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Lumberjacking needs equivilent items to Mining's Prospector's Tool and Gargoyle Pick.
Beyond that, the system is fine as it better rewards based on harvesting an area instead of harvesting a spot.
Basically, in Mining terms, you do better taking a fire beetle and strip-mining than you do recall bouncing everywhere (plus really it's faster if you're not having to cast a spell every minute or so).
As for scripting, with a mining character, I'll spend a good hour or two if I'm in the mood strip-mining certain well known and productive locations and have seen FAAAR fewer scripters POST randomization change. Why? Simple, the spots are no longer a guaranteed specific type. Some days trhe area produces very well, others, not so much, but that's the breaks of the game.
The idea though was not as much to hinder scriptors but to make "rare" resources more rare... because a resource isn't rare if you can harvest it in multiple locations on demand all the time.
It does lower the number of scriptors simply because they can no longer script-recall harvest specific spots.
That being said, I repeat my initial statement... Lumberjacking needs its versions of the mining tools that help miners obtain higher end ores (and at the same time, let's look at balancing the amounts gained through the two skills (10 boards vs 2 ingots) and the "fail rate" issue of processing raw material into resources (no fail for jacking, scaled % for mining).