Field professions

Find your trade's guild

Each trade has its own guild hall, in the town beside its first site. A sign by the door says the guild is inside. The Mining Guild works in Geffen's Miners' Lodge (the door north-east of the central plaza, 138,138), the Fishing Guild in its hall in north-west Alberta (93,205), the Relic Surveyors' Society in Morroc's Surveyors' Hall just inside the north-west gate (52,259), and the Cooking Guild in Payon's kitchen (223,117). Inside each hall you will find the guildmaster for directions, your journal and conditions, a supplier who sells the trade's tools, the guild's specialist, and a clerk with one small work order a day. Each guild sells only its own trade's tools: a reusable Prospector's Pick, Fishing Rod or Survey Kit for 300 Zeny, and Grinding Grit, Fishing Bait or Survey Paper for 8 Zeny each. Ask your guild for directions to its sites, for your journal, or for today's conditions in that trade.

Keep the matching tool in your bag. Each finished attempt uses one matching supply, whether or not it succeeds. Cancelling costs nothing and gives nothing.

Three ways to read the landscape

Everything gathered has a use somewhere, and the gatherer-only finds never drop from monsters. All of it can be traded except restored artifacts, which stay with your account.

Working a site

Walk up to a mining rock, fishing spot or relic site and click it. A small panel shows the work, the time left and a Cancel button. An attempt takes from about 25 seconds at the beginner sites to about 40 at the hardest.

Each attempt offers one optional moment. Ignore it and you get the ordinary result, never a worse one. A good find is revealed with its icon and a burst of colour over the original Ragnarok effect, and nearby players see it too.

• A monster's hit no longer wipes out your work. It disturbs you and lowers that attempt's chances a little.
• Moving, casting, talking to an NPC, changing maps, falling or disconnecting cancels the attempt without cost.
• Up to four party members working the same site help each other a little: better chances and more experience for everyone.

Fishing: reading the water

After you cast, watch the float. It may bob once or twice with false nibbles before it dips hard with a splash. Press Hook! on the panel, or Space, when it dips. The window is generous and judged by the server. A clean hook improves the catch; striking at a nibble spooks the fish and costs a little, never the whole attempt.

Before the bite, the ripples hint at the fish's size: small rings, a wide swirl or a long trailing wake. Cancelling is free, so you can let a small fish go and cast again for a bigger one.

Each bank has its own handful of species, and many bite only by night, by day, in rain, in storms, in snow or in one season. Every catch has a size, and the very biggest are Trophy size. The journal's Angler's Log keeps your best fish of each species, with where, when and in what weather you caught it. Angler Maren reads out the server's record board, with the angler's name beside each record.

• Maren makes bait from monster drops: Grub Bait for more ordinary fish, a Glowing Lure for night species and a Pearl Lure for bigger fish. Choose your bait with Bait my hook.
• River Pearls sometimes come up with a catch.
• Maren renders a named fish into Fish Oil. Alchemists can use it in place of Alcohol for a Fire Bottle, or of an Immortal Heart for an Acid Bottle.
• Maren also grills fish into Grilled Fish, a treat any pet eats happily.

Mining: reading the rock

Two seams glint on every rock. Choose Steady for a dependable yield, or Bright for a real shot at the rare finds. A bright seam can collapse into gravel, and some bright seams run deep while others are brittle, so it is a genuine gamble. If you do not choose, you work the steady seam.

Night brings out Starlit Ore, storms can leave Thunderstone, and the two deepest classic mines hold Runestone Blanks. Geodes turn up from time to time: Assayer Holt cracks them for a small fee, and they can hold rough stones, gems and occasionally an Old Blueprint.

• Blacksmiths smelt Starlit Ore into a Starlit Ingot, an optional forging catalyst, and forge better picks and rods from Steel at the Mini Furnace.
• Rune keepers make a Greater Chisel from a Runestone Blank and grind Thunderstone into Rune Dust.
• From Mining 40 the ore purifiers in Prontera, Payon, Alberta and Morroc take 4 rough stones instead of 5, and from Mining 80 only 3. Gathering never changes refining odds.

Relic Surveying: reading the ground

A survey documents three layers before revealing an impression. On the last layer choose Brush for a safe, intact impression, or Dig for a chance at a pristine one, at the risk of chipping it. Intact and pristine impressions yield some of the site's Relic Fragments, and a new impression also turns up the Stone Fragment or mineral find the site promises.

Each site keeps a catalog, shown in your Survey Collection. A familiar impression lifted intact leaves a rubbing: Archivist Corin can study a rubbing into an impression you are still missing, and three rubbings trade for an Old Blueprint. Fog is good surveying weather.

• Restore a finished catalog at Archivist Corin with the site's Relic Fragments, a few materials and some Zeny. Each restored artifact is an account-bound accessory with a small bonus and a title, such as the Payon Ward Talisman, which softens Undead attacks.
• Each Old Blueprint teaches your character one new recipe: a dish, the Stormglass Ingot for Blacksmiths, or Runewright's Fusion for rune keepers.

Night, weather and seasons

• Night: more experience at open field sites, and night-only finds such as Starlit Ore and night-biting fish.
• Rain: better fishing. Storms: Thunderstone and storm species. Fog: better relic finds. Snow: cold-water species.
• Seasons: each season lasts one real week. Spring helps fishing, summer helps surveying, autumn helps relic finds, winter helps Starlit Ore, and each season has a fish of its own.
• Each region reads the shared weather in its own way: the cold north turns rain to snow, the deserts stay dry, and Niflheim's gloom never lifts.
• Dangerous dungeon sites pay better, in both chances and experience. The Field Sites list marks them.

Levels, perks and mastery

Each profession has its own levels, from 1 to 100, kept per character and unchanged by job changes. Classic sites open at levels 1, 20, 40, 60 and 80, and the regional sites at 60 and 80. Levelling is quicker than it was at launch: everyone kept all the experience they had earned, and their levels were recalculated upward.

Every 10 levels brings a perk: an easier hook, faster swings and brushing, better yields, or a signature insight such as knowing whether a bright seam runs deep. Perks & Titles in your journal lists them. At level 100 you earn the trade's mastery title, a gilded tool and a gold aura while you work. When a trade levels up, a short banner names the new level and any perk you just earned.

• Blacksmiths forge Fine, Tempered and Starlit Picks, and Fine, Angler's and Starlit Rods. They count as your tool and help from levels 30, 60 and 90.
• Tovin's missing-survey outing for the Wayfarers hands over a Wayfarer's Survey Kit and points the way to the first regional relic site.

Glints

Every so often a Glint opens at a site for ten minutes: a Gem Pocket at a mine, a School of Fish at a bank or a Collapsed Tomb at a relic site. Everyone on that map hears about it and sees it on the minimap, and so does every gatherer online whose level opens that site, wherever they are. That trade's guild and your field journal name any Glint that is open. A Glint is generous with the site's best finds, a few for each gatherer.

Some Glints are guarded by a Rare monster. It carries a Break shield and can be called on the Lantern Watch board. Defeat it, and the Glint opens for everyone who helped. Everyday sites never run dry; Glints are where you race to be first.

The regional sites

Each newer region has a mine with its own stone, a bank with its own fish and a relic site whose catalog tells the region's old history. Each guild lists them on a second page of its directions. Levels are shown in brackets.

• Finish a region's record and bring it to that region's lantern keeper with some of its Relic Fragments and stones. The keeper reads it once and relights the old lantern: you earn the region's title, an Old Blueprint and two Survey Notes. Reading all seven earns Keeper of Every Road.
• The Surveyors' Registrar in Morroc trades two rubbings from one region for a Survey Note. Reading a note there reveals where that region's next Glint will rise.
• Assayer Holt trades three stones from one region for a Geode.

Your profession journal

Press Ctrl+P, or ask your trade's guild, to open the journal: each trade's level, experience and finds. From there open Field Sites (every site with its level, place, finds and today's conditions), the Angler's Log, your Survey Collection, Perks & Titles, the Kitchen and the Field Almanac. The journal is a record; you gather by clicking a site in the world.

The Field Almanac collects your ore and gem finds, your fish and the record board, your catalogs and artifacts, the Glints you worked, your recipes, the regions' chronicles, your titles and the season.

Cooking

Cooking turns your catch into meals for the road. Cook Hessa at the Cooking Guild in Payon, a cook at every inn and the cook at Mera's roadside camp prepare dishes from a fish, a monster drop or two and a shop ingredient. A meal gives a small bonus for 25 to 30 minutes, and only one meal is in effect at a time. Cooking has its own levels, from 1 to 50, and 25 recipes. See Cooking for the full list.

On the road and in the castles

• On open fields the Lantern Road sometimes offers an Unmarked Dig Site or a Spring by the Road. Both are free to use, need no tools, and give finds and profession experience.
• Each siege castle has a rich mining vein in its Lantern chamber, or in Neuschwanstein a fishing moat. Only the holding guild can work it, from Mining or Fishing 40, and it is sealed while a siege runs. It is the only source of Crownstone.

Gather with care

Higher sites lie in real fields and dungeons. Profession levels do not make a trip safe, and the usual death rules apply. Characters in the hard campaign gather normally and earn extra experience at dangerous sites. If one falls, the Field Almanac keeps a memorial line for their best catch or finished record.