Profession

“

We want players to be able to freely collect or craft 95% of the items in the game using all professions.

— Official website

In Corepunk, the profession system is used to keep track of a player's Gathering and Crafting skills. There are 9 professions in total, with each specializing in a different resource or item.

Gathering

Main Article: Gathering

Gathering is the process of collecting materials from a resource node. There are 4 different gathering professions: Butchering, Herbalism, Logging, and Mining.

Progress bar for Herbalism. The item has not yet been identified.

To begin gathering a resource, a progress bar will appear. For the resource to drop from the node:
The progress bar must reach the end.
The item must be idenfitied.
The gathering attempt must not fail.

This process repeats until no more gathering attempts can occur at a resource.

Crafting

Main Article: Crafting

There are 4 different crafting professions: Alchemy, Constructor, Mysticism, and Weaponsmithing. To craft an item, players must use the profession's respective Workbench, or use the Synthesis Machine. Using a workbench, crafting requires a Recipe. However, the synthesis machine doesn't require a recipe. As a result, items are crafted using it are more expensive to craft. The synthesis machine can also be used to upgrade skins you have by adding Upgrade Kits and, optionally, some additional resources to increase the chances of acquiring rarer skins made with different materials.

Items have two main judgements of satus: tier, and quality. They are very similar but have different implications on the crafted item depending on the profession. The Stats of crafted items are determined by randomly choosing a value between an upper and lower bound.

Tier

Main Article: Tier

An item's tier represents how it was crafted. It affects either how many or how good an item's stats are.
Tier 1 items are crafted from gathered resources only. Subsequent tiers are crafted using items from the previous tier in addition to rarer gathered resources.

Quality

Main Article: Quality

An item's quality represents its rarity. It is not specific to crafted items, therefore it shouldn't be compared with item tier and should instead be thought of as a completely separate metric.
Higher-quality items used in crafting affect the crafted item's secondary characteristics, such as a Consumable's quantity, a weapon's upgrade slots, or an artifact's secondary stats.
There are five possible qualities of an item: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary.

Progression

Players can progress their professions by doing activities related to the profession. By doing this, players gain Experience for both their Character and the related profession. Upon gaining profession experience, 2 metrics change: Efficiency, and Mastery Level (not to be confused with Weapon Mastery).

In general, increasing efficiency usually increases the chances of getting better items, whereas increasing mastery level usually increases base stats (e.g. number of gathering chances).

Efficiency

Main Article: Efficiency

"We favor mechanics where there is a choice, and that choice has both positive and negative consequences."

— Corepunk Gameplay Video #4: Professions

Artificial Core's design philosophy includes the idea that in-game decisions are not clear-cut. Efficiency is an example of this.
100% efficiency is shared among the gathering professions, and a different 100% efficiency is shared among the crafting professions. Upon increasing the efficiency of one profession, the efficiency of the least-used profession of the same type decreases in tandem.

A higher efficiency means:
A higher chance of gathering rarer resources.
A lower chance of failing the collection of a resource.
A higher chance of crafting items with higher Gear Score. 100% efficiency on the corresponding profession is required for this to take effect.
Access to a profession-unique bonus which affects gameplay. Upon reaching level 40, 100% efficiency on the corresponding profession is required.

To increase efficiency in gathering professions, players must gather resources corresponding to the gathering profession they want to increase.
To increase efficiency in crafting professions, players must craft items with a gear score high enough for the current mastery level of the corresponding crafting profession.

Mastery Level

Main Article: Mastery Level

Mastery Level measures a profession's experience level. There are five distinct mastery levels: Newbie, Journeyman, Craftsman, Expert, and Master.

A higher mastery level unlocks:
The ability to gather higher tier resource nodes.
Additional gathering chances.
A higher chance of finding a resource.
A profession-specific bonus to crafted items.

Unlike efficiency, mastery level can never decrease.