Greetings friends. As most of you will have found by now, we have professions in addition to classes on our server. The professions system works different from how it has in any previous SMP (it's a custom plugin), so I'll dump some information as well as answer questions here.
Commands
/profs - shows you all of the professions, and directs you to the menu for each with /[profession] help.
/[profession] - shows you your current experience, perk points, acquired perks and available perks for a given profession.
/[profession] help - shows you the list of commands (note, they're all the same for all professions, just sub in the profession/perk names)
/[profession] info [perk] - shows you a description of what the perk does.
/[profession] buy [perk] - spends a perk point to acquire the perk.
What are the professions?
Alchemy, Farming, Fishing, Forestry, Mining, Smithing, and Digging.
Which one should I choose?
Trick question. They are all always active.
How do I level them?
These professions level passively by doing what's related to the profession. You can see your experience with the /[profession] command. For example, mining stone and ores will gives you experience for mining, harvesting fully grown crops will give experience for farming, catching fish gives experience for fishing, etc.
How much experience do I need to buy a perk?
This is different for each profession, but in general the amounts needed aren't hard to reach. If you focus on any given profession, you should easily be able to complete it in anywhere from 2-6 hours. Alchemy may take longer, as the materials needed to craft potions are harder to find, even though you need less actual experience to get a perk point.
[perk] isn't working!?
Are you sure? First, make sure you read the description. For example, each profession has a perk that enhances combat in some way, however these perks only apply extra damage against mobs, not players. The Igniter perk requires you to have a flint and steel in your offhand. For players having difficulty with the Logger perk, it (and the description) have been updated to require an axe in your main hand. This means you can break a log without breaking the surrounding ones by not using an axe.
Finally, perks that generate drops usually have a cooldown of some kind and don't work on player placed blocks. So with Gemstones you might get free iron nuggets for mining iron ore, but you can't then place the iron ore blocks down and mine them again for more iron nuggets. Punching trees with Liberator will only work on a given tree once every so often, stealing from mobs with a fishing rod and the Thief perk will only work 3 times on any given mob.
If a perk genuinely does seem to not work, then please report it (here or in game).
Why are there only 5 perks for each profession?
The goal with this system is to have nice bonuses, and not something that is mandatory. As stated above, if you want to grind out the perks, it won't take very long. If you let the experience come casually, you'll eventually get perks anyway. In many cases, you'll find a perk or two that you really want, and then not care about the rest. That's fine too. These are bonuses, focus your min/maxing on your skillapi classes.
Future plans?
Yes.
Currently each profession has a perk that gives experience. These are default minecraft xp orbs (except the alchemy one, which can give you bottle o' enchanting). We're still evaluating whether to hook into skillapi and grant class xp instead. If we decide to do that, be assured that fighting monsters will still be much faster than mining to gain class levels, so don't hold your breath for it.
It's also possible we'll expand, either adding more perks to the existing professions or creating entirely new professions as we see fit. We've had some ideas that are really good but don't fit with current professions, and other ideas that do fit but just weren't implemented for time/consistency.
Probably the biggest one, we know it would benefit from a ui. That's going to take some time, especially since we're focused on other things right now. It's on the list, though.
Commands
/profs - shows you all of the professions, and directs you to the menu for each with /[profession] help.
/[profession] - shows you your current experience, perk points, acquired perks and available perks for a given profession.
/[profession] help - shows you the list of commands (note, they're all the same for all professions, just sub in the profession/perk names)
/[profession] info [perk] - shows you a description of what the perk does.
/[profession] buy [perk] - spends a perk point to acquire the perk.
What are the professions?
Alchemy, Farming, Fishing, Forestry, Mining, Smithing, and Digging.
Which one should I choose?
Trick question. They are all always active.
How do I level them?
These professions level passively by doing what's related to the profession. You can see your experience with the /[profession] command. For example, mining stone and ores will gives you experience for mining, harvesting fully grown crops will give experience for farming, catching fish gives experience for fishing, etc.
How much experience do I need to buy a perk?
This is different for each profession, but in general the amounts needed aren't hard to reach. If you focus on any given profession, you should easily be able to complete it in anywhere from 2-6 hours. Alchemy may take longer, as the materials needed to craft potions are harder to find, even though you need less actual experience to get a perk point.
[perk] isn't working!?
Are you sure? First, make sure you read the description. For example, each profession has a perk that enhances combat in some way, however these perks only apply extra damage against mobs, not players. The Igniter perk requires you to have a flint and steel in your offhand. For players having difficulty with the Logger perk, it (and the description) have been updated to require an axe in your main hand. This means you can break a log without breaking the surrounding ones by not using an axe.
Finally, perks that generate drops usually have a cooldown of some kind and don't work on player placed blocks. So with Gemstones you might get free iron nuggets for mining iron ore, but you can't then place the iron ore blocks down and mine them again for more iron nuggets. Punching trees with Liberator will only work on a given tree once every so often, stealing from mobs with a fishing rod and the Thief perk will only work 3 times on any given mob.
If a perk genuinely does seem to not work, then please report it (here or in game).
Why are there only 5 perks for each profession?
The goal with this system is to have nice bonuses, and not something that is mandatory. As stated above, if you want to grind out the perks, it won't take very long. If you let the experience come casually, you'll eventually get perks anyway. In many cases, you'll find a perk or two that you really want, and then not care about the rest. That's fine too. These are bonuses, focus your min/maxing on your skillapi classes.
Future plans?
Yes.
Currently each profession has a perk that gives experience. These are default minecraft xp orbs (except the alchemy one, which can give you bottle o' enchanting). We're still evaluating whether to hook into skillapi and grant class xp instead. If we decide to do that, be assured that fighting monsters will still be much faster than mining to gain class levels, so don't hold your breath for it.
It's also possible we'll expand, either adding more perks to the existing professions or creating entirely new professions as we see fit. We've had some ideas that are really good but don't fit with current professions, and other ideas that do fit but just weren't implemented for time/consistency.
Probably the biggest one, we know it would benefit from a ui. That's going to take some time, especially since we're focused on other things right now. It's on the list, though.
