Making Hunting Profitable

[Wren]

I've been thinking about the issue raised in this post re: the way the current in-game economy more or less prohibits much specialization, and have a small suggestion for how to diversify career paths a little bit.

I'm wondering if it would be possible to implement something like a butchering skill, which would increase the amount and value of item drops from killing a mob?  Realistically, it's not like you can drop an animal carcass in front of just anybody and get finely carved fillets out of it - there's quite a bit of skill involved, and it seems like it would make sense that a character who's been trained to properly strip a carcass would be able to get more out of it than someone who doesn't know a liver from an appendix.   There could even be a few items that only drop for a certain value of butchering skill, kind of the platinum ores of hunting.   

This would make it more practical to make characters who specialize in hunting, since a heftier drop rate would balance out the fact that animal goodies aren't worth as much as quality ores when selling to NPCs and aren't (yet, anyway) worth much, if anything, for resale to other players like ores are.

[Kaerli]

Good thinking!  I've always wondered why most of a beast's carcass seems to be left behind in Yliakum...

[Zan]

food sells anywhere between one and five tria. I doubt butchering skills would make you rich.

The in-game economy prohibits specialization because there is one money making skill that outclasses everything else in the game, mining. It was that way with the old gold mines and is even worse with the new platinum mine. What they need to do is drastically reduce the income generated by basic resources that are so freely available like platinum and gold. The best income should be from finished products. Crafted weapons, armors, furniture, stocks of potions, ... not things that can be mined by everyone and sold to NPCs.

Wait for hides to be used in the crafting of goods, they'll be more popular resources then.

[Shadow1490]

Aren't some animal parts valuable because they are used in alchemy?

Anyway with the massive amounts of platinum/gold that are being mined and sold shouldn't the value be dropping?

[Ravenguard]

I like the butchering idea, and when we've got cooks running around, why not be able to use the 'Finest [300/300q] Tefusang Steak' to REALLY knock someone's socks off when you make a 'Finest [300/300] Tefusang Grilled Meat' that like, kicks tooshie somewhere.  Health/Endu gain when eaten?

 Maybe when the NPCs start buying in relation to the quality of products, something like this would be the equivalent of platinum; something this good is reserved for the rich, ya know?  Come in, cook at Brado's or Allelia's, make some awesome dishes, and sell them to the NPCs (or players who feel rich) so they can serve customers (or the Octarchs and Vigelesmi) high quality food.

Edit:
And then Tefusang Gibblets, or Tefusang Meat Scraps, maybe some of the major organs and other things (heart, liver, tongue).  When you start off butchering, you can only do it once or twice on a carcass before you realize that it's now a ripped up mess.  As you get better, you cut better, getting you 4 or 5 times at a carcass to get things.
Oh man, this is exciting.

Edit of the edit:
By the way, I don't like Tefusangs.