of perception or each sneak-killing 30/120/250 animals.
Hunting 1 point of hunting for successfuly skinned 30/120/250 animals.
Farming: 1 point of constitution for 135/297/594 seeds planted/vegetable gathered.
Farming: 1 point of constutution for 1350/6750 waterings.
Wocutting: 1 point of strength for cutting down 30/90/150 trees.
Fighting: 1 point of strength or reflex for beating 20/60/120/250 encounters.
Fighting: 1 poit of reflex for beating 30/90/150/350 encounters.
Will it change the gameplay by much? Well, it depends on the player, either he will know about it from the walkthrough and just go to grind them all or he will find out about it just by playing the game and then check different interactions to check if they give him the same effect for doing things by himself and doing them right, thus playing the game instead of grinding exp on brigands to get another level to add another point to hunting.
Edit 3.
5. Skill-checks
After reaching certain points in a skill (mainly hunting) it is possible to just avoid doing skill-checks. In my opinion skipping skill-checks it's not a great idea. Knowing and having skills to do something doesn't guarantee a success, it's only decrease the chance of faliure. Highly skilled MC still should be capable of failing.
6. Moar sources of experience.
I think player should have multiple, I would even say too many, sources of gathering experience. Right now, besides doing quests, it's mainly fighting. Early on bandits, later goblins and later brigands. I wrote things about more experience in point 1,2 and 3, but I think game needs more. I think every meaningful and energy consumming action should be rewarded with experience. Especially when some skill-checks are quite high to pass early on in the game.
Examples:
Woodcutting:
Without high enough strength passing a woodcutting skill-check is almost impossible. But, after putting few points there, is mostly passable. Yet it's not so rewarding. I mean yeah, strength grants greater damage in battle and allow MC to intimidate others, but in order to develop it MC need points, and getting points mean leveling. Not to mention normal wood isn't expensive to either sell or buy. It is better to use time and energy to hunt and skin a rabbit or deer. as it gives some experience and, after selling, more money. Normal trees aren't worth the energy and talent points. Elder trees, well, they are, but soon gold isn't needed so much, so why bother. I think woodcutting should grant some experience for cutting them, like 100 exp for normal tree and 250 exp for elder one.
Crafting and Blacksmithing:
To my suprise smelting and blacksmithing aren't talents like thivery and hunting. And to my suprise they don't grant MC experience for crafting and smelting. I could understand it's due to engine or plugin limits, but for smelting rusted swords into ingots (as it takes energy) MC could recive 50 exp per smelting. Also it's it's rather easy to gather huge amout of them by beating orcs or fidning them around becuase of perception, so it could be another useful addition to gathering experience.
Edit4.
6. Alchemy
Now I'm playing full love and no corruption. So, I already finished current story of Rumah and to my suprise when I asked Katherin to teach MC and Tia about herbalism (or rather nature skill) it didn't unlock anything and, more importantly, didn't unlock option to fill vials with water, thus its impossible for me to brew potions. I read the walthrough to check if I did everything right and option to fill vials with water is unlocked when doing Tia's anal lube quest, but says nothing beyond that. Dunno if it's a bug or a oversight, yet I feel like I'm being punished for not corrupting girls.
