XP Rebalance - Make Non-Scout Roles More Rewarding

Currently, XP is weighted heavily on Scouts, to the point where if you want to level a wolf - especially a NBW - with any sort of efficiency, you need to rotate them into the Scout role. I've had wolves in my pack since the game went live to the public that have just barely scratched the surface of level 11 after regular hunts, regular pupsitting, etc, and it's honestly kind of a miracle any of them made it as far as they did.

To be clear: I am in no way suggesting that Scouting should get nerfed, and won't advocate for it. I am, however, suggesting that the other roles be brought a lot closer to Scouting's level. That, and anything that makes assigning those roles feel a lot more meaningful and a lot less frustrating. 

Herbalists and Pupsitters are currently the reigning champs of 'barely any XP gains.'

Pupsitting is the least rewarding role in the game. There is no interaction, there is no 'train pups' feature on top of the milquetoast 'you watched some pups, good job' XP you get with every rollover, and worse, that XP is not at all influenced by the number of pups that are being cared for. Any mom will tell you that dealing with two kids is difficult enough; imagine being made to do daycare for ten of them and learning practically nothing from the experience of doing so. CPS would probably be called by the time kid 6 came around.

Pupsitters need more rollover XP. Like a lot more, especially for the 100% proficient, can handle 10 pups and do just fine types. Make that role a rewarding one, somehow, and allow them to engage more with adolescents in the meantime! Give them more to do! They're the core of the pack, raising a new generation, on a sim that is effectively just breeding in terms of actual gameplay, so let their XP gains reflect that.

Herbalism is also a dead-ender job. Slightly more gains than Pupsitting, but just as necessary given the absurd rate at which leader wolves will suddenly have a bad case of Diarrhea (ps: please remove or outright nix the stupid Diarrhea proc, if wolves got diarrhea as often as my lead the species would have died out centuries ago), or the rate at which hunting parties with a bad RNG day will proc an Open Wound. Not only that, you have to pay some weird copay to tap into the knowledge they're getting from Wolf University or whatever, and their foraging skills are typically crap throughout.

There have been plenty of posts about Herbalism and its issues, however, so I won't list them here. I WILL say that giving Herbalists a targeted search of some kind, telling them to look for specific herbs that pays actual attention to their stats rather than just some RNG nonsense would be extremely good and cool.

Oh, and also, give them way more XP.

Herbalism requires learning medical knowledge and seeing to the overall health of your pack. That's a big job! So let the XP reflect that in a way that's substantive and rewarding. Or, if determined to keep the Herbalist XP gains as 'abysmal,' at least give players the opportunity to train several of them at once so that herbalists can be rotated out of their dead-ender role without incurring 100+ SC costs on a bad RNG hunting day.

Last, Hunters. Yes, even Hunters are getting crap for XP for doing what is arguably the most important work for the pack. Why do Scouts get way, way more XP in comparison to hunters? IDK if this is influenced by Biome, FWIW, and couldn't find anything about it in guides; it could be you get comparable XP for hunts the further away from the starter Biomes you are, but this seems like a bad way of doing things. Raise XP for Hunters. They do extremely important work, and capping their hunts to 10 incurs very minimal gains.

FWIW, it's fine to keep the ten hunts cap. But the XP needs a substantial boost. To wit: you get 800-1000XP/day (depending on level) if you go exclusively for large prey, which is not a guarantee. Level 15 -> 16 required 23k XP. That could represent upwards to 23 real-life days spent hunting to raise a wolf's level. Compare that to 5000 or so XP/day you get as a Scout doing Rainforest rescouts and there is really no comparison whatsoever, even if it still takes a long time if you don't have constant access to Guarana*.

RPGs shouldn't be a slog, and you shouldn't feel pressure to rotate wolves into a specific role, or, more importantly, buy premium items in order to level your wolves at an appreciable speed. It doesn't have to be lightning fast, but something that feels rewarding would be very appreciated in comparison to the XP balancing that currently exists.

* editorial note:  In spite of what's been said about this in other threads, some people very much abuse this feature, and abuse is easy to spot by looking at a wolf's level relative to how long they've been alive in the first place. So, gaining levels very rapidly is definitely allowed by the game, if you have the means to cut corners, so while Guarana itself is a separate issue (the item shouldn't exist at all IMO), it does have its hooks in this particular problem.

Also, I mean, if rules are going to be imposed on regular players to 'make leveling more realistic,' why are you actively undermining that 'realism' with Guarana in the first place? 

Raise XP! Make leveling easier!

I agree with this 100%. Hunters especially feels very frustrating, since moving to more challenging biomes requires higher level hunting party members. I tried moving to the swamp biome and ended up having to move back to the mountains because even with a hunting party that all had stats over 450+ I could not get anything other than critter trails. And I have learned from other players that they are having similar experiences in medium biomes such as desert. It seems like a very flawed system considering how difficult it is to level hunters in the first place and relies solely on breeding wolves with good stats from the start (and even then, you'd have to level those wolves as well so you'd run into the same problem). 

While I understand the mechanics of the game are apparently geared towards breeding for higher stats, it's hard to even achieve higher stats without having the scout role. And having only two scout role spots open makes this even more difficult. Also, I'm not sure if this is just my own experience but I have noticed that my finishers in the hunting group tend to get more XP than the rest of the roles which seems slightly odd. If this is actually the case and not just due to rng, I think it'd be beneficial to make all roles in the party equal as far as XP gain...

I like the idea you mentioned about herbalists and having an option to search for specific herbs based on your stats. I would imagine it could be implemented similar to hunting in that there is a chance % of whether you are successful or not. And it does seem strange that all the roles that essentially prevent pack members from dying (herbalist with medicines, pupsitters with protection, hunting parties with food) get less XP than scouts.

I completely agree with all of this.

To add on, I was especially surprised and kind of disappointed to discover that the amount of pups protected by a pupsitter had no impact on the pupsitter’s exp gain too. 

Pupsitting especially is no joke, as the Voyageurs Wolf Project has pointed out many times!

I'll have to keep an eye on my finishers in terms of XP, I'm curious to see if that's the case. And yeah, I haven't moved away from the Mountain biome specifically because I've heard about the stat requirements for other biomes, and am pretty sure even my new generation of higher-statted pups that have finally phased out the NBWs I started with - most have 350 base stats - are not enough to reliably take down better prey.

...Unless, of course, I cycle them out to work as Scouts for a while. ;p

Agreed. I was just thinking about this the other day with the herbalist especially.
You can only have one herbalist, it's an utterly essential role, and they get complete garbage for exp.

I sorta get why pupsitter experience is limited, since you can have an infinite number of them, pups are dirt cheap, and they gain experience without any further input from the player. It would be perhaps too easy to use it to train wolves as it exists now.
One idea would be a hefty exp penalty if a pup under their care dies, so the strategy of saddling them with 10 worthless pups and not caring for them wouldn't be rewarding, having them watch fewer and having to feed/play with the pups to get the full benefit would incentivize the role being used as intended and add limiting factor.

But yes, right now the discrepancy absurd and should be fixed.

For example, November 23rd I started an experiment and swapped out a couple level 6 hunters (Selune and Ashe) with my old level 15 scouts (Asora and Thay)
In the last 40 days: Selune was made a scout and gained 11 1/2 levels, Ashe was made a pupsitter and gained 4 levels, and Asora and Thay have gained 1 1/2 levels. I consistently get at least 7 hunts per team, 3-4 scoutings, and always have at least 1 pup to prevent skill loss.

100% agree with this, especially as a player who plays for lore reasons. I still want my wolves to have higher stats overall, but I don't want to cycle wolves into the scout position because it has a tether to lore in my back, and therefore the breeding male & the lead's mate are always the scouts. 

As for the hunters, I'd love if sending them out many times in a row maybe boosted their exp somehow or something... I usually have my good team (the actual hunters), a backup good hunting team, and two teams I'm trying to level up. But sending them out over and over for minimal gains doesn't really help at all.

Pupsitters are another big issue. I was actually thinking of taking in worthless males to take this role because the exp gain is so awful. As for herbalists, do not get me started on those.

In short, support 100%.

IDK that I agree with an XP penalty for a pup loss when that is entirely reliant on a really bizarre RNG system. And yeah, someone could potentially level a Pupsitter with 10 garbage pups, but I don't imagine most people will breed a bunch of crappy pups to level sitters. I mean, that's a huge resource hit in terms of amusement items/etc, so you really have to be dedicated to gaming the system and keeping pace with increased demands, some of which you may not be able to meet!

Pupsitters are already self-limiting in that sense, so IDK that it'd be an abuseable system. And if it is, more power to whoever figured out how to manage it without sacrificing their trophy items/without having to chase a bunch of pups when winter hits and hunting isn't turning out so well. That's a balancing act that's a few bad RNGs away from disaster.

Hell, if anything, I’d say it would do good for the puppy market, as they would probably gain more value. At least, I know that if such a revamp were to be done, I would probably buy many pups from the TC, as I don’t breed my girls all that much (for now), as a stats breeder. I would probably chase them once they reach adolescence, though 🤔

100% agree with this! 

it would be so cool if pupsitters could get xp + maybe a random stat or two every few pups they play with or tend to. they could have little text blurbs for each play action too - maybe you could choose to “comfort” a pup who’s missing their mom while she’s out hunting/scouting/making medicines (could do a cuddle text blurb or a blurb of the pup getting cheered up with some jokes, etc - earn some wisdom stat for the pup occasionally?) or “play” to amuse it (like rough house for strength maybe agility? and then chase/tag for speed and agility, maybe smarts for outrunning the pupsitter, ofc they wouldn’t always get a bonus stat but the cute text blurbs of them interacting would be adorable). they could also maybe play “doctor” which could get a lot of wisdom and smarts stat boosters too for pups alone, and then just random xp or stat for the pupsitter. these could all be interactions on the pupsitting page or maybe a tab on your den similar to the breeding male tab but specialized for pupsitters?

herbalists could also do... more. like tending to packmates who have lost hp, which could cost herbs and energy, but reward in xp. I also kind of like the idea of maybe another wolf going off to forage herbs with the herbalist to protect the wisdom/smarts stat nerd-herbalist-wolf lol, and maybe they both earn xp from that? idk maybe I’m getting ahead of myself with cute pack interactions lol! herbalists definitely need to get additional stats from foraging for herbs, at least wisdom and smarts (your herbalist is so smart, they knew this would be useful! +1 herb +1 smarts +xp) commonly, and maybe an added in strength (that root was hard to pull out of the ground! whew! your herbalist got +1 strength +xp) or speed (oh no! an enemy chased your herbalist home. at least they brought back the herbs and came back safe! -1 hp +1 herb +1 speed/agility +xp), the non wisdom/smarts stat gains being a lot less common? 

when the pups become adols, it would be neat to see a training system similar to this where an adol can go with scouts or a hunting team to get some early proficiency and additional little stat handouts, but I feel like I’m getting a bit off topic so I’ll just stick to 100% support pupsitters, herbalists, and hunters getting an xp buff!