There are some good ideas in here and I don’t think OP’s idea deserves to be dismissed based on it being a nerf. Of course it would be ideal to find alternative solutions to not alienate players, but when it comes to long term health of the game, it’s worth considering simple nerfs over inaction and delays due to complexity of alternatives.
I don’t think “eating stone pies” as I like to call it feels right. As soon as I started doing it, I felt kind of guilty, like I found a loophole. A way around actually playing the game to level up. As others point out, it’s not particularly fun to do either. Which I don’t think is a good reason for it being considered “fine”. If something is easy but boring and can be easily automated, it’s a good indicator that it’s not fun, possibly broken and might need changes (also hello, Regeneration Bombs, but let’s not get off-topic). But if it’s also efficient, of course people will do it regardless.
Did I want to exploit the fact that rock crafting in massive quantities gives a lot of EXP and logging off with an active Teaching Pie buff will not deplete it while offline? No. Did I want to level an alt quickly so I could finally get into forging? Yes. Did I want to develop carpal tunnel or make myself uncomfortable by pressing the same button hundreds of times? No. So, AutoHotkey it was. And I’m not too happy about that. Maybe Shift-clicking the craft button should just automatically fill the queue as far as it can, assuming we really are okay with this whole thing?
Anyway, that’s not even what I came here to post about, because I was thinking of a different approach, one that addresses another issue I’ve had with the game:
Mining is the aspect of the game I probably enjoy the least and I’m certain I’m not the only one, but it’s also one of the most important ones for progression. The reason for this is that it is also very repetitive, not excruciatingly so, but definitely has a much more mind-numbing quality to it than the other aspects of the game.
So, what if we had… more caves? Actual spelunking and exploration instead of mindlessly eating through rocks? At least for those of us that prefer doing that as an alternative. When I first went to Houchus I to look for Sapphires and realized that there are these really long caves and a lot of surface to find resources on, was probably when I enjoyed getting gems the most since I started playing the game. Of course they were plentiful too which helps, but it was a really nice change from the standard AoE mining.
It’s just an idea, but I feel like with more caves to explore and thus the option to sacrifice excess rocks for less forged tool durability wasted, there also wouldn’t be this much temptation to gobble up those stone pies.