Profession Levelling

[Robin of Spiritwood]

UPDATE:
As of Community Update 6, levelling has become much easier. This post contains data accurate to build CU5.

I have a level 4 merc, who is a triple Journeyman in Mining, Tinkerer, Alchemist, and a double Experienced in Cook and Blacksmith. How is that even possible? Let's look at how it can be done.

How to switch Professions

XP above your current rank is lost when you switch. So switch only once you hit a threshold in order to not lose XP.

There are a few professions that entirely rely on raw material resources as the limiting factor for levelling. These are Tinkerer, Blacksmith, Cook and Alchemist. (The Angler profession requires a supply of fishhooks, but the limiting factor is finding places to fish.) However, once these raw materials are in full supply, we can level up the professions in very little time.

Optimizing

Choose somebody with the Hard Worker Trait. Use the Labourer's Headband if you have the item. It's available as a Quest reward from the mining quests like the Ludern Nerprun Mine, Iron Mine in Vertruse, or found at Fatclaw Cave etc. These will significantly reduce your labour and expenses, cutting out 20% of the XP needed.

Blacksmith

Efficient levelling does NOT involve playing the minigame to make one item at a time. Instead, use a one click manufacture. I suggest using Throwing Knives which consume 3 iron, 1 leather and 1 wood only. You will need quite the stockpile. Making one stack of 4 at a time yields a higher XP gain than doing bigger batches. If you have unlimited amounts of resources, the blacksmith can be fully levelled in 4 clicks or so.

It took me 704 ( plus a couple others) stacks of throwing knives to get all the way to Journeyman.

Collecting resources: Suggest using a Warrior as a Miner, and gathering ore from the mines in each region in sequence, harvesting wood along the way. Buy/steal leather from the markets, and just bank the raw materials in the towns. See Miner for details below.

Cook

Virtually every recipe uses Salt. Instead of buying a mountain of salt, 20 units at a time from every vendor in the game, do yourself a favor, and have your Alchemist make a Salt Scoop.
There are a number of ways to get the basic raw materials for whatever recipe you use, but I would strongly suggest Pig Farming to get unlimited amounts of pork. The fastest way to level up is the easy tier one recipe for cooked Pork, or you can substitute bread from wheat, or whatever else you have ingredients for. I have a post out on Fat Boars, with details on pig farms. Fishing for ingredients is a viable alternative, and you level up the Angler too.

Alchemist

You will want an easy repeatable potion to make. The simplest is the Flawed Remedy, obtained from the Apothecary quest in Vertruse. In order to run the manufacture, you are going to need 1200-2000 Comfrey, and a Bottling Works worth of vials. Just steal all the empty vials on each visit to town as you play, to stockpile them for free. Store them in the Trading Post bank.
Alternatively just make Medicine, if you have enough Snow Iris.

Tinkerer

All you require is iron. Produce fishhooks or lockpicks en masse.

Miner

Setting up a good Miner route is key. As you travel the lands, deploy pitons to shorten the access to the mines strategically, considering that you'll be moving in from another mine. For Example:
Arthes has only one Mine- the Great Growler cavern. You can go across the mountains near the Boss Kaghal, and drop a line down into Tildren. Scoot across and drop another one down to the Piedra Mine. You can now go from Tildren's mines straight to the Great Growler cavern easily, and access Stromkapp by road to unload first.

Getting from region to region is now easy- just fast travel via the Trading Posts. It takes around a week for mines to reset.
The mining minigame is tiring to not make mistakes, but a non-perfect sequence will double the XP needed. So go slow, and try to get it right, every time. Rotating through the Towns, you will need to hit mines about 200 times to get to Journeyman. It's a grind. But at the end, you can make a Blacksmith/Tinkerer easily.

Thief

Just a few tips here. If you start in Tildren, head over to the Lakeside Camp in the south. There's a fence there. He has items you may steal, sell to him, steal, sell to him, ad infinitum. It's easy. But to get points in the Paths system, you need big numbers of items- so I use lockpicks/fishhooks by the hundreds. Sell him a stockpile, steal it back, etc.
Make sure you have no stolen goods in inventory, and go find a guard patrol and Confess. Pay the fine. Done.

Angler

There is a better belt item than the Headband for Anglers. You can find it in the sands in the North of Gosenberg by a smuggler camp. Go all the way to the seaside and look around East of the fishing hut.

[mrak20105]

Good advice. Leveling the theft path is still a big problem for me.

[[Heretic]Rivga]

Originally posted by mrak20105:

Good advice. Leveling the theft path is still a big problem for me.

Steal salt, every time you suspicion goes down steal more. You need salt early game anyhow, so you don't need to sell the stuff and it is small enough to easily steal.

[mutant]

i wasn't aware you could have multiple jobs, was that added, or when you switch job you only lose the exp towards the next level, i always assumed you lost all exp when you swtiched jobs-damn, it's gonna change my playthroughs if you can stack jobs xD, i just hire people for jobs sometimes

[mrak20105]

Originally posted by HereticRivga:

Originally posted by mrak20105:

Good advice. Leveling the theft path is still a big problem for me.

Steal salt, every time you suspicion goes down steal more. You need salt early game anyhow, so you don't need to sell the stuff and it is small enough to easily steal.

The problem is not stealing food. In the first playthrough, I upgraded three thieves on food. The problem with the "Path of Chaos" is that I'm still stuck at level 3, although I've already passed the rest of the paths. Slaughter caravans of merchants? My parents didn't raise me that way.... The merchants didn't do anything bad to me to cut them. Theft remains. But it is very long.

[fefnir3284]

Im 7 7 7 and 8 and I didnt fight any caravans. I sold 200 lockpicks, steal them and launder then and repeat. To lowest suspicion I captured as many criminals as I could and fill up the jails.

[[Heretic]Rivga]

Originally posted by fefnir3284:

Im 7 7 7 and 8 and I didnt fight any caravans. I sold 200 lockpicks, steal them and launder then and repeat. To lowest suspicion I captured as many criminals as I could and fill up the jails.

Any tips on capturing people when your mercs are leveled. My men seem to just make mince meat of everyone before I can capture them.

[Kheben]

just use lvl 2 weapons or torches or the like. Throwing knives also have small damage

[jasta85]

great info OP, although it seems odd to have multiple camp professions on the same character (tinkerer and cook each provide passive benefits from being at their stations when camping). That said, this will certainly help in keeping a party size small while still covering all professions.

[Ninth Hour]

Originally posted by mrak20105:

Theft remains. But it is very long.

Backstabbing a lot of people also raises points for that path and you will likely be doing that a lot, anyway, in combat. I don't think it even has to be rangers who land the killing blow. Any character who kills an enemy with a rear attack will qualify. It still takes a while to accomplish, since you need 100 backstab kills but at least combat, not just theft, helps with the path.

Also, if you open up assassination missions, those count too.

[Ninth Hour]

Sure, you can grind out multiple professions on one individual but it sounds time-consuming and boring and requires you to play the game in a less than natural way. Is all this metagaming really worth it?

I suspect that, for a number of players, it would be a matter of which would give out first- time or sanity.