Revision as of 02:51, 2 June 2010

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.

• The easy ones are: Florist, Toolmaker, Water-Carrier, and Magnetic Cartographer.
• The hard ones are: Butcher, Medic, Scrollmaker, and Larvester.

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.

Known bugs, issues and workarounds

As occupations were just recently introduced, there are still some issues surrounding them. Current known bugs include:

• If after advancing to Grade 2 in your occupation, you complete a Grade 1 item creation mission using Grade 2 components, you may be set back to being Grade 1 at 1 XP, and be unable to gain further XP. However you can still do Grade 2 missions. This seems to only happen part of the time too; perhaps only with certain occupations?
• If you have any Grade 2 Recipe's saved under Grade 1 in the Occupations application, you can fix it by re-using the recipe both under Grade 2 and under Grade 1.
• The Improved Tool item that improves your yield on creating items does not seem to work if you use upgraded components.
• The Improved Tool, Lucky Flower, Stimulating Water and Amber of Protection are automatically used even if you have them on your packer. The only way to save them for later is to put them in your apartment.

Specific Occupations

• Scrollmaker: Currently the first component mission cannot be completed by harvesting the insect larva yourself; you'll complete the mission but not receive any components. The only way to receive the components is to have a teammate harvest the larva for you while you have the mission open.
• Larvester: Since both component missions for Larvesters require handing items to Ana Ryon, having both missions open at the same time can prevent you from being able to hand in items for the second mission. Make sure you have only one mission open at any time and it should work normally.
• Medic: One of the NPCs you're sent to treat may be dead; right-clicking his corpse and selecting the option to treat him still allows you to complete the mission.
• Toolmaker: The mission descriptions are lacking a number of "or", so that it seems like you need to do every task in the list while in fact you only need to do either of the tasks.
• Florist and Water-Carrier: Getting water from the well only works if you approach the well from the side.

Quick Overview

Here's the main summary of the occupations to give you a rough idea of their differences:

Getting Started

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.

Words of Warning

A few things to know about occupations before you start:

• You can only have a maximum of 3 occupations, and there's a 2-day cooldown between taking an occupation and being able to drop it to make space for another.
• If you drop an occupation, you lose all experience you had in it, forever. There is no confirmation window asking you if you're sure you want to drop it! Losing all your occupation experience is just one misclick away! Be careful!
• If you advance to the next Grade (explained later) you get more difficult missions, and can no longer do the missions from the precious Grade. Make sure you are ready for the more difficult missions before advancing.
• Some occupations give you a Teleporter Pact for Almati Wood. If you don't have teleporter pacts for any other regions, using this pact will get you stuck in Almati Wood with no way out!

Basic Concepts

Now that you know about the common pitfalls, let's look at the basic outlines of how occupations work.

• Components: The core of every occupation revolves around gathering two different component items, unique to that occupation. You need several of both component items in order to produce the main products of the occupation. Every occupation has two separate 'gathering' missions, one for each component, that you must perform to acquire those components.
• Practising your ocupation: This is the process by which you turn component items into products. (This is the 'crafting' part of the occupation, but that term is generally avoided to avoid confusion with actual crafting.) It's done by taking a specific mission; the 'crafting' mission of the occupation, so to speak.
• Grades: Grades are a measure of how good you are in an occupation. You start at Grade 1, and can become better through practising the occupation. If you reach a higher Grade, you'll be given more difficult 'gathering' missions, which will reward you with higher Grade components, which in turn can make more powerful products.
• Upgrading: Every Grade has both basic components and upgraded components. The 'gathering' missions will give you the basic components, and upgrading is the process whereby you turn these into upgraded components. This usually takes several basic components for each upgraded component. Practising your occupation with upgraded components instead of basic ones gives better products.
• Special Items: Every occupation you have allows you to get it's own special item every 2 days. This doesn't require you to do anything else than ask the master of that occupation for it. The use of this special item depends on the occupation.

The occupation master

The master's missions.

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:

• Receive more of the Special Item of the occupation. What this item is depends on the occupation
• Drop the occupation to make room to learn another. Beware you will lose all experience in the occupation if you drop it.
• Never mind. This cancels the mission without doing anything.

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.

The occupation workbench

The workbench missions.

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:

• If you have a Lucky Flower in your inventory when you start upgrading, it'll be used up and double your chances of succeeding in the upgrade.
• If you have an Amber of Protection in your inventory and fail the upgrade, it'll be used up and you'll lose no basic components.
• If you have a Stimulating Water in your inventory and succeed the upgrade, it'll be used up and you'll get 4 upgraded components instead of 2.

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.

The actual creating of items

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.

Recipes

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.

Gaining experience

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.

Using upgraded components

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.

Final notes

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.

Occupation Trainers

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.

Zora

• Magnetic Cartographer (Easy): Just west of Daïsha Estate.
• Medic (Hard): Just south of Daïsha Estate.

Fairhaven

• Water-Carrier (Easy): Just outside the main entrance to the city.
• Larvester (Hard):' Just outside the southern entrance to the city.

Yrkanis

• Florist (Easy): Located in a building just east of the Karavan altar.
• Scrollmaker (Hard): Located just east of the stables.

Pyr

• Toolmaker (Easy): Inside the Great Forge.
• Butcher (Hard): Just inside the city from the southern gate.

Various rough notes on occupations - WIP