Picking up plants seems to be the easiest and fastest way to progress in experience levels. This is especially so in the early levels 1-10 where the 100 xp / plant award is significant compared to the amount needed for a level. Seems a bit wrong... There 's this mechanic with gathering ores that you gain an explorer token for each NEW ore type you find, and you only get this once per ore type. How about using that kind of system with the xp awards from plants? You would only get an xp award when you pick up a new species of a plant you have not discovered earlier. An xp award when you pick up your first "corn dog" but nothing for corn dogs aftert that. And the same for each plant species in the game. The xp award likely should then be higher since you would only be getting them a limited number of times. I don't know. A 1,000 xp? That would be equal to picking up 10 plants in the current game so seems reasonable. Though, the exact amount could be anything deemed suitable. The main thing would be that it's only awarded once per plant species when you discover a new one for the first time. By "plant species" I mean the different image assets of the plants, not the crop type. Meaning the corn dogs would be a different species than those blue bushy plants even though both give you plant protein. Also, farmed plants should not count i.e. same as it works now. I think this would even make it more plausible from the game-universe character's point-of-view: It's the discovery of new plant species that advances the scientific knowledge. From the game-play perspective it would give you an incentive to go explore new areas to discover new plants.
i think picking plants for xp is fine, it's like crafting or killing enemy, you got xp for the work you did for a while, i took me almost the same time to be lvl 25, with picking plants or killings zyrax, so it's not a game change .... but, not everyone want to have to kill hundreds of enemy just to lvl up . the game should have more ways to get regularly xp in a "peaceful" ways, other than killings and destroying everythings you meet.
You'd still get XP from picking plants. The change would be that you get the XP only once per plant species when you discover it the first time, but the amount of XP would be significantly larger. How many different plants are there in Empyrion if you count all the different variants as separate species? Thirty? If you'd get 1,000 XP per discovery that's 30,000 XP, and since you'd make most of the first discoveries in the beginning of the game, that would advance you through quite a many levels. Add to that the XP from discovering POI's and you should advance some more levels. If you think it's still too little, there's nothing special about that 1,000 XP amount. Could be some other amount, too. Or, actually, come to think of: that "XP from first discovery" principle could be extended to animals, too. Give an XP award when you loot the corpse of a specific animal species the first time. Same reasoning there, that the discovery and examination of a new species increases your knowledge. I think it would just make more sense to give XP from activities more related to scientific research than XP from repetitive mindless crop harvesting...
