Skinning Observations and Suggestions:

[Squeak]

Now that my little toon can actually skin things (hooray!), I’ve been out and about testing the whole thing. A few observations that I’ve come across:

For skill gains, it seems to be good. Gained about 6 skill points in a couple hours; Anything listed under the “You could potentially skin the following from the corpse” gave gains; the hide granting the most (0.178) with other incidental skin-able pieces produced a gain of .063. In my opinion, it feels good this way, with an organic feel to the progression that’s away from the wanton slaughter of animals. Don’t get me wrong, you still have to go and kill thousands for the skill gains, but it gives each kill more value.

Second thing I’d like to bring up is that there should be skill gains for cleaning and scraping the hides. Cleaning, if memory serves, is only one step, whereas scrapping is several – I think it’s dependent on pelt size, and if not, it should be. I think each step should give some gains to skinning, too. There’s considerable downtime preparing hides with the wait times (which aren’t exorbitant by any means) in each of the tubs, that having some skill gains would make the process feel better overall, in my opinion.

Lastly, I’d like to see some differing animals that can be skinned. Some prairie rattlesnakes (musical nope-ropes) with a small snakeskin “pelt”, a rattle that can be shaken for amusement purposes (or strung on a necklace/bracelet?), and some fangs (see the beforementioned note). Any type of animal claws could also be strung on a necklace, too, needing a drill and bit to attach them.

Anyhow, that’s it for now. If I come up with anything further, I’ll post it! As always, thank you, Rias, for giving my toon and I something new to do.

Edit to add: Well. Damn. It seems while I was writing this, the incidental gains from skinning claws, antlers, hooves, et cetera from things was removed. I’m not sure if it was an intentional thing or not, but if not, I’d like to discuss getting them put back in. With the risk involved in training skinning, I think the gains for the skill should be greater than say foraging, or mining – even if the latter does have some risk, it is not a constant thing and from what I’ve heard, somewhat mitigatable. I’m hoping it was just something that messed up and isn’t a proper change because accumulating 6 points in the skill, in several hours with no training, seemed appropriate for the risks involved.

[Squeak]

Update: Seems all skinning gains have been removed for the time being. I'm hazarding a guess they're still being tweaked, but in the off chance they are not and it's in actuality a bug, I'm posting here just to give folks a heads up.

Granted, I didn't test on everything I could feasibly test on, but I did try it on moles, rabbits, crawlers, lizards, turkeys, marmots, and ravens. Some of those I never got a successful roll on, so it's possible they still work (marmots and lizards).

[Squeak]

Random thoughts, again:

Not sure how the abilities are going to line up this go around, but I was thinking; What if Skinning Focus gave a passive reroll for successfully skinning something and provides an ability that gives a chance for someone to re-cut a less-than-average skin for a chance to produce an average pelt of one size smaller, if applicable? So Huge => Large => Medium => Small, anything after small just produces strips or something that can be used in creative ways (perhaps a tie in to weaving for necklaces, anklets, bracelets, et cetera?) Referencing the above:

...a rattle that can be shaken for amusement purposes (or strung on a necklace/bracelet?), and some fangs (see the beforementioned note). Any type of animal claws could also be strung on a necklace, too, needing a drill and bit to attach them.

. Those would be neat accoutrements for braided leather jewelry.

Since bushcraft basics has a passive chance to increase the quality gained, or did in Grandfather Clok, I think this would be a unique way to, forgive the pun, flesh out skinning focus.