Making Mini-Professions Major

Why are mini-professions called mini-professions and not just professions? Honestly, I dunno, the original concept for them was a minor skill tree that allowed players to branch their characters out better. Maybe it was that we were all playing WoW at the time and didn’t want to confuse our professions with theirs. In any case, mini-professions were intended to allow players to give their characters these little quirks, like someone saying: "Yeah, I’m a plumber, but I do bonsai gardening on the side." Or: "I’m Mr. Smith the Accountant by day, but Josephine the Drag Queen by night!" Well, maybe not quite like that, but you get the drift.

Shortly after deciding that doing something called mini-profession was way cool and the way to go, we integrated them into the grand Next Generation R&D scheme of things that Oveur came up with (he made this HUGE diagram linking everything in EVE with everything else, it looks cool but it gives me migraine looking at it for too long). From this monstrous diagram arose the simple truth of what mini-professions are: they enable players, in one way or another, to create items not otherwise accessible. This brilliant plan was put into motion with the COSMOS constellations in a very limited fashion. There, players can harvest certain ingredients using their Archaeological or Hacking skills and then assemble unique items from said ingredients. All pretty cool but not earth-shattering.

So what’s next in store? Well, first of all we’re adding a new mini-profession, Salvaging. The whats and whys and ifs and hows of that noble profession will all be revealed in a later incarnation of this blog, so lets talk about Hacking and Archaeology instead.

Hacking (and its associated module, the Codebreaker) is becoming a very important skill to have, as it is required to harvest lots of ingredients for various endeavours. If that sounded vague, it’s because it is. So lets get more specific. Hacking will play a big part in the production of the new combat boosters, as the main way to get blueprints and recipes to manufacture them is in hidden complexes where hacking is required. Hacking is also important for invention, as ingredients for building one of the main components used in invention can only be harvested through Hacking. It can also give you items we term Decryptors, which can greatly benefit your invention efforts. Finally, we’re adding the option for you to use your Codebreakers on locked acceleration gates in complexes to try and unlock them (but beware, this can spawn additional enemies if you fail!)

Archaeology will be the lynchpin of Tech III, which is just around a corner (note I said a corner, not the corner). Until that happy day arrives (I'm wondering about that myself! :) ~kieron), all you aspiring archaeologists out there can have fun hunting down various skills required for the new combat boosters and taking advantage of shortcut gates in hidden complexes that might or might not take you to unexpected but exciting locations. Ah, the mysteries of digging through old dirt! I wanted to add a feature where a huge round rock rolls around chasing you, but for some inexplicable reason the idea was shot down. C’est la Vie, I guess.

So says Clover.