I was originally going to reply this to the thread criticizing the new mining TT returns (tldr: 85% seems to be the norm on average), but this ended up deserving it’s own thread.
Treasure Hunting as a profession is griefing your PED card, full stop. It should genuinely be disabled (with all relevant quests/blueprints requiring resources removed) to avoid risking players quitting the game because they dared to touch it.
It was already unsustainable with 96.5% returns because all but like 3 of the materials are only used in cryptid-level blueprints for 1.0 (L) guns and clothing that nobody cares about. MU will NEVER reach profitablity ever again without a complete rework from the ground up. Arkadia has voiced in their discord for years that they want Treasure to have a use, but are unable to at this time. I speculate that the draconian contracts that MA has shackled them in combined with heavily reduced morale/downsizing over the years has left their hands tied.
The only way to fix this profession would be a rework from the ground up regarding resources sinks and uses. My personal suggestion to start with would be new craftable (L) weapon close to or on-par with ARIS’s Hyperion line, which would require a variety of resources. You could even use the particle samples crafted from Arkadia Daily Insignia Blueprints to add a sort of “time sink” like the ARIS Daily Vouchers, in order to avoid an overabundunce in supply from stockpiled resources.
While we’re on the topic, Arkadia crafting is laughably outdated. Even the mediocre new Toulan Mirsal Token weapon BPs have better stats than any craftable Arkadia weapon. The Arkadian Golden Key is a dead end goal requiring you to burn unholy amounts of TT value (not even counting MU, JUST raw 1000 PED in TT) in order to enter an instance with worse potential item drops than Toulan’s CUHOF or the FREE ARIS daily instances.
I will praise the new additions including the UL Beginner gun, colored Hoverpods, and IFN Armor to an extent (rip the guy who burned 100k PED before finding out Perfected IFN is borderline impossible to make), but this planet needs some serious love.