Lifeskilling is in a bad spot compared to grinding right now if you compare the silver per active hour unless you are gathering griffon claws or hunting rhinos/boars+bears/narcion hunting. For example, the best you can do right now in grinding with 320% drop rate is around 2.5 bil an hour at cyclops with current NA prices on a gear-capped player. The best you can do gathering+cooking+hunting right now on a mastery-capped lifeskiller is odylita meals which average around 1.2 bil an hour (neglecting afk time for cooking) if you just turn the meals into boxes and turn them in over a period of months.

This is going to sound egregious but hear me out: I suggest removing everything but guru boxes from imperials and then removing the cap on imperial crates that you can turn in crates limitlessly. It still wouldn't hold a torch to grinding but at least you don't have to worry about market demand for meals and you can have a consistent flow of income from lifeskilling. The market is currently in a state of recession since most people are grinding for debos and not silver and this change would fix that. It would also fix the problem of too much supply increase from any lifeskilling buffs that occur in the future that provide more base materials. You would also be able to do alchemy crates in conjunction without having to worry about capping out your turn-ins on just cooking crates.

On top of ALL of this, PA wouldn't need to change much of their code making it very easy for them to implement :)

While your proposal of removing the limit on imperial crates seems intriguing, I'd like to bring attention to a potential shift in market dynamics. If the limit were lifted, there's a possibility that many lifeskillers would opt to personally trade in their cooked meals rather than sell them on the market.

The reasoning behind this is simple economics — as a cook, I would only sell my meals on the market if the returns were greater than what I'd get by converting them into crates and trading them myself.

Conversely, as a buyer, it wouldn't make sense for me to purchase dishes from the market if the prices are higher than what I'd get by directly engaging with lifeskillers.

This creates a scenario where the market might see a reduction in supply as more players turn to personal trade in, potentially leading to an increase in prices untill there is no buyer left. Also, prices wouldn't decrease anymore, as the cooks would simply remove the meal from the market and trade it personally.

Therefore, the proposed system without limits wouldn't make sense.

While I 1000% agree lifeskilling (apart from snipe hunting) is in a really bad spot. 

I would improve imperial crates by raising the cap limits - instead of based on your CP do it based on your rank in that lifeskill or a combination of the two (CP + Rank/Level in Cooking/Alchemy). 

I also would love to see alchemy and cooking not having a shared cap. Allow lifeskillers to turn in alchemy and cooking imperial crates independently. 

They could at least make it 1:1 exchange.

This is a nice idea and how it should be done in my opinion.

Thanks!

I ended up making my own suggestion thread and following PA template on how to provide feedback (just FYI): https://www.naeu.playblackdesert.com/en-US/Forum/ForumTopic/Detail?_topicNo=46564&_page=1&_opinionNo=180883