Talk:Skills/@comment-68.98.176.73-20170507033256/@comment-70.78.105.25-20170507050405
I believe they are the total amount from level 1. I've recently achieved L5 in firestarting, cooking, and harvesting and there's no way that I've harvested 195 specimens, for example. I acheived L5 in harvesting not that long ago and have to date harvested a grand total of 67 hides (I harevest everything). I'm not sure how exactly the game caculates skill increases, but counting the hids is a fair metric of the number of (mostly large) animals that I've had to bag before maxing the skill.
Similarly for firestarting, I've only lit a grand total of 210 fires, having achieved L5 sometime ago (I didn't take note of how many fires I had lit at the time) out of the 370 fires needed if you totalled the number of fires needed on a per-skill rate of increase.