A craftspeople's yard at golden hour: a smith at a glowing forge, a weaver at a loom, a cooper hooping a barrel and a potter at a wheel under timber-framed workshop roofs.

The trades

Pick a trade and work it

Nobody in SL Colonies can make everything. Each trade owns its own benches and its own recipe book, levels only by being worked, and depends on the others for what it cannot make itself.

Trades: 12
Benches: 30
Recipes: 5,653

Where everybody starts

Colonist is not one of the twelve

You register as a Colonist so you can start playing immediately, and it is a placeholder rather than a trade: it has no bench of its own and nothing to level. Taking a trade is a separate, deliberate choice — and you keep a level in every trade you have ever worked, not just the one on your meter.

Brewer

Makes the beer, wine and spirits the taverns run on, from the press through to the barrel.

6 benches · 814 recipes

Butcher

Turns animal carcasses into usable cuts — and is the only trade in the colonies that can.

1 bench · 57 recipes

Carpenter

Makes tools and furniture from wood, and the crafting stations other trades work at.

2 benches · 168 recipes

Cook

Food and drink for the whole colony. Nothing to buy to begin: get the ingredients and cook.

1 bench · 4,108 recipes

Farmer

A busy trade. Fields to tend, cows to milk, wheat to grind, and the baskets and jars for it.

8 benches · 27 recipes

Herbalist

Creates the potions and balms that heal and harm, at the alchemy station and herbalist table.

2 benches · 350 recipes

Merchant

Trades goods on Marketplace HUBs — the one trade in the colonies that crafts nothing at all.

1 bench

Ranger

A hunter and a fighter protecting the community, and the trade that cures what it brings home.

1 bench · 2 recipes

Seamstress

Turns fibre and hide into cloth and clothing, at the spinning wheel, the loom and the sewing table.

4 benches · 9 recipes

Smelter

Melts ores into usable ingots, and blows the glass that every potion is bottled in.

1 bench · 18 recipes

Smith

Forms metal into tools and weapons, at the forge and at the weapon bench beside it.

2 benches · 84 recipes

Woodsman

Mills logs into the planks and scraps of wood that every carpenter builds from.

1 bench · 16 recipes

And who you are

Your trade is what you do. Your race is what you are.

Forty-one races, each shifting six attributes up or down — and those attributes set how much health, energy, hunger and thirst your character can carry.

See the forty-one races Start playing