Hello there!

I'd like to suggest that when mining ore, you get a few experience points per ore, increasing with rarity (so copper ore would be like 1 exp per ore, iron 2 exp etc), instead of just having us gain experience with smelting.

Leveling mining is tedious the way it is now and I'd appreciate if there was a way to level faster. (I always have wheels and pickaxes equipped, but it is still so slow.)

I think I'm on board with this. I always felt like Mining was the one activity I focused on the most in comparison to Cooking and Hunting and Fishing and all, but excluding Farming, Mining is the lowest leveled activity. I've crafted plenty of Pickaxes and wheels and I've even got a companion who rewards energy to the wolf I have mining, just to keep up, and yet I still feel like it's incredibly slow.

It's one of those things that almost make you feel like you're not accomplishing too much. It's nice to get a lot of ore, but when you're just tunneling it all back into mining through using your materials for crafting items to make the process faster, but your experience and progress is still staggering, it doesn't feel like you're being effective, nor does it make your efforts feel like you're doing anything. It also almost feels like you're wasting a lot of the materials you've worked for.

I'm only hesitant for supporting this because it's still so early in the game and I'm not sure if the intention is to keep it slow for other plans later on, but I will say that gaining experience with this seems stunted in comparison to other activities.