Profession

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The player can practice all kinds of gathering and crafting professions by gathering and crafting most of the items in the game, but players can only gather the rarest resources and craft the best items if they focus on one gathering profession and one crafting profession.

In Corepunk, the professions system is used to keep track of gathering and crafting. There are two profession types - crafting and gathering. There are 8 professions in total, each one specializing in a different resource or item.

Gathering

See: [[Gathering]]

There are 4 different gathering professions:
Butchery
Herbalism
Logging
Mining

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

A Fragrant Root has been identified.

The process of gathering resources can be outlined as follows:
Click on a gatherable resource to gather it. These come in the forms of ore veins, trees, bushes, and low-level dead animals. When hovering over a gatherable node with your cursor, it should change to represent the profession it is related to. Upon starting the gathering process, a progress bar will appear above the skill menu. At first, the progress bar will show a generic icon and the name of the resource the player is gathering from.
There is a chance of identifying the item. Once an item is identified, the icon and name will change to the respective icon and name of the specific item that has been found. If the progres bar finishes and no item was identified, no item will be gathered. The gathering process can also fail once an item has been identified, and no item will be gathered. After an item has been identified and the progress bar finishes without failing, the item will drop from the resource node ready to be collected. This process repeats until no more gathering attempts can occur at a resource, at which point the resource disappears and no more can be collected from that spot.

Crafting

See: [[Crafting]]

There are 4 different gathering professions, all with very different mechanics:
Alchemy
Construction
Mysticism
Weaponsmith

Items have two main judgements of satus: tier, and quality. They are very similar and have different implications on the crafted item depending on the profession.

Tier

See: [[Tier]]

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.
In general, an item's tier represents how good its primary stats are.

Quality

See: [[Quality]]

There are five possible qualities of a crafted item: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary. In general, an item's quality represents how many secondary stats there are.

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

See: [[Efficiency]]

"In terms of game design, we’re not always advocates of rigid distinctions. More often than not, we favor mechanics where there is a choice, and that choice has both positive and negative consequences."

Artificial Core's design philosophy includes the idea that in-game decisions are not clear-cut. Efficiency is an example of this.

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 of the same mastery level as the corresponding gathering profession.
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.

However, 100% efficiency is shared among the gathering professions, and a different 100% efficiency is shared among the crafting professions. Therefore, upon increasing the efficiency of one profession, the efficiency of the least-used profession of the same type decreases in tandem.

Mastery Level

There are three distinct mastery levels:
Beginner
Advanced
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 can never decrease. However, upon reaching Master in one profession, it will be harder to progress another since higher tier resources must be gathered.