ThornswoodProfessions and classes
Skyrim's own levelling is switched off here. Nothing you do raises a vanilla skill and no perk menu opens when you sleep. What replaced it is three choices, made once in the game, that decide what you are for.
A profession. What you make, or how you fight. A sub profession. Which half of that you actually do. A class. Where the raw material comes from.
Those are three separate choices, not three words for the same one. You are a profession and a class at once. A Smith who took Miner digs their own ore. A Smith who took Hunter does not, and has to know somebody who did.
What nobody gets is all of it. One profession, one half of it, one class, and everything outside that is another person.
Where you choose
A new character wakes in the creation hall and makes a face. Then the panel behind K opens on its own, with your class, your profession and the half of it you will make your own, and the town you start in. Only the town has to be chosen before you leave the hall, and choosing it sends you to that town. Your class and your profession can wait: leave them for later and pick them in the world, from the same panel. What waiting means is further down.
The same panel, on K, is where you spend skill points for the rest of your character's life, and where the recipe book tells you what your half can make at the rank you have reached. A new character gets forty gold once, and the clothes they stand in: what else you carry, you earn, make, buy or are given.
Professions
Pick one, then pick one side of it. The side is not a flavour, it is what you are able to make at all.
| Profession | The two halves |
|---|---|
| Warrior | Bulwark, holding the line, or Berserker, breaking it |
| Mage | See below. It works differently |
| Alchemist | Blightbrewer, poisons and harm, or Physicker, medicine and restoration |
| Cook | Hearthcook, dinners, or Confectioner, desserts |
| Smith | Platewright, armour, or Edgewright, weapons |
| Enchanter | Bladebinder, weapons, or Wardweaver, armour and apparel |
| Tailor | Liverywright, robes and faction dress, or Haberdasher, common and fine clothing |
| Woodworker | Charburner, firewood through to coke, or Woodwright, bows, arrows and instruments |
You get the novice work of your sister half for nothing. An Edgewright knows how to beat out a plain iron cuirass, because anybody who works a forge does. What they cannot do is go any further than novice with it, and a steel cuirass is not novice work. For that you find a Platewright, and that is a conversation rather than a menu.
Everything outside your own profession you cannot do at all, unless somebody teaches you. There is a way to learn a little of it and it is further down.
What your half actually stops you making
Your half decides what you are able to make, and the server holds you to it. The crafting menu at a forge, an oven, a tanning rack or a workbench lists only what you may make there, and a bench with nothing on it for you does not open. Whatever reaches the server anyway is either your half's work or it is not. If it is not, it does not get made and you keep your materials.
Smelting ore into ingots and tanning a hide into leather are Platewright work at novice, so an Edgewright can do them as the novice of that sister half. They are not open to anybody else. One row per ingot stays, and the duplicate rows are cut.
Until you pick a profession, you cannot make anything that is somebody's work. Every bench tells you so and to press K and choose one. Picking a profession is what gives you a half, a rank to climb in it and work that is yours, and from then on the three answers below are the rule.
Three answers, and every one of them names somebody.
Your own half, at or under your rank. It gets made, and the hours count towards your next rank the same way a seam counts for a miner.
Your sister half, up to novice. It gets made. That is the plain iron plate above, and it is as far as it goes.
Your sister half past novice, or any half that is not yours at all. It does not get made, and you are told whose work it is and what rank it asks for, so you know who to go and find.
The recipe book, on K
You do not have to find the wall the hard way. Press K and there is a Recipe book beside the other sections, and it says what you can make right now: one column for your own half, one for your sister half, and one for each half a Master of another profession has taught you. Each column carries the rank you are at in it, the kinds of thing it makes, and how many of each kind is open to you out of how many there are.
It lists kinds and not items, on purpose. A Tailor's half runs to hundreds of garments and a list of them is not an answer to "what can I make". Robes and body wear, hats and hoods, shoes and light boots, gloves: that is what the book says, with a count beside each. A mage sees their spell book here instead; a mage who was taught a trade sees both.
The numbers move on their own as your rank climbs. Nothing in the book is clicked, marked or sent: it is what the server already knows about you, drawn.
The two halves that gate nothing
Bulwark and Berserker. Warriors do not make things. Their half is how they fight, and there is nothing at a workbench for it to be about. A warrior's half is a set of combat maneuvers instead, on a key of its own, and more of them open as the rank climbs.
The alchemy lab and the arcane enchanter
Skyrim has no alchemy or enchanting recipes. A potion is worked out from what your ingredients have in common, and an enchantment from what you have learned by breaking things down, inside the menu, so there is no recipe for the server to hold you to. The bench is held instead.
An alchemy lab works for an Alchemist, either a Blightbrewer or a Physicker. An arcane enchanter works for an Enchanter, either a Bladebinder or a Wardweaver. Anybody else is turned away at the bench. Somebody who has not chosen a profession yet can use neither, and is told to press K and choose one.
Tempering and repair
There is no tempering. The sharpening wheel and the armour table do not open for anybody, because nothing is made at either.
A piece is mended with a kit instead: a Weapon Kit, an Armor Kit or a Sewing Kit. With one in your pack, the inventory names the key that opens the repair panel. The half that makes a kit mends with it to 120%, past new: an Edgewright with a Weapon Kit, a Platewright with an Armor Kit, a Haberdasher with a Sewing Kit. Anybody else, the sister half included, mends to 100%.
Gear wears with use. Each hit takes 1% off the armour and clothing of the person hit and off the weapon that landed it, and a piece at 0% can break. Its condition is written on its name whenever it is not at 100%: Iron Sword (85%).
The Mage, which is the odd one
A mage picks two schools, then two starting spells.
The spells do not have to be one from each. Take both from the same school and you are further along in it on day one, and the other school is still sitting there with its starting spells unclaimed, waiting for you to come back and pick from them later. Spread them across both and you begin wider and shallower.
You can also take neither of them yet. The two slots stay open, and you spend them later on something further up that you would rather have than either of the spells you were offered at the start.
Neither is the right answer. It is the first real decision a mage makes.
Climbing it
Rank does two things for a mage rather than one. Higher spells open, and more spell slots open with them, so a mage gets wider and stronger at the same time instead of trading one for the other.
At Master a mage picks a third school.
Magic for everybody else
It is not closed to the rest of the world. It is just not free.
Somebody who did not take Mage needs two things to learn a spell: the book, and a mage at Master rank willing to take them on as an apprentice. There is a cap on how many spells anyone can learn that way, so it stays a thing you know rather than turning into a mage with extra steps.
That is a scene between two people, and the master gets to say no.
Spell tomes
A spell tome teaches its spell only to somebody who could have picked that spell anyway, mage or not, Enchanter or not. Reading one asks three things:
- A spell point to spend. A mage earns them by rank, and two more with each semester of study at the College of Winterhold, one semester a day. Anybody a Master mage taught earns one with each semester there, and holds two spells at most.
- The rank the spell asks for in its school. Apprentice and Adept spells are Advanced here, Expert spells Expert, Master spells Master.
- A spell from the rank below, of the same school, already known. A Novice spell needs none.
If any of the three is missing, nothing is learned, you keep the tome, and the line in chat says which ones. What a staff binds is not learned this way: see Staff spells, below.
A semester is the Study button on the College page of the K panel, pressed inside the College. Its day is kept on your character, so logging out does not start it over.
Staff spells
A staff binds one spell, and a staff enchanter only makes the staff for somebody who has unlocked that spell for staves. Enchanters do it the way a mage learns spells, with points of their own and no tome:
- A staff spell point to spend. An Enchanter starts with two, earns one with every Bladebinder rank, and two more at Master.
- The rank. Your Bladebinder rank decides how high you can go: a Novice unlocks Novice staff spells, an Advanced one Advanced, and so on up to Master. Bladebinders climb it as their own half; a Wardweaver holds it as the sister half, at Novice until a Master Bladebinder takes them on.
- A staff spell from the rank below, already unlocked. A Novice one needs none.
Press K and open Staff spells, mark the ones you want, and press Unlock. If one of the three is missing, nothing is spent and the line says which.
Somebody who is not an Enchanter can only have staff spells the way a non-mage has magic. A Master Bladebinder has to teach them first, which is one of their two other trades. Then they learn a staff spell from its tome, it takes one of their places, they hold two at most, and only Novice ones.
An unlocked staff spell is on your character as a spell too, because Skyrim's crafting menu lists a staff only for somebody who knows its spell.
Classes
This is the half of the world that produces rather than makes. Each one owns a verb that nobody else in the game has.
| Class | What only they can do |
|---|---|
| Hunter | Loot an animal body. Everyone else walks past the carcass |
| Fisher | Fish: with a fishing pole in your pack, press E at salmon, clams, pearl oysters, horker meat and slaughterfish egg nests in the water. A crude pole fishes novice water, a fine one fishes through expert, and a master one fishes every water |
| Gatherer | Gather material out of the world |
| Miner | Mine |
| Farmer | Farm |
Those are exclusive, not preferential, and they have nothing to do with your profession. Somebody who took Miner gets nothing off a dead elk whatever they do for a living, and a Hunter cannot pull a flower out of the ground. If you want leather you know a hunter, and if you do not know one yet, that is the game telling you to go and meet people.
Waiting on a class is the other way round from waiting on a profession. Until you pick one, none of the five is yours: every seam, carcass, plant, fishing spot and crop turns you away and tells you to press K and choose.
Roleplay only (not Class or Profession)
Five names from the old flat list of trades are not a Class and not a Profession. You may roleplay as any of them. You do not pick them on K, and they grant no exclusive verb, craft half, or other class or profession privilege.
| Name | What that means |
|---|---|
| Bard | Play and perform; a lute, flute or drum played from the emote wheel, or Sing there, helps people resting nearby, and is not a class ability |
| Merchant | Trade and keep shop in character |
| Priest | Faith and rites in character |
| Scholar | Study and lore in character |
| Thief | Larceny and stealth in character |
Characters who still carry one of those old keys are asked to pick a real Class and Profession. Gatherer and Tailor remain in the tables above.
The tools
Four picks need a tool in your pack before the work happens: three of the classes and one whole profession. In the pack is enough; nothing has to be equipped.
| Who | What they carry |
|---|---|
| Miner | A pickaxe |
| Farmer | A shovel |
| Fisher | A crude fishing pole, or a fine or master one |
| Woodworker | A woodcutter's axe |
You are handed yours the moment you pick. After that it wears with the work: each one has 50 uses in it, you are told when it is worn thin, and when it breaks the next one comes from a smith, or for a pole from a woodwright. With no tool in your pack the seam, the plot, the water, the chopping block and the kiln turn you away, and nothing hands you a free one.
Any of them counts. The game has two shovels that look and read exactly alike, and six things it calls a pickaxe including the Notched Pickaxe and the ancient Nordic one that cuts stalhrim. Whichever you are carrying, the work happens. A war pick is a weapon and not a mining tool, so that one does not.
Skyrim has no hoe. There is no such item in the game, and there is none in any of the mods we load on top of it either; every one of them was searched. So farming asks for a shovel, which a smith forges, and a shovel is what we mean whenever this page says farming needs a tool.
Nothing else asks for one. Gathering and hunting need your hands.
Farming
Farm is the Farmer's verb, and this is what it means. A farm is made of plots. A plot is one crop growing in a field, and every crop in every farm in Skyrim is one of them.
A farm nobody has worked yet is standing as it always was, and the first crop you bring in off each row is yours. That is where your first cabbage comes from, and your first wheat, and your first apple. Go and find the field. After that the row is empty, and only sowing fills it again, so a farm is full exactly once.
A farmer claims a farm, one farm at a time, with X at a crop. The claim is how the farm knows whose work it is. A farm nobody has claimed is open to anybody with the class, and that is where a new farmer starts. A claim lapses if the farm is left unworked for 14 days, so nobody puts their name on good ground and then walks away from it.
To plant, stand at an empty plot with the crop in your pack and plant it. The crop is its own seed: a cabbage plants a cabbage. Then it grows in real time, and how long it takes depends on what it is. A higher rank shortens the wait, because a farmer who knows the ground gets more out of it than somebody who is guessing at it.
When it is ripe you bring it in, and the plot is empty again. It does not come back on its own. If you want another, you plant another. What you bring in is more than the one you put in the ground, so a farm that is worked grows and a farm that nobody works stops.
Where the crops come from
The crop is its own seed, so the question of where the first one comes from is the whole question. Three answers, and none of them is a shop.
The fields themselves. Every farm in Skyrim is standing full right now, and the first bring-in off each row is real. That is one crop per row in the life of the world, so it is finite, and it takes walking rather than waiting.
What is already lying about. Cabbages, potatoes and leeks sit in barrels and on tables in every hold. Pick one up and you can grow it.
Another farmer. Somebody who has worked an orchard has apples, and you have whatever they have not got round to. This is the same answer as everything else here: if you want leather you know a hunter.
A farmer who has run out entirely is handed a few of the common crops when they stand at a plot with nothing to sow, so nobody is ever stuck with an empty pack in an empty field. It is not often and it is not much. It is a way back in, not a living.
What you are allowed to grow
Rank gates the crop, the same way it gates a seam for a miner. Standing in front of an empty plot is not permission to grow whatever you like in it.
| Rank | What opens |
|---|---|
| Novice | The common field crops: cabbage, leek, potato, gourd, carrot |
| Advanced | The ones that take a season: wheat, ash yam, tomato |
| Expert | The orchard |
| Master | Everything |
A rank never stops you carrying a crop or eating it. It decides what you may put in the ground and what you may bring in, and nothing else. A novice can find an apple. A novice cannot run an orchard.
The rank a crop asks for is about how hard it is to grow and not about how rare it is: a new farmer with nothing to sow could never do the work that earns the next rank.
How long a crop takes to come up and how much a harvest gives back are set on the server, and they are tuned as the team watches people farm.
Getting better at it
Four ranks, and you climb them by doing the work rather than by being here a long time.
| Rank | What it is |
|---|---|
| Novice | Where everybody starts. The basics of your half, and not much of it |
| Advanced | The everyday work. Most of what a hold actually needs |
| Expert | The things people come looking for you specifically to get |
| Master | The short list. Few people hold it and everyone knows who they are |
Each rank opens more of what you are able to make, inside your own half of your own profession and nowhere else. An Edgewright at Master still cannot make a steel cuirass. Each rank also gives you one free skill point, below.
What Master actually gets you
Reaching Master opens one thing that nobody below it has. It is the reason the rank is worth the years rather than just a word over your head.
| Profession | The Master perk |
|---|---|
| Warrior | Warlord. Every maneuver of your half, and you can teach novice combat to people who are not warriors |
| Mage | Archmage. A third school of magic, and the standing to apprentice non-mages |
| Alchemist | Master Chemist. Every batch yields two instead of one |
| Cook | Grand Chef. Every batch yields two instead of one |
| Smith | Mastercraft. The 120% repair with your own half's kit. Every smith of that half already has it, so Master adds nothing on top of it |
| Enchanter | Twin Souls. Two enchantments on one item |
| Tailor | Master Weaver. Each garment you make carries hidden armour, which gives back a tenth of every hit, or keeps the weather off; you pick which on K. It still weighs what clothing weighs |
| Woodworker | Master Carver. Fires and kilns you work give the most warmth there is |
Taking an apprentice
A Master can take on an apprentice, and there are two different things that can mean.
The other half of your own profession. Your sister half is yours at novice the moment you pick a half, and your work on it is counted on the same ladder as your own. Without a Master of that half it never leaves novice: the count waits at the threshold. Once a Master of that half takes you on, the next piece raises you, and from there it climbs the whole ladder. This is the only way past novice in your sister half. An Edgewright who wants to go further than plain iron plate needs a Master Platewright to take them on.
Your own half needs nobody. It climbs on your own work, at the same pace with a Master beside you or without one, and a Master of your own half cannot take you on in it.
Outside your profession entirely. A Master can teach a novice's worth of their own work to somebody from another profession. A Master Cook can show a Smith how to feed themselves properly. It has to be a Master of the exact half you want to learn, it never goes past novice, and you may only ever do this twice. Your sister half does not count against the two.
So a person can end up knowing their own trade properly, the half next door at novice, or further if a Master of it takes them on, and a little of two other trades entirely. That is the ceiling, and it is deliberately low enough that you still need the room.
The master decides who, and either of you can end it. Nobody is owed an apprenticeship and nobody is stuck in one. A Master looks at somebody and picks Take on as apprentice on the look prompt; that person gets Accept and Refuse, and nothing is recorded until they accept. The Masters and apprentices page on K lists who is whose, with End beside each.
The skill tree
Your profession is what you make. This is what your body and your magicka can take, and it is separate from all of it. Everybody has the same fifteen, and nobody fills more than a few of them.
Points go into fifteen sub-skills under three headings. Five points fill one and give you its perk, and those are the ones worth planning around. Your picks place a few points to start with, and every rank you reach gives you one more to put anywhere that is not full.
Health
| Sub-skill | What it raises | Filled |
|---|---|---|
| Vitality | Your health | Cheat Death. Once a day, the blow that would kill you leaves you on one |
| Fortitude | How fast it comes back | Troll's Blood. It keeps coming back during a fight |
| Might | Melee damage | Devastating Blow. Power attacks usually put people down |
| Resilience | Armour rating | Unshakeable. Nothing staggers you while you are blocking |
| Toughness | Poison and disease | Purified Blood. No disease touches you, and poison barely does |
Magicka
| Sub-skill | What it raises | Filled |
|---|---|---|
| Capacity | Your magicka | Archmage's Vessel. Drop below a tenth and it floods back |
| Clarity | How fast it comes back | Leyline Attunement. It refills while you are still casting |
| Potency | Spell damage and duration | Overcharge. Now and then a spell lands twice as hard or holds twice as long |
| Ward | Resisting hostile magic | Spellbreaker. Some of what is thrown at you is swallowed and becomes your magicka |
| Efficiency | What spells cost | Font of Magic. Once a day, fifteen seconds where nothing costs anything |
Potency and Efficiency land in the schools you hold, and nowhere else. The game has no such thing as spell damage in general: it has destruction damage, restoration damage and so on, one for each school. So points in those two are worth nothing at all to somebody with no school, and they are the two to think twice about if magic is not yours.
Stamina
| Sub-skill | What it raises | Filled |
|---|---|---|
| Endurance | Your stamina | Tireless. Sprints, power attacks and shield bashes cost half |
| Vigor | How fast it comes back | Second Wind. Empty it and it fills, once every five minutes |
| Agility | Speed | Windwalker. Faster on your feet, and falls do not hurt you |
| Burden | What you can carry | Pack Mule. Being overloaded stops slowing you down |
| Precision | Bows | Lethal Aim. Arrows go through half of whatever armour is in the way |
A day, for Cheat Death, Archmage's Vessel and Font of Magic, is 24 real hours from when it fired, and the K panel says beside each one whether it is ready. Font of Magic is the one you start yourself, with the Use button beside it.
Precision also raises the critical chance on your character sheet, and that number does nothing here: the server works out every blow, and none of them is a critical hit.
None of this is for sale
Rank comes from doing the work. Nothing else moves it.
Not real money. Thornswood is not pay to win and it is not going to become it. The Patreon pays for the server, the domain and the other expenses of keeping it running, never for anybody's time making it. It buys nothing in the world: no rank, no recipe, no gear, no land, no profession, no seat in a hold.
Not gold. Coin buys goods and work off other people, which is the whole point of having it. It does not buy a rank and it does not unlock anything you have not put the hours into. A master can take you on as an apprentice, and that lets the other half of your profession climb past novice, but it still climbs on your hours.
Not being here first. Being around longer than the person next to you earns nothing on its own.
And nobody gets a favour. Not staff, not friends of staff, not whoever asks the most times.
Settled, and argued about in the Discord
Everything on this page is the system, settled and not up for a quiet redesign. What is broken in it right now is on Known Issues, and what is being added next is on the roadmap.
Argue about it in the Discord. Most of what ends up in it will have come from somebody who was already doing the thing.