Speaking numbers and profit, what if we play a little game and try and fix some issues game has just by tweaking some numbers?
- Elexit shards. Of course, everyone knows that those are used as glittering loot to get your attention to places and are often hidden together with elixit deposits (which you need a tool to mine), sometimes near incredibly powerful enemies. And of course nobody collects those without thinking and then recounting their elex, so everyone knows how much elex you get from a shard.
It's one. One elexit.
And the small bag gives you 25, while larger, used as incredible rewards for you climbing something equally incredible holds 50.
In comparison, pickpocketing a drunk bum can net up to a 100, while killing some respawning dumbfuck with trophies would net, if we recount all our ivory plates and ivory parts, my minimal guess from 400 and more. No wonder once you hand over your teeth and claws, especially with haggler, sometimes you get 2000-3000 elexit per one item stack.
As for mining, it has it's own skill to use, and I know how much I got for mining that another elixit deposit behind a skullfuck enemy.
It's twenty. Twenty elixit. I think game just always gives you a twenty, because that's same for any resource, even gold nuggets. But, what if we hunt for deposits minecraft style as an alternative way of playing the game instead of pickpocketing bums and such, I mean, it's an open world game so you should have different approaches BUT grinding same quests with every type of character you make, and using same skills?
Well, investing into Mining improves the gains. Instead of twenty, you'll get thirty. Kek. Exploration, here we go!
So how do we tweak this?
Well, the first thing I'd nerf would be Trophies, since they are an infinite money supply due to fact that, well, monsters infinitely spawn, even endgame trolls and deathclaws can spawn near you first Camp, where your companions staying there can farm them for you for free moneys.
An elixit shard could give probably at least 10, and elixit bag at very least double, like a 50 or even 100, and large bag should be at least 100 or 200. So finding secret cellar beneath some secret place would be a bigger achievement than farming turkeys all day. Mining, it should work differently for every resource, but it should net x5 or even x10 amount with skill invested, depending on type of resource (20 iron is less than 20 gold).
Trophies should also net you some crafting materials and increase the amount of stuff like meat you gain, so that skills would increase your sustainability by netting more meat, and hand you things like Leather which is used in Outlaw recipes for example (it does so for some recipes, but not for all of them).
- Combat and damage. (Observations based on Ultimate difficulty) For what it's worth, the Q attack, especially on Ultimate, does so little damage compared to R1s that it's almost meaningless when traded for the amount of control and responsiveness you lose. It should do at least x3 damage base, even without skill investment.
For the amount of elexit you spend on them, some heavy weapons should do triple, if not x5 damage compared to other weapons. For example, all heavy weapons that are not Flamer (which uses 1 elixit per fuel ammo) have either rare ammunition or Hand Grenade to craft that ammunition, as well as multiple Tapes, Plasma packs and such. What does that mean? It means you're trading say a few plasma packs (which can be used with plasma rifle to rain AoE death on enemies) AND extra resources, spending hundreds of elixit to get 1 plasma missile which would do 125 damage instead of 100 damage from plasma rifle. This means that heavy weapons not only cancel your jetpack movement and strafing but also are simply innefective (except of Flamer).
- Experience from quests and monsters. This is really a difficult one, since it ties to the fact that monsters respawn. Perhaps, tweaking amount of XP you get could depend on your level, so more leveled you are, the less XP you gain from weaker enemies. New player DESERVES those 1000 or more XP for his first troll or chimera taken down, I don't think anyone could argue that.
Elixit from quests, could also be tweaked. Heck, I'd probably DOUBLE amount of it you gain from many quests, since some rewards give you like 75-150 elixit, which is a drop in the sea of brooms and mugs you unload on a vendor every time. The whole Claws questline nets you what, 3k? 4k? While your spending in the game counts in tens of thousands.
Speaking of it, I'd just remove half or so of the useable and pickable items from the game, not only because they sometimes block your actions - I'd pay for a mod that removes ALL CHAIRS near chests, - but because it makes sense to make unique loot more valuable, and trash loot just that - trash. And since enemies never drop weapons or armor, these could probably be more expensive since it's a rare find, depending on their tier.