Weapon Mastery Acquisition is sub-optimal

[ArkTolei]

The mutations tied to improving weapon damage are currently tied to a flat number of enemies killed, and the number required is incredibly large if you're playing as a group and someone else is largely in charge of food.  A player can progress to the point where they're in full ladybug gear, with tier 2 weapons without ever realizing weapon skills exist, because killing a gnat in 1 hit gives the same value as killing a ladybug  whose hp has been buffed by having 4 people hitting it, or the literal broodmother.   It should be noted that the ladybug's hp is massively boosted by having multiple people on its aggro table (a problem in and of itself, that I'll make a separate topic for), but only 1 person can last hit it for credit.  4 people killing a lady bug together get proportionally 1/4 of the value of a single player smacking a gnat a single time.

It would be much preferred if the game instead tracked damage dealt per weapon type, and scaled mastery acquisition based off of that instead.  It feels a bit ludicrous that you reasonably quickly reach a point where killing strong enemies doesn't give you much gain, but killing swarms of mites gives you tons of progress toward your lategame goals.

By changing the mutations to track total damage dealt, no matter what combat style you choose, you will be progressing mastery.  If you want to jump at orb weavers the second you make your first shield you can, without undermining your ability to actually use your weapons effectively.  It also ensures that when your friend hits an enemy with a sliver of life, and it's healed for 30% of its max hp instantly and goes from 1 shot range to 8 shot range because of the aforementioned hp boost (a mechanic that has killed me on several occasions), you at least get something out of the suddenly much harder to kill opponent.

[ScritchOwl]

I don't think there is a problem with the method per say but I do think they need to allow the improvement of weapons from different sources than just kills. Such as targets

You could make one out of dry grass, rope, sap. Then you can shoot, throw or wack the targets. The target will go to a destroyed state after so much damage which triggers a faux kill tick.  This can be repaired to be used again. For people who say it needs to be a kill you can max it out now on grubs aphids and gnats. What's the difference

[AugspaCussh]

I'd say a simple solution is to make it based on total damage done with said weapon. 1k = tier 1, 2.5k = tier 2, 5k = tier 3. This would also allow harvesting to count toward damage mastery.