Professions guide

There are 7 professions. Mining, Woodcutting, Fishing, Herbalism, and Skinning gather from the world; Smithing and Carpentry transform what others gather. Every skill goes from 0 to 100.

Materials have no rarity: every unit of the same material is identical. That is what lets them have a real market price instead of being appraised piece by piece.

• Two gates. To gather a material you need a high enough skill level and the right tool in your hand. The game tells you which one is missing.
• Nodes are struck, not timed. Each node goes through 3 stages before it breaks, and finishing each stage can give material and skill.
• Nodes are shared. There is one node per spot on the map, not one per player or per channel: everyone who sees it hits the same one, and if someone else finishes it, it is finished for everyone.
• Respawn is random within a range. Low nodes come back in seconds, high ones take hours. The exact moment is not shown, so nobody can camp a node to the second.
• A better tool strikes faster. Each tool tier above what the material asks for shortens the time between strikes, down to a floor of 50% of the normal time. It never changes how much material you get.
• No energy. Gathering does not spend energy. Processing does (see below).

Each material teaches according to the level it asks for: higher materials give far more skill per node. And it wears off: a material 10 levels below yours gives only the minimum. You cannot level by repeating the easy one; you move up the ladder.

The skill needed for the next level grows in a straight line (20 points at level 0, 4 more per level), so the last levels are not a wall. This is how many skill points each material step asks for in total:

The entry tool of each profession is sold at the Shop. The rest are made: metal tools by smithing, wooden fishing tools by carpentry. The rule to remember is that the tool of the previous tier is the one that opens the next material, so you never need a tool made from the material you are about to gather.

One table per gathering profession: the skill each material asks for, the lowest tool that can gather it, how long a broken node takes to come back and where to find it. Every material has its own page in Materials.

Herbalism: There are no nodes for this trade on the map yet: its materials exist and its tool is sold, but there is nowhere to gather them.
Skinning: There are no nodes for this trade on the map yet: its materials exist and its tool is sold, but there is nowhere to gather them.

Bars do not come from any vein: they come only from smelting ore at the forge, which is smithing. There are 8 bars; from steel upward they also ask for coal, more at every step, which makes coal one of the most wanted ores.

Carpentry turns logs into planks with the carpenter’s hammer in your hand. 6 woods can be sawn; the others are used as logs. The level each plank asks for is carpentry level.

• 165 recipes. Each one turns materials and gold into the exact piece you pick. The full list is on the Forge page.
• Always common, always tradable. Forged gear comes out at the lowest rarity, but it is born tradable: unlike anything bought from a merchant, it can go to the market. Loot gives high rarity on a random base; the forge gives the base you want at the lowest rarity. One does not replace the other.
• It can come out Masterwork. 1% of forged pieces are born Masterwork, just like loot.
• Weapons and shields need two professions. They take metal and wood, so at least some recipes make you buy from someone else.
• Processing costs energy and time. Smelting, sawing and forging take longer and cost more energy the more material goes in, and higher materials weigh more.