Handyskills
These are the trades tied to raw material. They are the floor the whole economy stands on: nothing gets crafted, cooked or sold that somebody did not first pull out of the ground, the water or the woods.
Nine professions sit in this family. Each one has its own experience ladder, its own talent tree and a capstone ability at the top of it.
The gathering trades
These four send you into the world to take something out of it. What you can work is gated by your grade: a node has a difficulty, and until your grade reaches it, the node stays grey.
Mining
- Yields: coal, copper, iron, gold and the stone around them.
- The ladder: coal and copper at the bottom, then iron, then gold rock at the top. Four rungs, and the climb is the profession.
- Cost: 1 energy for coal and copper, 2 for iron, 3 for gold.
Lumberjack
- Yields: timber, from young stands up to ironbark.
- The ladder: young stand, oak, ironbark.
- Cost: 1, 2 and 3 energy respectively.
Herbalist
- Yields: herbs, roots and the things that go into remedies.
- The ladder: wild herb patch and forage patch, then healing thicket, then the rarer growths.
- Cost: 1 to 2 energy.
Fishing
- Yields: fish, for the table and for trade.
- A note on the map: the current world has no open water a citizen can work yet, so fishing has a ladder but nowhere to stand. It is the one gathering trade waiting on the world rather than on you.
The making trades
These five take what the gatherers bring back and turn it into something worth more than its parts.
| Trade | Turns | Into |
|---|---|---|
| Blacksmith | ore and timber | tools and worked metal |
| Tailor | hide and cloth | worn goods |
| Skinner | carcasses | hide and leather |
| Cooking | crops, fish and game | food that keeps a citizen standing |
| Farming | seed, soil and water | crops, on your own plot |
The clearest loop in the game runs through the smith. A miner brings iron, a lumberjack brings timber, and the Blacksmith turns the pair into the four tools the other trades need to work at all: a pickaxe, an axe, an herb knife and a scythe. All four are sold in the Craft Halls.
That is the economy in one sentence: the trades cannot start without each other.
Farming is the odd one out and worth knowing about: tending your own plot costs no energy at all. It is slower than swinging a pick, but it is the one trade you can work with an empty pool.