Growing skill affects chopping wood but UI says nothing?

[Rokdog]

Coming back to the game after a break I couldn't remember if chopping wood had a skill tied to it or not. A google search turned up this reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/2igqsn/skills_involved_in_plant_cutting/

The person who replied claims that Growing skill affects wood chopping speed. Having never heard this before and given the fact that the person didn't quote anything but anecdotal evidence, I decided to test it myself.

A colonist with 15 Growing skill chopped a tree in about 6 seconds on normal speed, whereas a colonist with 3 Growing skill took around 20 seconds. Not only does Growing skill obviously affect wood chopping speed, chopping wood also grants Growing XP! This is also true for all tasks that fall under the work priority of "Plant cutting." (gets faster, grants xp)

For some this may not be surprising and it's old news, but I've been playing since Alpha 4 and missed this somewhere along the way. When you mouseover "Plant cutting" in Alpha 8, it still says (none) for relevant skills and everyone gets a default 3/20 and the Wiki seems like it hasn't received updates since Alpha 6. It does makes sense and might have been obvious to some players, since trees are an option in Growing Zones and chopping a tree produces the same leaf icon that most plant-related tasks use. However, in other similar games (Dwarf Fortress, Gnomoria) Growing and Wood Chopping are separate skills, and the UI tooltip (and Wiki) led me to believe all this time that it was true in RimWorld as well.

When did this change and why hasn't the UI been updated to reflect the change? Even if "Growing" for "Plant cutting" is just a placeholder, it would have been nice to know and will definitely affect how I split labor up. This thread is not meant as a gripe, rather I just wanted to share my observations with others and I was curious about the when and the why.

I'm considering turning some of my RimWorld notes into a mini-guide to help other newbies with stuff like this.

Cheers!

[REMworlder]

I never thought to connect that tree cutting gives growing XP, cool find! Maybe I missed it, but don't forget you can see stuff like that on the colonist's info page. It should show all the skills involved in a task and their weights. For example, here we can confirm growing skill is used in plant work.

[BoogieMan]

Interesting find! I'll have to update my labor priorities.

Thanks!

[kic]

For my current game, this may change things a bit for me... all of a sudden, Growing neural implants have a whole new usefulness to them.

Thanks for the heads up.

[Rokdog]

@REMworlder: Not long after I made my post, I found that screen when starting a new colony and my hand reflexively smacked my forehead Not sure when that screen & info was added, but I missed it. You're absolutely right, that does provide some form of in-game proof that there's a link between plant work and Growing skill. The other "Overview" screen still doesn't reflect this, but at least it's in there somewhere.

@everyone else: Glad I could be of assistance!