Cook

It is the most laborious trade and the most varied. Low level recipes ask for two components; the top ones ask for four, five, and the level 4 Apple Pie asks for six different lines of ingredient. Garlic Bread is one of the few recipes on the server that gives back two units at once. None of it comes out of a vein or a tree: all of it comes from somebody else’s hand.

The cook is the trade that depends most on the others and gives most back to the server: meat from the hunter, flour and dairy from the farmer, and the result goes to whoever is travelling far in the cold. In a northern hold, a cook is infrastructure.

Two trades per character, five levels in each. Experience comes from gathering and from making, and the thresholds are 1,000, 6,000, 15,000 and 30,000 points.

Gathering takes from the world: an ore vein, a tree, a downed animal, a field. Making needs the right station nearby, the forge for metal, the cooking pot for food, and the components in your pack.

Recipes are gated by level, and most of them ask for material another trade produced. That is what keeps the server economy turning around people instead of shops.