Newbie Beast Form Suggestions and Feedback (Cow, Mainly)

[snowe]

What follows are heavily revised suggestions and feedback on animal forms after levelling my first Project: Gorgon character from a would-be sword wielding, psychology spouting menace to a 60 skill level cow/druid after happening across Maronessa. The original thread was posted under the old forums, and revised multiple times here to make it more approachable.

### Suggestion: Hanging Out With Dairy Cows

All players currently see a 'Milk Cow' option when mousing over an NPC Dairy Cow. For characters in cow animal form, the mouse over option should be changed to the same 'Talk' option seen with other NPCs. Of course, these non-enhanced Dairy Cow NPCs wouldn't have anything intelligible to say to the character, but they would provide a standard NPC dialog with the current 'Milk Cow' option and a new 'Hang Out' option.

Choosing 'Hang Out' would allow the player to queue one of the repeatable 'Graze with this herd' offline events of variable length (2, 4, 6, 8 or 10 hour(s)). The event would always award the character with a food buff and minor cow skill line experience upon completion which scale in meal level and magnitude with the amount of time spent grazing offline. Additionally, grazing with different herds would become the new means of learning a subset of cow skill line abilities as follows:

L.05 Cow: 'Graze' after grazing with any herd.
L.06 Cow: 'Clobbering Hoof 1' after grazing with any herd.
L.07 Cow: 'Chew Cud 1' after grazing with any herd.
L.15 Cow: 'Tough Hoof 1' after grazing with any herd.
L.28 Cow: 'Chew Cud 2' after grazing with any herd for a 4+ hours.
L.39 Cow: 'Chew Cud 3' after grazing with any herd for a 6+ hours.
L.55 Cow: 'Chew Cud 4' after grazing with any herd for a 8+ hours.
L.?? Cow: 'Chew Cud 5' after grazing with any herd for a 10+ hours.

L.16 Cow: 'Clobbering Hoof 2' after grazing with Eltibule herd for a 4+ hours.
L.26 Cow: 'Clobbering Hoof 3' after grazing with Eltibule herd for a 6+ hours.
L.36 Cow: 'Clobbering Hoof 4' after grazing with Eltibule herd for a 8+ hours.
L.46 Cow: 'Clobbering Hoof 5' after grazing with Eltibule herd for a 10+ hours.
L.56 Cow: 'Clobbering Hoof 6' after grazing with Eltibule herd for a 10+ hours.
L.?? Cow: 'Clobbering Hoof 7' after grazing with Eltibule herd for a 10+ hours.

L.30 Cow: 'Tough Hoof 2' after grazing with Animal Town herd for a 4+ offline event.
L.45 Cow: 'Tough Hoof 3' after grazing with Animal Town herd for a 6+ offline event.
L.60 Cow: 'Tough Hoof 4' after grazing with Animal Town herd for a 8+ offline event.
L.?? Cow: 'Tough Hoof 5' after grazing with Animal Town herd for a 10+ offline event.

L.15 Cow: 'Moo of Calm 1' after grazing with Southern Serbule herd.
L.35 Cow: 'Moo of Calm 2' after grazing with Southern Serbule herd for a 4+ hours.
L.48 Cow: 'Moo of Calm 3' after grazing with Southern Serbule herd for a 6+ hours.
L.62 Cow: 'Moo of Calm 4' after grazing with Southern Serbule herd for a 8+ hours.
L.?? Cow: 'Moo of Calm 5' after grazing with Southern Serbule herd for a 10+ hours.

Two herds already exist in game, a herd of Dairy Cows found around Serbule's stable (with nothing special proposed to be tied to grazing with it due to the location's convenience), and a herd of Dairy Cows among the feral cows in Eltibule. The Southern Serbule herd would be created by moving two of the Dairy Cows from Serbule stables to the stables near the Southern Serbule Inn (preserving the current NPC-supplied availability of Milk). The Animal Town herd would be created by adding two new Dairy Cows in and around Raul's pen (expanding the NPC-supplied availability of Milk, but reducing the net convenience of collection by spreading Dairy Cows about).

Allowing the above skills to be trained in this manner would resolve another issue I encountered as a new player trying to advance the cow skill line - having insufficient favor with NPCs to acquire role-required (tank) skills when level appropriate. As one example, the suspicious cow is a bad exclusive gatekeeper to the first level of Clobbering Hoof, as by the time you've found her and gained sufficient favor to receive training, you've well out-levelled the utility of Clobbering Hoof 1 and end up purchasing it only as a cash-sink prerequisite to Clobbering Hoof 2 or 3. Similarly, Tough Hoof 1 is fairly difficult to get by level 15 (when it becomes available) without already knowing where Animal Town is, surviving a level-challenging run to Raul and then gaining the favor required to train from him before the skill simply becomes another cash sink prerequisite to Tough Hoof 2 in most cases. Both should be acquired with the proposed 'grazing' system, and if favor-gating were still desired, it could be added as a prerequisite to subsequent iterations of those abilities learned by grazing with their respective herds.

Similar herding mechanics might be applicable to deer and pig animal forms, but I won't brainstorm further about them here.