I've been playing now for over a year and have the odd alt or two. So I've done a little bit of crafting and have some views about it I would like to share and see what others think. Leveling most crafts up is slow especially from 99 to 100 so I'm not going to talk about that.

TLDR: Don't rush to 100, You get punished for raising some skills, Skill leveling speed needs to be evened out across all skills and Think about not starting your chosen skills at 25

My first thought: Why the rush to 100?

When I first started what I got from listening to chat and asking questions was get to 100. Now I have a completely different view for some but not all skills. What happens when you grind to gain levels is you make better quality stuff and you learn recipes. What also happens, especially in the armor skills, is that you don't learn all the recipes. I have a leather worker locked at 90 because he still doesn't know all the basic recipes and without checking I would be confident enough to say he only knows about 10 complete basic sets. I have an alt leather worker who locked his skill every 10 or so levels and didn't unlock it till he learnt all basic recipes up to the level lock. At 59.98 he knew all basic recipes and can make a set of any type. Same goes for tailoring and bone crafting.

Quality obviously improves with higher skill levels but why on peace do you need supreme quality buildings for example? I haven't yet seen any of my low quality buildings fall down.

Now that I understand more of how combat works I have an alt hunter who takes mule deer in starter clothes and a moderate quality shovel. Sure you take less damage with top quality armor and do more damage with top quality weapons but (on peace) you don't need them. Plus play long enough and you will get to 100 I just don't see the need to rush there - on peace.

Don't race to level your skills take your time play and enjoy the game and learn the recipes.

My second thought: Why does the game punish you for leveling your skills?

Make an alt skill them for resources or foraging start them at 25 and go pick rock/grass. Your starter stacks will be around 15 levels higher than your skill level. Around skill levels in the 80's it begins to even out but hit the 90's and now your stacks are up to 7 levels lower than your skill level, average is around 5 levels lower and that is consistent. By the time you're over 98 you've picked around 20,000 rocks but you aren't skilled enough to pick rocks at your level? So the more skilled I get the lower the quality of my rocks/grass relative to my skill level. Does not make sense me.

My third thought: Why do some skills level faster than greased lightning and others move slower than glaciers?

I assume there is a reason for this that I don't know. It just seems to me skills should level at a rate somewhere between the two. It has never made sense to me why skills like farming and cooking level in the blink of an eye and something like logging requires the deforestation of a whole zone to level up 1.0. Ok a slight exaggeration but you really do almost have to deforest large tracts to level logging. Sure you can pick rocks and grind masonry and use those green points but why should/is this be the case?

Let's just not talk about forestry or foraging.

My final thought: Think about not starting out at 25 in your chosen skill!!

I have an architect just shy of 100 who knows 167/267 schemes and only a one storage building not learnt from a scavved scheme. I have another who is 75ish who still only knows 3 normal posts and one base post. Basic posts are low level and oh so valuable if you want to grind or build a fence on sloping ground. He was close to 60 before he learnt his third normal post. Both these guys started out at 25.

My third architect didn't start out as one, isn't specced as one and started at level 5. At around skill level 40 -50 he knew all the basic posts a lot of (from memory I think at least 3 or 4) storage buildings and way more useful stuff than either of my other two. Remember though he has had an extra 20 levels of building/grinding stuff than the other two because he didn't start at 25.

Maybe it was dumb luck or maybe just maybe it's because he has had an extra 20 levels of grinding than the other two.

Anyway those are most of my thoughts on crafting. My apologies for it's length but if you didn't stop at the TLDR then thanks for taking the time to read it all.