T'Pol had a great idea while we were discussing the operation of iron beetles. What if there were Beavers in the game. Same concept as iron beetles, we would have to give them an axe, except on tree's around the area. I do not have coding for it but i still think it would be an awesome idea that would attract many players to the shard. Also I had an idea to have certain bears that can catch fish , same concept of giving it a fishing pole, and store them on the ground next to you or something. Any other animals that can harvest materials? Post it below

What about NPC's; like a lumberjack? Only we pay them and they produce X amount of logs per day... like honey bee's.


  Just be careful, playing UO is about having fun, not ruining it by breaking the small economy that is here.

beavers are much cuter that a dirty old lumberjack     i think getting them to find the trees would be the hardest part, and the beetle AI might work really well with some targeting tweaks 


oh and a cute little squirrel that can gather regents
 

These are all neat ideas but (the dreaded but) I can see some of these leading to aiding people in afk gathering.


I am not saying that we will not look into it but we will have to balance any resource gathering pet we place into the game.

YAY,   

maybe you could have a puzzle box pop up randomly like when panning? help keep people at the keyboard. except this one will kill the pet after 5 minutes of no response Mwahahaha.     stupid AFK gathering abusers     

the beavers wont need to be faster than the average person, but chopping wood is just so boring as it is 

I proposed the lumberjack/hireling for two reasons. The first reason is personal; in my opinion it seems everything new, lately, seems to be for the tamers. The second reason is there is already code available for 'Hirelings'. I'm sure additional code would be needed to make this idea work.

 Now if this new code was crafted after the idea used to make the Bee Hives work: X number of lumberjacks  produce X amount of random wood for Y days; where Y = the amount of days it takes a player to gather the wood from there hireling. Then I feel this idea would hold some merit.

Now lets talk gold sink. Hirelings require payment, when there is a demand the payment is high, when the demand it met the inflation decreases to a lower rate. Admins would be able to set the tone for how much each hireling would require as payment.

Logging camps could be put up in certain areas, these logging camps should know of specific tree types in the area, which the player might be after, thus allowing selection of what trees to get logs from.

 Having said all of this I believe, without any doubt, that adding another creature to do the work the players should be doing will be boring.

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However, if beavers are to be used; I propose using a pack instinct system, where each additional beaver adds more logs found-- up to say 15-20 (at random) each successful munch/bite from a beaver in felling the tree.

 Beavers should cost one pet slot, and a minimum of two beavers should be required to get any return in logs.

There is plenty more that I believe should be done, but it can wait until further notice, since this is all just chatter any ways.

  Thanks Dev team for listening.

I also may suggest a cooldown system to these new npc's that could be added. Afk farming is a problem but with cooldowns on how long said npc can farm for/ weight limit could prevent players from worrying about it.