Quwin
The Forestry skill is unique that the efficiency of the skill’s gains (in terms of both exp and profit) is determined entirely by the given user’s Actions Per Minute (APM), with no (realistic) limit. This is unsustainable, as it creates an environment which highly incentivizes bot activity or auto clicking in order to progress.
In order to solve this issue, I propose a complete rework to the Forestry skill, which also brings the following benefits:
  • Decouple Sap and Log drops to allow for easier economic management
  • Reduce the APM of optimal Forestry gameplay, making it more fun
  • Make trees consumable, to incentivize the continuous production of T3+ trees rather than a hard limitation set by the number of NFT Lands * Carrying capacity
  • Remove the item drop style of trees, reducing server load
  • Allow Forestry to play more intuitively than endless cutting
My suggested rework can be summarized as this:
Trees placed on land now act similar to crops on soil.
To expand more on this concept, trees would now be a consumable crop, in which reaping the fully grown crop (a mature tree) would drop Logs. This would consume the tree. I suggest a quantity of 99 Logs to drop from a tree, but that number is arbitrary. Keeping in line with the NFT Tree Trait of today, Dense/Light lands could boost Log drop rates, but it could also be implemented in a different way.
In order to differentiate Trees from crops, you are not immediately forced to cut a tree, through the process of attaching a sap spile to the tree. This spile would also be a consumable, made at a Metal-crafting station.
This would transform the Tree to an industry similar to a Mine: a “gacha” style industry which has a chance to produce sap when interacted with. Unlike cutting, this should not consume the Tree. This creates an interesting scenario: cutting a tree consumes it, but opens up space for other production. One the other hand, tapping a tree allows for constant production, but takes up valuable room, and sap is obtainable from every tier of tree. A tapped tree can also be cut down at any time.
To incentive higher tier trees still being tapped, the time efficiency of sap production would increase with each tier of tree. This would not affect the Energy / Sap ratio. For instance, tapping a T1 tree could produce an average of 1 sap for 5 energy every 5 min. On the other hand, tapping a T4 tree could produce an average of 10 sap for 50 energy, but still every 5 min. Additional QoL changes (like decreased “miss” rate) should also be implemented for higher Tiers, similar to Mines.
The effects of these changes would be as follows:
  • The production value of Logs is equal to ([Sapling cost] + [Energy value])/[Log Drop Quantity]
  • The production value of Sap is equal to [Energy/Sap ratio] with an initial cost of [Spile cost]
  • Forestry gameplay is more aligned with Farming or Mining gameplay in terms of APM. EXP gains are weighted accordingly
  • Incentivizes the production of tree saplings
One topic I did not cover was how this implementation would work with Land Permissions. I would be happy to expand on that, or provide further explanation in the comments.
Thank You.