Proficiency Guide – Archeage Unchained

The proficiency system in Archeage is a complex collection of different skills. There is an opportunity for it to become one of the best crafting/industry/life skilling system in any MMO I have ever played. Yet it lacks importance, such as the industrial system in Eve Online has. You can quite frankly play this game without ever opening up the proficiency tab or even acknowledge it’s existence.

Having said that I still find it personally enjoyable to mess with and some proficiencies have the possibility of earning silver which is on par or even greater than farming pouches. It can also be a welcome break from constant grinding. But enough about that, let’s look at how the proficiency system works.

The Proficiency System

There are 22 different proficiencies in Archeage Unchained. By pressing the “K” button and opening the “Proficiency” tab you can see all these proficiencies. The proficiencies are divided into three groups and you can level each proficiency up by ranks. For example, The Alchemy and Metalworking proficiencies in the image below are at rank 1 which is the novice rank.

You level your proficiencies by spending labor points on tasks requiring that proficiency. If you use 10 labor points on mining, your mining proficiency goes up 10 points. If you spend 300 points on construction, then construction goes up by that amount. So in a nutshell, proficiency experience rises as you use your skills.

Proficiency Ranks

Each proficiency has the same ranking system where you need ever-increasing experience to move up a rank. The ranks and the experience needed to reach that rank are:

• Novice – 10,000
• Veteran – 20,000
• Expert – 30,000
• Master – 40,000
• Authority – 50,000
• Champion – 70,000
• Adept – 90,000
• Herald – 110,000
• Virtuoso – 130,000
• Celebrity – 150,000
• Famed – 230,000

Each rank comes with benefits regarding XP increase, labor cost and production time. To see those benefits you can click on the “Rank Details” button. Note however that you do not gain these benefits until you have maxed out the respective rank. for example to get a 20% reduction to labor cost you need to be at Authority rank, but you still need 70,000 points in the skill to get the 20% reduction.

From this window, you can also see the benefits you gain from a higher rank. The combination of XP increase and labor cost reduction is really enticing as there is virtually no limit on the XP need for this game since Ancestral level 55 requires such a ridiculously large amount of XP. Because of this, focusing on a single or few vocations can also help with leveling your character level.

Another interesting thing about the ranking system is the fact that you cannot max out all the proficiencies. There is a limit to how many proficiencies you can advance beyond amateur rank and also a limit on how many proficiencies you can rank all the way up to Famed.

If you look at the Rank Detail window again you will see that next to the rank name is a number in a parathesis. This number indicates the max number of proficiencies that you can have at this rank. In the bottom left corner is also a counter labeled “Specializations Used”. This is the total number of proficiencies that you can rank up, but don’t worry, you can increase this number.

Because of this, it is important to remember that when you reach the proficiency required to advance to the next rank you need to manually accept the rank increase. If you do not do that you no longer advance in that rank, which may be what you want for certain professions as you cannot rank every profession to famed status.

Proficiency Types.

Proficiencies are also separated into three types. These are harvesting, crafting, and special. You might have noticed the “Proficiency Category Limits” near the bottom of the page. What this means is that you can only have two harvesting proficiencies, three crafting proficiencies, and 2 special proficiencies at maximum rank, with each requiring 230,000 experience points.

Getting 230,000 proficiency points in a single proficiency will take a lot of time. It will take 160 days of natural labor generation if you only use your labor points to that one proficiency. So this is something you won’t need to worry about for a long time, but need to be aware of if you are going to specialize in harvesting or crafting.

Increasing the Number of Specialization.

For those of you that love harvesting and crafting don’t worry too much about this limit. You can increase it by using a Specialization Snowflake. This is an item sold by a general merchant and costs 200 gold. It increases the total number of specializations and also the number of proficiencies you can have at a higher ranking.

I am not sure that there is a limit on how many snowflakes you can use, but I would expect there to be some. What I do know is that each use increases the snowflake requirement for any following use. For example, the first increase only needs a single snowflake. The second increase will require two snowflakes, and so forth.

Gear and Furniture That Increases Proficiency Score

There are several pieces of gear that can increase the proficiency score of certain vocations. You get these items either from completing quests or by crafting them yourself. The benefit of using this gear lies mostly in the fact that you can gain the benefits of a higher proficiency rank and be able to craft items with a lower proficiency than normally required.

For example, as we saw before you need 70,000 points in a vocation to get the 20% labor reduction. But if you have, say the +5,000 points cooking furniture and Dazzling Dawnsdrop belt (gives +15,000 to cooking), you get the 20% labor reduction right at 50,000 points as your gear and furniture gives you the extra 20,000 points you need.

Dawnsdrop Gear

This is gear that you get from completing the final Blue Salt Brotherhood quest. Each piece is a piece of leather armor that increases your proficiency experience in a few proficiencies.

List of Dawnsdrop Gear and What Proficiencies are Buffed

• Cap: Artistry, Handicraft, Tailoring.
• Jerkin: Construction, Exploration, Logging, Weaponry
• Belt: Cooking, Husbandry, Printing.
• Guards: Alchemy, Farming, Leatherworking.
• Fists: Larceny, Machining, Mining.
• Breeches: Carpentry, Gathering, Masonry.
• Boots: Commerce, Fishing, Metalworking.

The basic version increases the proficiency of each of the mentioned vocations by +5,000 points. On top of that this armor is upgradeable using your leatherworking skill to increase this bonus even more. You can upgrade each piece three times, giving +10,000, +15,000 and +20,000 points to their respective vocations.

Also, Dawndrop gear will give you a speed bonus when you perform an action while wearing it. For example, if you start mining, each subsequent mining action within 50 seconds will take a little bit shorter to complete.

Proficiency Giving Furniture For Your House

There are two types of proficiency giving furniture for each of the following vocations. The lesser gives +5,000 experience to the respective proficiency and the greater version gives +15,000 experience to its proficiency.

The problem with furniture is that you need to place the furniture in your house and be in your house or at least near it for the benefit to count. So to be able to get the benefit of, for example, the Culinary Queen’s Secrets (+5,000 cooking) you would also need to cook in your house.

The proficiencies which have functional furniture are:

• Alchemy
• Cooking
• Carpentry
• Handicrafts
• Leatherworking
• Metalworking
• Tailoring
• Weaponry

Overall, it is much better to upgrade your Dawnsdrop gear first rather than making functional furniture. There are exceptions to this, such as for alchemy and cooking as you get a regal alchemy table from the blue salt questline and you can cook in your house. But using functional furniture becomes more useful at later stages of your crafting career.

So that’s about all I know about the proficiency system in Archeage Unchained. If you found this useful then please share it with your friends and allies in Archeage. I also have a few other guides you might find useful. Anyway, good luck with your vocations and have fun.