Mastery
Mastery is a depth system layered on top of every skill: each individual action carries its own personal mastery level from 1 to 99, earned simply by doing that action. Mastery gives even a low-level action a reason to keep running it — every completion, no matter how basic, is progress toward a perk. On top of the per-action ladders, each skill has a shared Mastery Pool that pays out skill-wide bonuses.
Earning Mastery
[edit | edit source]- Every time an action completes, it earns mastery XP toward that action's own 1–99 ladder.
- The amount earned per completion is fixed for a given action: slower actions and higher-level actions earn more per completion.
- Because the award is tied to an action's base speed, any speed boost you have (gear, Pets, Museum wings, etc.) also raises your mastery gained per hour.
- Reaching mastery 99 on a single action takes roughly 90 focused hours at typical speeds — it is a long-tail goal.
Almost every action in the game has a mastery ladder: gathering, crafting, expeditions, delves, Arenas, and tames. (Farming is plot-based rather than action-based, so it has no mastery.)
Per-Action Perks
[edit | edit source]Each action's ladder pays out perks at mastery 25, 50, 75, and 99. The exact perk depends on what kind of action it is:
| Mastery | Gathering / Crafting actions | Expeditions / Arenas | Tames |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25 | −5% action time | −5% action time | −5% action time |
| 50 | every 10th completion yields double output | +3 expedition score | +5% to the tamed creature's stats |
| 75 | −5% more action time | −5% more action time | −5% more action time |
| 99 | +1 bonus to the primary output | +6 more score (+9 total) | +10% more stats (+15% total) |
The mastery-50 "double output" trigger is deterministic — it lands on exactly every tenth completion, not a random roll. The time-reduction perks stack together.
The Mastery Pool
[edit | edit source]Every skill has its own Mastery Pool, a shared reservoir that fills as a side stream and pays skill-wide bonuses:
- Filling: a quarter (25%) of every mastery XP award also flows into that skill's pool — this is extra, nothing is taken away from the action's own progress.
- Capacity: the pool's cap scales with how many actions the skill has, so skills with big rosters (like Expeditions) take far longer to fill than small ones (like Delving).
- Checkpoints: the pool grants a bonus while it sits at or above each threshold:
| Pool filled | Skill-wide bonus (while at/above this level) |
|---|---|
| 10% | +10% mastery XP earned |
| 25% | −2% action time |
| 50% | +25% mastery XP earned |
| 95% | −3% action time |
- Spending: you can spend pool XP to instantly buy the XP an action needs to reach its next mastery level. This is the system's central tension — spending can drain the pool below an active checkpoint, switching that bonus off until the pool refills. Hoard the checkpoints, or cash out to push a favorite action forward.
See Also
[edit | edit source]- Skills — the skills whose actions carry mastery
- Achievements — the Studied track (total mastery levels) and Virtuoso track (actions taken to 99)
- Museum, Pets — other sources of always-on speed bonuses