This article explains the various professions available for a player to pick and how to change professions should you change your mind. We also go into detail about the starter profession known as the Colonist.
There are many professions within SL Colonies. All professions have particular tasks which they specialise in when it comes to gathering, farming & crafting. No one profession can do absolutely everything.
One problem we saw with a lot of systems out there in Second Life is that people with a lot of L$ and a lot of time up their sleeves could setup mass production farms and make everything a system has to offer on their own - flooding the markets and drowning the economy with inflation and over supply.
SL Colonies aims to fix this issue by requiring players to pick a profession and earn their way up by crafting and doing tasks in that profession. As you work in your profession, you will gain skill points, known as Crafting Experience (CXP) which will give you new abilities within your craft, e.g. access to new recipes, faster crafting times, higher yields, reduced trading & travelling costs just to name a few.
Should you find that you wish to change your profession, you may do so at a cost of 500 CXP multiplied by your current player level. Your player level is a total of all the levels you have been in your professions (+1). For example, if you were a Level 3 farmer and have also been a Level 2 Merchant, to change profession again it would cost 3+2+1 = 6 x 500CXP = 3,000 CXP.
You will retain the memory of the recipes you had already learned that are shown in your recipe book and still be able to craft them. However, you will no longer earn CXP for crafting items within your old profession. You will also not be able to learn new recipes from your old profession, so if new recipes do become available and you wish to learn them, you will have to switch back at an increased cost.
This also opens the game to lots of roleplay and trade potential. A new RPG sim will have positions vacant for players to take on, people will have to travel from place to place in order to get the materials they require to produce for their profession. Or, a sim may focus on what they have the best abilities for. Perhaps your land will focus on minerals from mining, or farming various crops. Or focus on crafting from the produce made and gathered by others. Or, you may enjoy travelling from land to land and see yourself more as a trader, seeing what’s available in the various markets - buying low and selling higher elsewhere to seed places that do not have access to other materials or do not know where to find them.
Base Skills - The Colonist
When a player first registers in SL Colonies, they will start off as a profession known as a Colonist. This is a base profession that enables you to try out all the different professions before making a decision on what your style of play might be.
You will earn CXP doing all the types of crafting stations.
NOTE: As a Colonist, you are limited to crafting Level 0 recipes from the crafting tables. You will need to have an active profession in order to craft Level 1 or higher.
You will also not remember any recipes you have crafted, so no quick way to craft more than 1 item at a time.
Your first profession will cost you 500CXP. So play around with all the stations and gather the CXP needed to make your starting decision. Remember that you can change later.
Once you have picked a profession, you will still be able to craft Level 0 recipes from other professions, but you will no longer earn their CXP for doing so.
Any recipes you now learn in your given profession will be stored in your Recipe Book which will allow you to craft without having to add each individual ingredient one by one and clicking craft. And it also allows you to craft multiples of the same item - saving you tonnes of time and getting bulk CXP.
Below are the professions available within SL Colonies.
To learn about each professions recipes, you can go here: Recipes
To learn about each crafting station for each profession, you can go here: Product Tutorials
Brewer
Brewers have a fascinating job ahead of them. This is one of the professions that are considered limitless, because the items you can craft have no real set recipes. You are responsible for not only growing and harvesting grapes and hops in the vineyards, but you also press juices and oils.
You mash different ingredients together to obtain as much of the sugars available from different ingredients and ferment them through a realistic fermentation process that requires your sugars to break down with different types of yeasts over time to gain your desired alcohol content and taste, which you can choose to then distill if your product requires a distilling process.
Your alcoholic beveridges can then be placed into aging barrels. And these increase the benefits of your drink over time. Some members of the community have had wines aging for more than two years!
There are no set recipes through these processes (except for the wine press), and you can combine whatever foods containing sugars and starch into your creation. So your imagination is the limit here.
Further to this, you are able to bring your creations into a physical prim object. There are bottling stations available that allow you to bring your finished product into bottles that smelters make, or barrels that carpenters make for you.
The bottle or barrel can be branded with your logos and act as vendors that destribute their contents to players or trade the full bottles and barrels as you wish through player trade!
Butcher
The butcher will work with the various meats brought to them by hunters and farmers. Butchers are the only profession that can transform a ‘meat carcass’ into their various edible counterparts. When cutting up a carcass, the butcher gets a set amount of portions based on the animal type. These portions are combined to make the various cuts of meet for that animal type.
These recipes are all set recipes in the system and is a simple profession to learn and grasp.
We do plan on adding more features to this profession over time, including smoking cabinets and sausage making (delicatessen style meats).
Carpenter
The carpenter gets to work with the various types of wood cuts and wood scraps that the Woodsman has provided, as well as using parts provided by the Smith and even the Rangers leather to make various tools and items needed by other players.
There are loads of recipes of various levels to learn in this profession. All recipes in this profession are set system recipes.
Cook
The cook is a very interesting profession. It is like the brewer in that you are not limited to what you can do with cooking.
If you are not a cook, you can still use the cooking station, but you are limited to using a combination of 3 ingredients only, which is still a lot, considering the limitless combinations you can come up with. You will not earn CXP for your work however, and your recipes will not store in a recipe book. You’ll need to remember the recipe each time you wish to cook, and it will be limited to one batch per cycle.
If you are a cook, however, as you level up, you will get to add an extra ingredient to your recipes. Making your cooking more and more complex as you grow. And, your recipes are all stored in your own recipe book forever (even if you leave your profession as a cook).
As you come up with recipes, be they drinks or food, you get to name your own creation, type out its description and select an icon to help signify the type of dish.
We allow players to submit their own mesh creations when it comes to food and drink, so that we can script them and turn their food into rezzable foods.
Enchanter
This profession is currently inactive. It is in the pipeline (has been for a while) and will be our magic class. You will be able to enchant weapons and create spells and encantations for players to use.
Farmer
Farmers are one of the most common professions in this game. And that’s not just because it’s a fun thing to do, but there is so much work to be done and a lot of Crafting Experience (CXP) to be earned doing it.
Farmers not only have different types of fields to handle (Grain fields, vegetable fields, wet fields), but also are responsible for milling these grains into flours. Farmers are also responsible for breeding animals that are to be used for other needed raw materials.
Farmers also use the basket weaver to make various baskets and bags, as well as a pottery station to make different pots.
It’s a very busy profession on a larger world and will keep you busy all through your days and require a lot of management on your part, to get the perfect balance.
Herbalist
The Herbalist is another profession that gets into limitless recipes. The herbalist has two stations currently. Starting with the Herbalist Table that allows for the combination of herbs and flowers and other items grown in a Herb Garden, to insect parts and odds and ends that go into various potions and poisons that are already set in the system.
Once a herbalist obtains the required level requirements, they can start playing around with the Alchemy station. This starts opening the doors to researching ingredients to determine their powers. Followed by being able to create various strong infusions.
Infusions are a combination you come up with of any drink from the system (including alcohols), and 5 herbs. Infusions will combine all the stats from the drink you chose to use, and the 5 herbs you chose to use, and then double the stats of that combination. Making them a powerful addition to any potion later on. They can also be used in cooking to make powerful foods.
At the highest level, herbalists will be able to create concoctions. Which are your own potion recipes. You will be able to combine any number of ingredients into your potions. Including an infusion you came up with.
The higher level item you create, the more CXP you will earn.
As you create your recipe, you will play with the brewing times and the heat of the alchemy station. The more heat, the more volatile the stats might be.
You will need to find the perfect balance for your creations. You will need to either test the potion out on yourself, or get a friend to come test your potion before you determine if it is worthwhile to scribe that recipe and name it as a permanent recipe in the sytem.
Any ingredient in the game can be used in alchemy. Including weapon parts, animal parts. Anything that is in the system can be thrown in to make your dream potion.
A herbalist can even bottle their potions by purchasing bottles from a smelter and pout their potions inside, stick their own label onto it, name the bottle and rez it in world for everyone to see!
Merchant
The Merchant is an interesting profession within SL Colonies, in that it does not do any crafting. Instead, its role is to visit other colonies and participate in trade. The objective of the merchant is to trade goods between Marketplace HUBS in order to earn CXP and coins as a reward.
Merchants also gain discounts at marketplaces based on their level and their charisma - earning them better pricing which may compete with private vendors for some items.
Ranger
While rangers do have some crafting, they are more a combat class within SL Colonies and get bonuses to combat as they gain experience and level.
There are many animals and monsters in the SL Colonies system that players can hunt. Some will run away, some will attack you. Rangers are the only profession that will earn CXP from killing animals and monsters.
Animals can be skinned by a ranger and turned into high quality leathers and even parchment that other professions need.
SL Colonies is currently working on a dungeon system, and rangers will be the best suited profession to tackle these due to the bonuses in combat rangers obtain.
Rangers get bonuses in weapon damage per level, so they will make quick work of higher level monsters and bosses found in these dungeons.
Seamstress
The seamstress works with various wools and cottons, converting them into strings. They are able to create unlimited choices of coloured dyes to apply to their materials and then create patterns in the loom for rolls of cloth materials. These materials are then made into different types of bedding, pillows, cushions and table clothes that can be applied to furniture owned by a player. They’ll even be able to make various items of clothing that players can wear in-world!
Smelter
While anyone can mine, only the smelters have the knowledge of how to smelt the ores into their precious metals. Only the smelter knows which metals to combine together to infuse into even rarer metals. Smelters also have the ability to cast directly into certain moulds as well. Their metals are highly sought after by the many smithies spanning all lands of SL Colonies.
Not only can smelters make the various ingot types, they can also make glasswares and bottles for use by brewers and herbalists and other professions.
Smith
Smithies traditionally did not also smelt their own metals. Smithies are too busy using their precious metals which they have purchased at market to keep up with demand for all the required tools, equipment and weapons that many lands require. Their skills are highly sought after, and high level smithies can focus further on weapon smithing, putting various weapon parts together to create powerful weapons with magical stats!
Woodsman
Every civilisation is in need of wood. This is where the woodsmen come in. Logging communities are a necessity, and these men and women know how to size logs and planks to meet specific needs. Wood supplies are highly needed by carpenters who will be able to create tools, equipment, furniture and decorations for the many peoples of SL Colonies!