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Guilds and professions

Two things decide what your character can do. Your profession is your raw natural talent: it sets what every skill costs you to learn, for the rest of your life. A guild is a club of people with a guild master and teachers, and you may join as many as you like once you have earned your way in.

When you make a character you choose one of four archetypes:

Fighter

Cheap weapons and strength, expensive magic. Dwarves, half-ogres and grolls are born to it.

Thief

Stealth, locks, traps and a knife in the dark. Halflings and brownies excel.

Healer

The divine arts: curing, protecting, and striking at the undead. Half-elves, half-orcs and dark elves lean this way.

Conjurer

Arcane magic, cheap to learn and dearly bought in weapon skill. Elves, gnomes and brownies are the great mages.

Whatever your profession, the guilds command shows the guilds you belong to and your level in each. Levelling up also levels your primary guild; ask a guild master for a new title to make a different guild your primary one.

These guilds exist in Valhalla, each with a master and, typically, four teachers: ability, skill, spell and weapon.

• Fighter
• Cleric
• Thieves
• Mage
• Paladin
• Ranger
• Dark Knight
• Sorcerer
• Barbarian
• Assassin
• Necromancer

You start enrolled in the guild you chose at creation. Joining another means finding its guild master and meeting the requirements, usually a quest. Each time you gain a level, go back to your guild and practice with the teachers: skill points buy spells, weapons and skills; ability points buy strength, dexterity and the rest. The game offers more than a hundred guild paths; pathlist complete lists them all, or try fighter pathlist, sorcerer pathlist and so on.

At level 25 each profession may specialize, once, by finding the right guild master and reading the sign:

• Fighter becomes Barbarian (seek Hilka the Bold at the Barbarians' Guild)
• Thief becomes Assassin
• Healer becomes Druid
• Conjurer becomes Sorcerer

You never have to. Changing makes the skills of your old profession slightly harder (−1) to learn, with a lower ceiling, so be very ready before you do.

From level 50, Father Nicholas in the Healing Center north of the Temple of Udgaard will let you take a second (and eventually a third) profession, after fetching him something first. A character can hold three professions in all, so a fighter / healer / conjurer is possible. Each move is limited by where you stand:

The price: skills from your previous profession become harder to learn (−2, and −3 for your first profession once you hold three; abilities −5 for the first). Father Nicholas calls the Healer "Priest" and the Dark Knight "Knight". In the game: help professions, help guilds, help practice.