Life skills
The nine Duckhaven life skills, what each one improves, and how they differ from careers.
Life skills make you better at particular activities. They level up from the work you do and reach level 99, like careers, but they are not jobs and they do not pay a wage on their own.
| Life skill | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Agility | Endurance, and using less Energy. Courier, warehouse and fishing work train it. |
| Strength | Manual handling. Speeds up the lifting, loading and carrying actions a job marks as Strength-eligible. |
| Luck | Comes from first masteries, not from training. See below. |
| Cooking | Which recipes you know and how large a batch you can cook. |
| Gardening | Which crops you can plant and how large a field you can use. |
| Husbandry | Caring for and harvesting from chickens, pigs and cows. |
| Crafting | Making craftable goods, including the Timber Trail furnishings. |
| Fishing | Which fishing methods and catches you can use. |
| Witch | Brewing potions. You only need it to brew. Anyone can buy or use a potion. |
Careers and skills with the same name
Cooking, Gardening and Fishing are each both a life skill and the theme of a career (Home chef, Market gardener and Regional fisher). They are separate progressions. A level-50 Home chef does not automatically have level-50 Cooking, and the career guides note when a job checks the life skill instead of the career level.
Woodcutting and mining are careers only. Neither is a tenth life skill.
Strength in practice
Strength shortens the actions a job marks as eligible, such as holding a box, loading a stretcher or swinging an axe. At Strength 99 those actions run at 1.2 times their normal speed, which is about a sixth less time each. It does not change how much an action pays or how much XP it gives, and it does not touch driving, walking or machine timers. Each career guide lists exactly which of its steps Strength affects.
Luck
Luck has no ordinary XP. It rises as you reach your first level-99 mastery in careers and life skills. Each first mastery adds a small bonus to reward rolls, up to a cap at 20 masteries. Prestiging a career and maxing it again does not count as a new mastery.