The current state of lifeskilling has 3 major issues that I'd like to address:

1. Lifeskill gear lacks true meaning compared to combat gear. Life skillers have a choice between mastery and EXP with the latter being significantly under valued, and as you progress through higher and higher levels even mastery gear becomes undervalued as we start selling our TET Manos for the cheapest gear we can still reach 2k Mastery with. There's no reason to strive for better life skill gear.

2. For the long term life skillers, upon reaching Guru 50 100% in any life skill, you start to feel like there's something else you should be doing as you're no longer getting the full value out of your time. The inverse of this for beginner life skillers is they lose motivation to even push to Guru 50 100% because they're better off taking their time as they will just get hard capped if they push hard enough.

3. Life skills are not engaging or lucrative enough to attract and maintain players into venturing down for life skill path which does contribute to burn out. If a grinder finds the concept of hunting large sea creatures interesting, they immediately lose interest when they find out they can make 20m/hr at crocs when they can sneeze and make 30x more grinding. This leads to burnout as they feel like they're griefing themselves by life skilling.

There has been some talk about potentially increasing the mastery cap to give value to PEN Manos, but that only addresses Mastery gear and not EXP gear or the other 2 points. There's also been suggestions about increasing the level cap above Guru, but that would only make the gap between long time players and new players significantly wider which isn't the right way to go about it.

So, I've put a lot of thought about what's the best direction PA should take life skills and I strongly believe my suggestion is a step in the right direction. But first a brief disclaimer:
Related issues that will not be discussed in this thread as they're deserving of their own separate discussion:
-EXP rates of indivdual life skills when compared with each other, such as Sailing being one of the slowest life skills currently and I believe PA will add a grind spot that has high EXP rates for sailing or another way to address this in future.
-Mastery balance between the life skills, such how Farming, Trading and Barter don't have any mastery yet.
-Speific ways to make life skills more fun and engaging as a way to bring in non life skillers and grow the community, such how Sniper Rifle hunting is very engaging and rewarding which encouraged non life skillers to try out hunting.

The Solution

Upon reaching Guru 50 100% in any give life skill, you'll be promoted to the final tier "MAX" of life skilling as well as receive a special title for reaching the MAX level of that lifeskill. Every time you would reach 100% EXP within this MAX tier you will receive some reward set to certain probability. The EXP  rates within this tier are the same as Guru 50, but the purpose of the MAX tier is purely for leaderbaord purposes (it won't make sense to hit Guru 50 100% and then lose your ranking on the leaderboard once it resets back down to 0%). If a player managers reach MAX tier for all 11 life skills they will receive a special title that celebrates them as being the Ultimate Lifeskiller.

This addresses all 3 of the major issues mentioned previously:

1. PEN Manos now has more meaning as you're encouraged to reach 2k mastery and then prioritize EXP instead of the current meta of using mastery crystals and downgrading your gear.

2. Gives reason to continue doing the life skills you enjoy upon reaching Guru 50 100%  while also closing the gap between veterans and new players in a way that encourages newer players to push life skill levels.

3. Encourages more people to take up life skilling as the reward system will allow life skills to be a bit more competitive when it comes to silver/hr.

Rewards

Ultra Rare

TET: Manos Necklace, TET: Manos Earring, TET: Manos Ring, TET: Manos Belt

(Approximate Value: 27,675,000,000)

Explanation: PEN: Manos Accessories cost approximately 600b silver on average to enhance making it virtually impossible to obtain via the Central Market as there's no profit to be made. By adding TET: Manos to the Ultra Rare table, it makes obtaining PEN Manos a bit more realistic for those who want it while also giving players the choice of just selling TET: Manos to the Central Market for profit.

Guaranteed

*All of the following items will be rewarded:

Concentrated Magical Black Gem x5-10

(Approximate Value: 79m)

Memory Fragment x10-25

(Approximate Value: 54m)

Cron Stone x10-25

(Approximate Value: 35m)

Caphra Stone x10-25

(Approximate Value: 47m)

Black Stone Powder x3,000-5,000

(Approximate Value: 14m)

Gold Bar 100G x5-10

(Approximate Value: 75m)

Gold Bar 10G x10-25

(Approximate Value: 18m)

Gold Bar 1G x25-50

(Approximate Value: 4m)