Can we have a discussion about the current state of lifeskilling in the game?
Im a veteran with +3 years on my back in this game and what got me to play this game was the fact i could do alot of different stuff to progress my account in BDO, wether it be grinding, gathering, cooking, alchemy, trading, processing, hunting, fishing, bartering or traning, and you would still be able to be competetive. What i mean by competitive is you would'nt be lacking behind in money income compared to grinders if you did lifeskilling, if you knew what you were doing. This simply isnt the case anymore. The only competitive life skill you can currently do is gathering/cooking, those two have to go hand in hand if you wanna be competitve with income from grinding. Grinding has been buffed to the point where you can make 3-400mil/h easy! We constantly have 50% droprate events, lootscrolls, new grinding areas etc to make grinding even more busted than lifeskilling. And we are we getting lifeskill events??????? every week content for grinders, but lifeskillers are left in the dust or we gotta go do grinding.

I don't say nerf grinding, but PA you should really be doing more to make more income avenues viable to allow lifeskillers be competitve. Lifeskilling hasnt seen a update since the release of manos which we had to wait over a year for after KR got it, oh yeah you did add a new draught with sycria, oh wait nvm frenzy draught is gated behind grinding as well, more money for grinders. Oh what is that you say? O'dyllita brought new alchemy stuff? Oh nvm thats also gated behind grinding, and doesnt add anything to anyones income, its just a nice side bonus for grinders. Oh new hunting with O'dylitta you say? nvm you made sure that it doesnt compare to kama wolf hunting (which btw is still shit for silver) cause why would we wanna spend time in a new area you have spent the good part of a year developing and another year to release to NA/EU, screw new areas and content am i right guys? id much rather go back and do 1bil an hour good feed cooking.

You have had so many oppotunities to update lifeskill content but you have dropped the ball on it every time.
Id wish i could log on and have multiple things i could do to make 300mil/h with the right mastery but that just isnt a thing.
Cooking is busted we all know this (compared to other lifeskills) in it self its the closest you get to a competitve lifeskil to grinding.

Alchemy is dead and has been for a long time, no way to mass gather fruits or traces, new alch content, gated by grinding weeeeeee, imperials? id show you my spreadsheet but it got cucked in the transfer and i cba to update it, but alchemy has been bright red (negative income) for about a year.
Hunting is just low silver cause furnitures are too shit/rare and the trading items makes little to no sense, and why would i go hunt for meat and blood if i could just go gather for an hour and get 3 times the mats i could hunting.
Underwater gathering is such a cool thing, go out on your boat, sail to bum fuck no where, swim down to a cool underwater world and gather, but nah you havent given underwater gathering an update since launch, here is an idea FOR FREE, how about you make abyssal essence a thing you could gather underwater, instead of gating it behind grinding :O sick idea right.
You have actually buffed training congrats, im sure the 100 people who actually does training for money are happy! Still not close to be competitive, what a shame.
Trading? i dont even know where to begin, workers gathering outdated, the amount of mats dont compare to what it used to mean to ones income. Trading hasnt seen an update since launch either, its dead and to anyone still doing trading, wtf are you doing, go barter.
Processing is just something you do when you are semi afk.
Fishing hasnt been updated since launch either, oh wait you gave us cool fish to catch at a VERY LOW chance with mastery, niiiiice an extra 2 mil/h bruh im finna catch up to these 700GS pinoy/pilot players quick sheeeeesh. Yeah no, prices for fishes are a joke, they didnt inflate with the economy and this goes for alot of things, the cost of certain items from lifeskilling hasnt seen an increase since launch. And to anyone over night fishing for extra mulla, turn off your pc at night and save $ on electricity and spend that money on pearls instead, its more silver pr hour. Not kidding, do the math.
Farming? eh its a nice side thing with your cooking, but thats about it, you wanna farm for alchemy? HA 500 fruits a week!! shit im swimming in money. <-- sarcasm. Shits outdated.
Gathering is fine i guess, but i dont take fun in just gathering to sell the mats on the market and that is no way competitve to grinding.

Im sure there are things im wrong about but you get the jist of my post. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD UPDATE LIFESKILLS SO THEY FOLLOW WITH THE GAME AND DONT GET LEFT BEHIND. You got alot of different types of players in this game, and not all like to run around in circles and smack the same mob over and over again, and i know grinders would love for less people to do grinding, cause popular grinding spots are overflowing with people, i hear complaints about it every day in my guild. Its only gonna get worse with the new free gear they are gonna give new players btw.

Please start listning to your community about changes they wanna see (ehm nerf succ wizard/witch?) and maybe you will still have a playerbase down the road.

Well, grinding combat is always active play, there is no afk grinding for silver from combat.

Lifeskilling is both active and afk. and that is where the silver difference comes in.

Underwater gathering.

Well there's seaweeds that give small amounts of experience for health, strength and breath if you eat them, much like the foods. You have to know where to harvest and they are to your family characters, not market sales.

Finding Giant Tridana Clams for pearls & oyster flesh -golden pearls are used in crafting many ship gears,muzika leather mask for minature elephants and old moon camping anvil. pearl oyster flesh dried, chowder for sailors and seafood cooking dish.

Basic coral? Silver embrodiered fishing clothing, jewelry, jade ignots-ship craft building again. Knowledge of how to make *colored corals* requires some skills in processing, alchemy, gathering.

And of course all things gathered can be sold as well to npcs.

What you get gathering underwater is, just like land,is very dependant upon your gathering skill level, tools and clothing (accessories & gear). 

I am Guru 47 cooking with TRI manos accessories and I make more money an hour grinding at pollys Forrest than cooking.  I am very disappointed I see no reason to take my cooking to guru 50 and was looking forward to the accomplishment 

TLDR:

1) No lifeskill should provide more gold/hour than grinding at the same gear standard.

2)Alot of gear and items in this game have no real purpose anymore since the content has been phased out and it would be good to see these items repurposed into new content, this would go a long way into making older systems relevant.

3)Most lifeskills as a mechanic have amazing potential however they mostly feed into systems that are outdated (workshops) or have giant bottlenecks which prevent them from being good alternatives to grinindg or competitive alternatives to other lifeskills (alchemy). It would be nice to see all the developers make full use of all the items that are no longer usefull and integrate them into newer content. 

4) The optimal routes in most lifeskills have far outweighed their non meta versions and limits the diversity of the activities within each lifeskill. This is seen the most in gathering since most players do logging or meat and most other items are essentially psudo bottlenecks that no one wants to do since its not even close in a gold per hour perspective like (random example crocodile meat).

Long version:

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 Tbh this is the type of mindset that shows that the community probably doesnt understand why a lifeskiller complains... all the things u listed in this post about underwater gathering sounds cool but makes little to no money per hour. At max grinding you will make you 500mil per hour and as everyone kind of agreed on this post grinding should be the best Money/Hour in the game. However most lifeskills are garbage... anyone who does a lifeskill does gathering (usually logs for capheras or to support cooking), cooking, farming(to support cooking or to grow magical seeds), afk horse training or Bartering.

Fishing is bad, Trading is bad, Trade crates are bad, farming (to make crates) is bad, Nodes and workshops are bad, Alchemy is bad (like a worst version of cooking), hunting is bad (just go gathering), Processing sucks (unless ur processing to support cooking/Alchemy). I have tried almost all the life skills in this game and lifeskilling is super fun. I understand the Money/Hour structure (more active skills = more money) however the developers should really bring the "forgotten" lifeskills back in tune since most of them are basically pointless to do.

For AFK lifeskills fishing lands far behind horse training (both of which are kinda bad). I'm not convinced that its worth leaving ur pc on to even do anything in this game overnight) and it would be nice to see it being worth it to leave a lifeskill going for the extra silver.

Worker nodes and workshops are features with some AMAZINGLY fun potential however its not worth it to use them in most cases. I have tried the whole 100mil a day worker empire and mostt of those videos are misleading. You will get 100mil woth of items (If you are lucky and max out your works) however GOOD LUCK trying to sell that shit XD no one needs half of the shit nodes produce and the other half is so over saturated that its pointless or makes little to no real profit.

Processing itself isnt in a bad spot however it feeds into systems that are in a bad spot so y do it. Processing for trade crates isnt a lot of money and uses way too much CP to do enmass. Processing to benefit cooking is meh and kinda limits processing as a lifeskill. If trade crates and the other lifeskills that used processing were in a better spot then processing would be better. Processing to make a margin on items is pointless and requires way too much planning + a value pack so its better to just use that valuepack and go gather lol. Workshops are almost completely useless since most workshops craft items that no one really needs. The most used workshop has to be the cooking utensil which is completely oversaturated as a market.

Semi Afk lifeskills (alchemy, cooking,Bartering):

I think bartering is kinda balanced im no top tier barterer however the difficulty of building a ship really does balance out any rewards u get at the bartering end game i think gathering is more Gold/Hour so idk however its not like doing bartering is necessarily bad even tho it may not be optimal. Alchemy is like a far worst version of cooking, its delivery system sucks since the price doesnt increase with mastery like cooking does and i think alchemy recipies are more difficult since the market for lower tier items is scarce. 

Active lifeskills (hunting, gathering)

Gathering the optimal way is in a good spot however i think gatherers would like to have more competitive options other than logs and a few kinds of meat (which would also open up the cooking and alchemy markets). Hunting however is iffy, i have never tried hunting because i have already watched enuf guides to know that gathering is far superior. I know alot of hunting biproducts can be used in workshops to make trade items/ funiture however those would not make any real gold per hour. ( i actually wanted to do hunting to integrate it into a trade workshop since it sounded like a fun mechanic however i did the math and it really wasnt worth the time)

Suggestions

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Afk lifeskills:

Overall afk lifeskills should really come closer to that 100mil per day baseline that magical seed farming does. I think horse training is already around 60mil or so per day if you are lucky however fishing is around 30mil per night which is a pointless activity to keep my pc on for 8 hours. I think Fishing needs a heavy price update since even the imperial fishing tokens give u useless items and the one item that has potential requires 25 tokens which heavily nerfs its money poetential. I do not think these lifeskills should be heavy money makers however at least make the things they drop feed into the overall game in a more profitable/useful way.

Farming isnt in a very bad spot since it is great if you want to suppliment your cooking activities or if you do magical seed farming. However i think with the increase in players doing cooking/alchemy the number of farm slots may need an increase to ease the bottleneck. Also i think the other forms of farming really need to come in line with the current demands. if i remember correctly farming milk or eggs is not profitable even if you are using them yourself, farming for trade crates is like shooting yourself in the foot and farming to sell directly to the market does not meet the gold per hour of farming for stonetail fodder. 

processing:

As i said before processing isnt really in a bad space it just doesnt feed into systems that are worth doing in most cases. I dont necessarily agree  that processing to make a margin off the market should be a more viable option since this may cause scarcity in low tier goods however things like trade crates should be buffed/ reworked into the overall trading lifeskill to make it more viable to process. i think processing should remain an intermediary lifeskill and not a main source of gold per hour but thats just me lol.

Gathering is not in a bad space however the options of things to gather sucks. on the surface it seems like there are millions of things to do however most of them are horrible from a gold per hour standpoint. this in turn creates havy scarcity in a lot of items (like underwater gathering stuff). Also the spawn timer on some gatherable goods make it a nightmare to reliably gather unlike gathering shrubs which respawn faster gathering corals is BAAADDDD (yes im trying to make a boat  ).  

Hunting is also in an odd spot since the biproducts of hunting that you could upgrade in workshops arent really that useful (directly because trade crate type items suck). This takes the uniqueness of hunting away since ur basically meat gathering at that point so y not just do regular gathering instead.

worker nodes/ workshops/investment banks need a significant update as the items in these systems for the most part are USELESS. Equiptment from workshops, tools for workshops and furniture from workshops are basically niche or garbage. Investment banking is blocked behind a rediculous gate and even if u did unlock it, it would be better to not use it since its returns are essentially slower than grinding hours on goblins lol.  PS. i thought investment banking was a cool idea thanks to basquean Ljurik but i looked into it and was quickly diappointed.. his rates are worst than my savings account.

Trade and Trade crates

I know there is a trade rework coming and i hope it includes trade crates and trade items from workshops (including hunting items). This would really give that lifeskill some new life and i cant wait to see it (i activly do trade crates simply cuz i like the system and i like to torture myself ).

bartering:

Still have not finished my end game boat however i already like this system. If you are a lifeskiller who wants to add a semi afk stream of income look into this. Building a boat is a challenge but even with lower tier boats and items u do make some decent profit while u watch netflix lol.

cooking is not in a bad spot since most players buy meals off the market to turn into crates. I think this system works well for cooking and allows non lifeskillers to dabble in the system while providing lots of sales to actual cooks. I think the introduction of oasis cron meals maybe killed the diversity of cooking since lower tier meals for specific life skills dont sell anymore unless you use them to make other meals also high teir meals with multi buffs dont sell as well since u can simply buy an oasis meal however the regular version of these meals are kinda expensive. i love oasis meals since i dont activly cook anymore but i can imagine how it affects cooks everywhere. 

alchemy needs to be more inline with cooking in terms of the imperial delivery system also the items for alchemy are too rare which makes this lifeskill rather difficult from my understanding. If alchemy was basically cooking but for potions i am sure lots of players would try this lifeskill for both imperial turn ins (since turning in cooking meals is hard in some towns) and for a main source of income. 

Finally, i know the playerbases measures everything in Gold / hour however i think its best to look at how useful a system is towards the endgame of players. I see a lot of items and systems that have the potential to be fun and expand the way we get to the end game and sustain in the end game however they are outdated. Allowing those items to have further purpose in future systems of the game is the easiest way to  make these systems relevant. An example of this system working well would be ultimate pen items which turn relatively uselfess green grade gear into end  game viable items. Solutions like this could go a long way into fixing lifeskills like fishing which could remail low gold per hour but could feed much better into something like cooking to create items that have a much high gold per hour. Also please pay attention to how players use systems and dont get stuck on how you intend for the system to be used... NO ONE likes active fishing (ESPECIALLY HARPOON FISHING).

PS: cool idea for fishing. Lower tier boats can have added storage gear. It would be nice to add a buff to ocean fishing on these boats using totems (another system i dont think anyone really uses) and make the boat storage an extention of the player storage while afk fishing. This adds extra content since players will now want to build up their boats and their totems, players will enjoy the buff to afk fishing and if fish fed better into some cooking recipies this would allow fishing to suppliment cooking as a lifeskill (just made this up dont kill me lol).

+1

PA, please give us more lifeskill content.

Give us more silver per hour on the high end of mastery, for the time and effort invested, it does not yield enough reward!

I was wondering what happened since i quite  a year ago and yup... there's clearly a massive inflation happening in the game and lifeskills really don't reach even close to the grinding. Totally agree that grinding should be the highest earner but it should come with caveat of super high income coming from rare drops, currently we're in meta where you can make 300mil/h from trash loot alone and this system is plain broken, especially with lifeskilling having hard time to break 100mil/h in profit.