[Gameplay] II: Professions

    In the world of Telara your characters can choose to work in various professions. This gives them abilities to gather various resources, like wood or metals, or to craft items from resources, like weapons, runes or potions. A character may choose any combination of up to 3 professions. These are leveled independently of adventuring levels and are not tied to the soul system.
     Rift has 12 professions at the moment. These are divided into gathering and crafting professions. Gathering professions are generally independent from crafting professions and do not have any prerequisites. Crafting professions tend to depend on materials that are gathered, crafted by other players or bought from random vendors around the world, or by accessing the in game Rift shop window thing. This means crafting professions are harder to level up and require more dedication, but you can also get some nice rewards from them if you work hard enough at it! One thing to note, especially if you're playing Rift after being a WoW addict (like me) is that Rift lets you have 3 professions (at first) and more if you are willing to spend the credits, unlike WoW, which limits you to 2. If you wish to remove a particular profession for whatever reason, you can simply talk to the profession's trainer and ask to unlearn the skill. You will lose all work gained in that skill though and won't be able to retrieve it even if you relearn the profession.

     Here's a list of professions currently in Rift. For further in depth guides on each of the professions, click on the profession title:

• Apothecary
• Potions, Dye, Serums
• Requires Butchering and Foraging materials
• Armorsmithing
• Chain armor, Plate armor, Shields
• Requires Mining and Butchering
• Artificer
• Necklaces, Rings, Offhands, Staves
• Requires Mining and Foraging
• Butcher
• Crafting profession, allows you to skin animals
• Don't forget to skin all the critters you kill, and keep an eye on others
• Don't forget to train before leaving a city or quest hub so you can get skill points
• Dream Weaver
• A new addition to the game, salvages artifacts to create Dimension items
• Salvage Artifacts to get Dream Ribbons!
• Common Artifacts-1 Dream Ribbon
• Uncommon Artifacts-2 Dream Ribbons
• Rare Artifacts-5 Dream Ribbons
• Epic Artifacts-20 Dream Ribbons
• Legendary Artifacts-50 Dream Ribbons
• Fishing
• Crafting profession, allows you to find and catch fish around Telara
• You can turn in multitudes of common fish for rarer fish
• Goes hand in hand with Survival

 

• Foraging
• Crafting profession, allows you to pick flowers and harvest wood
• Always train the maximum skill level before going out in the world
• Mining
• Crafting profession, allows you to harvest ore
• Always train maximum skill level before leaving a city or quest hub
• Outfitting
• Cloth armor, Leather armor, Augments
• Requires Butchering
• Runecrafting
• Runes (stat boosts for your armor and weapons)
• Works best with an armor or weapon making profession
• Survival
• Food, Buffs, Tents, Outdoorsy stuff
• Works best with Fishing
• Weaponsmithing
• Swords, daggers, Axes, Spears
• Requires Mining and Foraging

    Professions are pretty easy to understand, pick up, and level up in Rift. And you can always use or sell what you create or harvest, either for yourself, your guildies, or putting on the AH. Although personally I'd prefer to give them to someone before selling on the Auction House, but that's just me. Different professions can be found in different locations in your starter area, as well as sparsely located around the various leveling zones of Telara, but it's pretty easy to just take a Porticum to your faction's capital city or Tempest Bay and pick up/train a profession there. The materials needed to level up your profession change the higher your skill level gets, and also become harder to make, requiring more ingredients, and larger quantities, but if you keep your professions up to date as you level it shouldn't be too much of a problem. You can also save profession leveling until you need a break from questing or dungeon crawling and than you can just go farming for several hours or a day, depending on your attention span and patience. Me, I don't have much patience.
     Having a profession is of course, not required but it does make it easier to gear your character as your leveling, especially if you're leveling via Instant Adventure (IA) or PvP and don't want to spend your currency. You can also create cool wardrobe items with it if you like having different clothing on. Also, don't forget to use the Salvage tool to help cut the cost of materials and to make new items with!!