4Game

Pretty simple suggestion; it's probably been said but I couldn't find a past post regarding it.

Skill progression in this game could be a little more meaningful. Currently, the best way to level skills is using the worst weapon of that type you can craft, so that you maximize the number of swings you make, and just hit a lot of stuff. The only reason to use harder biomes at all is because the mobs there (Lox, for instance) take a lot of hits to kill with a level 1 club, level 1 bronze sword, level 1 atgeir, etc. There really isn't a way to be better at this, and there's no reward for taking bigger risks. If you care enough to grind out skills, so far the best route I've found is to find a Draugr village and just stand next to the bone pile and block and kill and block and kill until you can't stand it anymore. It's pure grind and zero risk once you're in better armor types. I can't bring myself to do it; it just feels like pure cheese. At that point you might as well macro, really.

But the game is a lot more fun when you're taking risks. It's fun to feel safe in the plains that kicked your arse back to spawn when you first found them.

A simple change that would make leveling skills more rewarding would be simply to multiply the skill experience for weapon skills, and blocking, by the biome level (or some modified coefficient of it), e.g. Meadows =1, Black Forest = 2, Swamp = 3, Mountains =4, Plains =5, and hopefully soon, Mistlands = 6.

Even better, mob level (stars) could compound with biome level to give even more skill exp per swing.

As I suggested before, it doesn't need to progress in full integers; the coefficients could be 1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, 1.8, 2.0 and it would still have the desired result: feeling like taking on harder enemies was in any way a good use of your time other than the drops they have. Some players like working on raising skills as a goal, and it's somewhat deflating that really the best way to raise certain skills (say, Block) is to put yourself in no danger, minimize stamina drain, and just stand there and tank a hallway full of skeletons for as long as you can stand it.

I'll never demean myself as a gamer to do it, but even worse, we have to live with the knowledge that you can raise weapon skills to 100 in only twice the time just beating on a stone wall.

If having skill progression be so mundane is part of the vision for the game, so be it, but I fail to see how it's better as it is.