A Lament character is defined not by membership in a guild or class, but by the skills they know.
All new characters can have up to ten different skills selected at creation, though these are by no means the only ones they can learn: simply by exploring the world and trying new things, anyone can pick up potentially dozens of new skills during their career. Skills advance by testing them, which often means failing a few times at climbing that tree or practicing that new craft, but so long as the task in question is neither too easy nor too difficult, a character's relevant skill or skills will slowly improve over time. There is no limit to how many different skills a single character can learn.
Skill choices are not limited by a character's species, homeland, gender, age, or even their stats. While many skills are easier if a character's associated stats are higher, with time anyone can learn to do anything.
Some sample professions available in the game, and skills associated with them, include:
- Academic: (Darcandel, Plaintongue, literacy, herb lore, Ydra lore, Moorva lore) You know more about books than life outside the city, but this has granted you skill with unfamiliar languages and knowledge of far-off places.
- Blacksmith: (smithing, metallurgy, charcoal burning, logging, whittling) Work iron into a variety of useful goods. When not at the forge, you can make your own fuel, refine your own ore, or make handles for tools and weapons.
- Domestic: (cooking, weaving, sewing, butchering, gathering, first aid) Your experience is not with the wilder parts of the world, but in taking care of the hearth and home. You are prepared for anything from cooking to tending a scraped knee.
- Fisherman: (fishing, swimming, butchering, weaving) Weave a lure or bait your hook with something tastier, cast your line, and reel in one of the many fish to be found in the wilderness.
- Healer: (first aid, gathering, herb lore) Tend horrible injuries with bandages, or comb the wilderness for herbs to help you in your task. You know how to find yourself a meal while exploring, too.
- Hunter: (archery, butchering, skinning, stealth, wilderness lore) Approach wildlife unseen, take them down with some well-aimed arrows, then dress the remains to use or sell. You also can recognize when you're the one being hunted, instead.
- Laborer: (logging, charcoal burning, gathering) Someone has to do the dirty work, and that someone might as well be you. You know how to burn charcoal and scrounge up useful things to keep yourself from starving.
- Mercenary: (sword, shield, attack, defense, attack speed) Armed with a shield and a simple blade, you know enough to take down a careless foe, though you have a lot of training left to go.
- Skald: (Ydra lore, stringed instruments, Kungesvald lore, literacy, Moorvic) Trained in the Yddr tradition, you know how to sing the sagas, and even a little more of Moorvic than most Yddrlings do.
- Tailor: (sewing, leather working, skinning, weaving) Spin fibers to weave into thread and fabric, skin animals to get fur, tan scraped skins into leather, or use what you've made to make fashionable clothing in any size.
- Wanderer: (hiking, forestry, Kungesvald lore, Liidhaga lore, swamp travel, mountaineering, desert travel, swimming, climbing) Something of a jack-of-all-trades, you know bits and pieces about surviving in countless places.
- Woodworker: (whittling, logging, carpentry, axe) You can work with wood and bone confidently. When the time comes for collecting larger amounts of wood, simply take up your axe and log a tree in the wilderness.
All of the preceding options are presets that can be selected during character generation. Players can modify these choices however they like or even choose skills from scratch.
