I went to make a gatherer/arborist, until I realized trees give 2xp, and even if I kill all the low level animals around, sap and bone gives 5xp. I feel like I need to make all my alts miners to level, then respec them into gatherers.
I don’t think the solution should have been nerfing mining XP, it should have been buffing the XP of other professions.
this is exactly why i just merged my gatherer/miner in to one,they share the same stats anyways.
I have a gatherer and a crafter as separate characters. You can easily gather basically everything on one character and then use those raw resources to craft on the other. Best of both worlds. I wouldn’t bother with trying to level multiple gatherers or that’s gonna be a serious pain.
My plan is gatherer, crafter and then Hunter when I feel the need.
I leveled a gatherer/arborist to 20 just last night, I found the most efficient route is to gather ground resources instead- boulders, desert sword, rosette nox, etc. These award 20ish xp each and drop resources that can be cooked or sold for additional xp and income. Gathering foliage to cook berries is an ok source of xp and food, but not the best. Focus skills into dex and axe mastery with the gatherer epic, of course.
Hmmm 
… I see I might need to consider another alt 
Yeah I’ve abandoned my lumberjack unless I need something specific for a build design. It’s the least rewarding profession.
To make it a perfectly viable (comparable to miner) profession, we just need a single change:
Getting the same XP for mass crafting Timber as we do for mass crafting Stone.
Problem solved. 
Only the smallest % of mining experience comes from the actual breaking of blocks.
Actually with rock buster, hammer that hit 9 blocks in one hit, you get decent XP for mining on T1 worlds.
I’m not arguing that, I’m arguing that the % of the xp from the act of breaking the blocks is comparatively small when you factor in the xp gained by mass-converting all those blocks into stone (and then optionally into refined rock).
Edit: Or are you telling me that you’re happy enough with the XP from creating huge holes that you just delete all the blocks you collect from it to keep on mining? 
Not quite, ore gives 24xp for copper, wood gives 2xp, mining is still way better.
How do I make one of those? Does anyone sell them?
The equivalent of copper for the gathering / lumberjack profession is ground plants, mushrooms and boulders, and they’re more uncommon than tree trunks, same as seams vs. raw rock, so in that aspect they’re both comparable.
In the same way, some boulders/plants/mushrooms only exist in higher tier worlds, just like you can’t find diamond seams in peaceful planets.
But I believe the issue discussed in this topic is specifically the experience gain from mining regular rock vs. experience gain from breaking tree trunks / leaves.
And 3x3 AoE tools are made in a Forge (kind of like minecraft’s enchanting table). 3x3 is the highest level of the AOE effect and it can get pretty expensive in terms of materials to get one of those.
You won’t find 6 desert swords right next to each other though, which makes mining way more efficient for XP especially considering you can smelt the ore for XP also.
I would boost tree xp to 3-4 at least, and give a small amount of XP for timber.
Actually you would and I have. I’ll screenshot it and post here next time I see it.
(I mean, not EXACTLY next to each other but all within 2-3 blocks of each other)
And you can cook the yams, or process the leaves, or whatever, for xp, so yeah, still pretty much comparable.
I tried, spent 2 hours on Boori gathering/trees, and I can say I didn’t make even half as much XP as I would have if I had mined.