We've tried to improve the flow of the leveling of skill experience. We're looking forward to hearing feedback on this.
I have to say it is still hideously slow. I got to the quests that required level 15 weaponsmithing and then started building up my weaponsmithing. After a very boring long time, I have given up at level 10. It may have been better if I had upgraded propsecting and weaponsmithing in concert (and forestry), but having done the forestry/propspecting bits already, the ages one spends mining for a small amount of experience in weaponsmithing is just not worth it.
I note also that the rate of experience-gaining is out of kilter. By my reckoning, if one is merely prospecting to make weapons, then one gains about 2-3 times more experience in prospecting than one does in weaponsmithing, yet prospecting also has to feed armoursmithing. I realise that one can also use forrestry to feed the weaponsmith (though not, I think, armour), but the rate of experience growth still leaves the smithing growing much more slowly than the resource-finding skills.
I'd add to that the fact that both the prospecting and the forging are slow - about 5 s for each prospecting dig, compared with about 2-3 s for gathering. In the end, that just makes for very boring time-filling, and that does not seem to me to be game-play worth paying for (when it eventually gets to the alpha version). Forging is not so bad because you can stack 99 at once and go away and leave it, but propsecting remains boring - and long winded - and particularly boring when you spend about 1 hour propsecting just to raise the armour smith from level 9 to 10.
My suggestions would be (any or all of):
* make the digging graphic shorter
* make 4 coppers/bronze/... the median outcome instead of 2
* greatly increase the rate at which experience from weaponsmithing grows with the level of the item being smithed.
On the last point, I note that there is only a very marginal increase in weapon smith experience per copper bar with level, and given that the levels become much further apart, and the prospecting takes so long, this does not seem a good ploy. I particularly does not seem like a good ploy if you expect people to develop skills way beyond level 30 in the long term. You really don't want them giving up in boredom through what are still relatively low levels.