After making a character that can avoid confrontation by the means of magic, I have found exploring the wilds as they are a tremendously rewarding experience. While I know most DMs do not care much about doing so on one's own, I have found that both alone and in company, the wilderness has many fascinating things, NPCs, things, monsters and random encounters, not to mention some extremely attractive areas to offer that are there for the exploring.
I find the exploration XP that is given out once per character for certain areas quite sufficient when it comes to a mechanical rewards as it can indeed be quite high, depending on where you en up. The random encounters further help mixing things up and providing material incentive.
All that said- I definitely like the idea of rare monsters rarely spawning and dropping items that are obscure, but handy and can be given to certain NPCs for fixed experience rewards, a little like White Stag Meat on CoA. However I find most things already drop obscure things that can be used for some purpose other than XP, such as rare ingredients or handy fetishes and such, such as for example the Mist Essence.
I find the exploration XP that is given out once per character for certain areas quite sufficient when it comes to a mechanical rewards as it can indeed be quite high, depending on where you en up. The random encounters further help mixing things up and providing material incentive.
All that said- I definitely like the idea of rare monsters rarely spawning and dropping items that are obscure, but handy and can be given to certain NPCs for fixed experience rewards, a little like White Stag Meat on CoA. However I find most things already drop obscure things that can be used for some purpose other than XP, such as rare ingredients or handy fetishes and such, such as for example the Mist Essence.