Overview

Occupational skills are used to represent the increase in experience, understanding and skill your character will benefit from over time. They are intended to provide an opportunity for your character to specialise in areas that interest you. Most occupational skills are taught by the guilds, either exclusively to their own members, or more widely, to anyone applying for training.

All occupational skills, whether purchased from the guilds or Games Control, take time to learn. You will not be able to use skills purchased at the Heartland Games, Faction Moots, or Gathering until you book (or register at Event Control if you have booked on the gate) for the main events the next year. This delay represents the amount of time your character takes to learn any skill or ability to a useful level. Skills you are able to use will be shown on your character card; until a skill is shown on your character card, you cannot use it.

Occupational skills can only be purchased at the Heartland Games, the Faction Moots and the Gathering (no occupational skills can be purchased at sanctioned events). With the exception of income and Scholar skills, which may be purchased more than once, no other occupational skill may be purchased more than once, unless specifically stated in the skill description.

All occupational skills must be purchased using Occupational Skill points (OSP's). OSP's are issued by the Lorien Trust to our customers as thanks for continued loyalty and represent your character's potential for learning and the amount of time they may be prepared to spend in training during a year. If you choose to play a new character, or your character dies, any OSP's you have earned and have not spent may be spent on your next character.

Your OSP's will be sent to you with your ticket when you book for any of the Lorien Trust main events. If you book on the gate for an event, you will be able to collect your OSP's from Event Control when you register. The number of OSP's you receive depends on which events you attend each year; if you book in advance , you will be sent all your OSP's for the year, but if you book on the gate you will only be given OSP's for that event.

The table below shows the number of OSP's you will receive for each event:

Event	OSP's
The Heartland Games	10
A Faction Moot	5
The Gathering	10
A Lorien Trust sanctioned event	1

OSP's are issued as round tokens. The colour of the token indicates the value, as shown below:

Colour	Value
Green	10
Yellow	5
Blue	1

Some of the older issued OSP's are still on laminated cards. If you do still have any of these card OSP's tokens you can either spend them first on purchasing your OSP skills or bring them down to Games Control for exchange.