Mar 27
Mining, Logging, Gathering should not be skills
Tool efficiency and mining, logging, gathering benefits should work like Skyrim and other games with the system they use: you should get experience every time you do it, regardless of you choose to be a specialist in that skill. Mining, logging, gathering and hunting actual specialties should be left as crafting skills like any other - or be renamed to match what they do.
We seldom see people mining rocks to sell to those with mining skill star, or chopping trees, gathering crops, hunting fort hat matter. And when people spend the star in such a skill, they would normally prefer to set up the crafting tables and sell the final products they can do instead of basic ingredients (concentrate instead of ore, raw meat instead of carcasses, etc.)
At all times people who do the actual gathering of raw materials (or "farming" as it's commonly named) are the most important for the economy but what end up happening is that each player would only harvest the ingredients related to their profession, not only because people want to skip buying raw ingredients but also because they get an incentive from their specialized skill and talents.
So all those activities (mining rock/ore, chopping trees, hunting animals, harvesting crops) should give points to skills that are not in the star system, or to ones that are given on player creation like the survivalist.
Pending
Expanding in this idea with the current skills system (different from the one in my OP): 1. Mining, Logging, Gathering and Hunting could be specialties in the Survivalist Profession; 2. They should all cost one star instead of compounding with how many specialties you already have; 3. Current recipes of those professions should stay where they are now, the current skills renamed to Advanced Mining, Advanced Logging, Advanced Gathering, Advanced Hunting; This decouples tool efficiency and leveling up with manual work from crafting knowledge and gives the means for people to focus on activities they like such as chopping trees without the pressure of having to sell furniture, and the person who actually focus on crafting will hopefully get rock, ore, wood, crops sold.