Occupations are a type of job, if you will, you can take. An occupation from what is currently known allows you to create all sorts of items, which mostly aid in helping regenerate an attribute of the player character. At any given time you can not take on more than three occupations and there is a two day cooldown before you can drop an occupation. In the event that you drop an occupation, the grade you had in that occupation will be lost.
At the moment there are 8 occupations in game, and it seems 4 of them are much easier and take place in the normal regions of the main continents, starting in the lowest-level one and working their way up, while the other 4 are much harder and involve going into the Kitins' Lair right from the start.
Occupations yield certain items which aid regeneration when consumed, among other things. See the individual page for each occupation for a description of what they produce.
As occupations were just recently introduced, there are still some issues surrounding them. Current known bugs include:
Specific Occupations
Here's the main summary of the occupations to give you a rough idea of their differences:
Occupation: | Takes places mostly in: | Main Activities: | Product improves: |
Water-Carrier | Aeden Aqueous | Running around | Life and sap regeneration |
Magnetic Cartographer | Witherings | Running around | Life and stamina regeneration |
Florist | Verdant Heights | Foraging and running around | Sap regeneration |
Toolmaker | Anywhere you prefer | Hunting, foraging and crafting | Stamina regeneration |
Butcher | Burning Desert and Kitins' Lair | Killing stuff | Life Regeneration |
Medic | Kitins' Lair | Running Around | Life Regeneration |
Larvester | Kitins' Lair | Foraging | Focus Regeneration |
Scrollmaker | Kitins' Lair | Foraging and running around | Craft success |
This section will address the basics to get you started in your chosen occupation. As an example, we'll use the Water-Carrier occupation, but the concepts we'll discuss apply to all occupations. Remember to use this guide sparingly; half the fun is in figuring it out yourself.
First, you need to chose an occupation. Read up a bit about the different occupations here on the wiki or in the ingame guide, which can be found by opening the API-window (shift-W by default) and going to the "Occupations" section. Once you've decided, find the master for your chosen occupation using the maps included on this page.
A few things to know about occupations before you start:
Now that you know about the common pitfalls, let's look at the basic outlines of how occupations work.
Now you're ready to talk to the occupation master of your choice. This master will offer you four missions, displayed on the image to the right.
The first mission will be the only one that's available when you first talk to the master. This is the one you take to become a practitioner of that occupation. (Water-Carrier in this case.) Once you're already a practitioner of the occupation, you can take the same mission again every 2 days and it'll offer you three options:
If you pick an option, the mission will then become unavailable again for 2 days (unless you pick the "never mind" option).
The second and the third mission are the main 'gathering' missions for your occupation. These are the missions you have to do to get the two different components to practice your occupation with. Both these missions are an "ongoing" mission involving 4 different tasks: Once you take the mission, you will randomly be assigned one of the 4 tasks of that mission. If you complete that task, you'll receive a component, and will again randomly be assigned one of the 4 tasks (which may be the same task again). This will go on while the mission is active, and the mission will only stop if you abandon it.
For Water-Carrier, for example, the 4 tasks for the first gathering mission are 4 different locations to get water from, and the 4 tasks for the second gathering mission are 4 different NPCs to bring water to. For other occupations, the 4 tasks may be completely different, but these missions always involve 4 tasks on continuous random shuffle. Note that you can always abandon the mission and retake it to get a new random task, as many times as you like.
The fourth mission in the menu is for later on in the occupation, so we'll not bother with that for now.
Somewhere close by the master of the occupation is the workbench for the occupation. It's different for each occupation, but usually easy enough to recognise. You have to be a practitioner of the occupation to use the workbench. It will offer you 8 missions, displayed on the image to the right.
The first two missions are for upgrading the two different components of your occupation. With upgraded components you can create better items. At Grade 1, doing the 'gathering' tasks described above will give you basic Q10 components. These can be turned into upgraded Q15 components. To do this, take the mission to upgrade a particular component (the first mission for the first component and the second mission for the second component), and hand 4 of the basic Q10 components over to the workbench.
Beware that upgrading has only a certain chance of success, and if it fails, you will lose 2 of the 4 components you just handed over. If the upgrading succeeds, you will get 2 upgraded components out of 4 basic components. There are some Special Items that can help with upgrading:
The next six missions in the menu are for actually practising your occupation and thus creating items. At first only the first one will be available. The other 5 are for the higher grades later on in the occupation and won't be addressed here. To start creating items in the occupation, take that first 'crafting' mission (the third mission in the list) and be ready to hand 4 of both of the two component items of the occupation over to the workbench.
Once you take the 'practice' mission from the workbench, a 5 minute time starts. All the following actions have to be done within those 5 minutes or the mission will fail. Also note that nobody else can take a 'practice' mission from the workbench until you're done with yours.
First, the mission will ask you if you want to use basic or upgraded components. We'll assume for now you'll chose basic components; the difference with upgraded components will be discussed later on. You'll then be asked to hand over 4 of each of the two basic components of your occupation. If you do not have these in your inventory, the mission will be cancelled.
Once you've handed over the necessary components, you'll be asked for a "recipe". This recipe basically comes down to making 5 choices in a row, each between 7 options. The combination of options you chose will affect the "yield" of the creation. The yield ranges between 0% and 100% and a higher yield means you will create more items. For example, a yield of 40% may give you 6 items while a yield of 60% will give you 9 items. The items created will be the same, the yield only determines how many you receive.
There is no way to know ahead which combination will give a good result, except asking another person who's done the same occupation. So just pick options randomly and see what you get. Beware there are no do-overs: You only see how good the combination you've chosen is when the creating is already done, and if you got a bad result there's no changing it anymore. However, the combination you used will be stored in your recipee book. So the next time you practise your occupation again, you can chose whether to use the same combination and get the same yield again, or to try a new combination and hope it'll turn out better.
Once the recipe is chosen, you will be told how many items you created and asked whether you want to keep the items, or to hand them in for experience. You will only receive experience in your occupation if you hand them in, but handing them in means you won't actually receive any items to use. So chose carefully if you'd like to create items now or gather experience to create better items later. If you chose to hand them, you'll receive 1 point of experience for each item you had created.
If you chose to practise with upgraded components, you'll be asked to hand over 4 of each of the two upgraded components of your occupation. Again if you do not have these in your inventory, the mission will be cancelled. The rest of the process will go exactly the same, and the recipe's will give the same yield as they would've with basic components. With upgraded practising however, the same yield gives you a higher number of actual items created.
Another important difference with upgraded crafting is that once the recipe is completed, you'll get the options to either hand the created items in for experience, or to hand half of them in for experience and keep the other half. There is no option to keep all of them. (And with basic practising, there is no option to turn in half.) You will only receive 1 point of experience for each item handed in. But if you chose the second option, the items you'll receive will be more powerful than the items created with basic components.
Lastly, the 'crafting' mission can only be taken once every 20 hours. Once you've completed it and received either your items or your experience or both, there'll be 20 hour cooldown before you can take the mission again.
There is only one trainer for each occupation. Each capital has the trainers for 2 occupations: one easy occupation and one difficult occupations. The easy occupation mostly involves missions in the local regions, while the difficult occupation sends you into the Kitins' Lair.