Gated Careers And Registration

A career is either practised or gated. This page describes the gate, when a pack can register a new villager profession, and what a pack must supply for each part of the game.

Practised And Gated Careers

• A practised career is open to everyone. A character takes it up and learns it by doing the work.
• A gated career must be earned first. The character must meet its requirements, and then gain it through one of its acquisition_routes.

To make a career gated, give it at least one acquisition route. A career with no acquisition_routes is practised.

{
  "requirements": {
    "type": "pheno:and",
    "conditions": [
      {
        "type": "pheno:career_xp",
        "career": "minecraft:farmer",
        "at_least": 120
      },
      {
        "type": "pheno:chronicle_count",
        "key": "townstead_beekeeping:beehive_harvest",
        "at_least": 20
      }
    ]
  },
  "acquisition_routes": [
    "self_discovery",
    "mentor",
    "institution"
  ]
}

• Townstead decides from requirements only. The requirement lines on the Career record are hints that Townstead makes from the condition.
• If the requirements condition is malformed, Townstead rejects the whole profession definition. A broken gate never passes.
• Townstead checks self_discovery after successful work. A custom mentor or institution interaction must start the acquisition route itself.

For the condition language, see Pheno Conditions.

Registry Timing

At startup, Townstead reads the profession definitions in installed mods and in recognised Career packs. CurseForge installs a Data Pack in the datapacks/ directory of the profile. Townstead recognises a Career pack by its Townstead Profession file. You can also use the config/townstead/career-packs/ directory for development and server administration. Both locations accept a pack directory or a ZIP file. Townstead also reads a KubeJS data/ directory in the same way.

Townstead reads the work.json next to each definition before the registries freeze. Then it can register the profession ID, and a POI for the declared job blocks. It also mounts each recognised Career pack as required server data and client resources. Townstead does not load other packs in the datapacks/ directory of the profile. Minecraft or your data-pack loader loads them.

A definition that is only in the datapacks/ directory of a save loads too late to register a new VillagerProfession. Install a pack that adds a profession in the profile, and restart Minecraft. You must also restart after you change the registered profession ID, the job blocks, or work_sound. For the other Career files, /reload is enough.

For a dedicated server, install the same Career pack on the server and on each client when the pack adds a profession. The profession and POI entries must be the same on both sides before a client joins. The server cannot add them to a running client with a resource pack.

At startup, Townstead reads only Townstead profession schemas. By default, Townstead registers a gated Career. A practised Career must set register_profession to true to register. Either kind can set it to false to not register. Townstead checks mods before it registers the profession, and reads work_sound when it makes the profession.

Complete Runtime Support

A Career definition and a Minecraft villager profession are related, but they are different things in the game. Check each part that the pack must support:

Part of the game	Data required	When it loads
Career record and player progression	profession.json, progression.json, Skills, and completed work that gives Career XP	A world data pack is enough.
New villager profession ID	register_profession: true and a valid POI declaration in work.json	Install the Data Pack in the profile through CurseForge, or put it in the datapacks/ directory of the profile. Then restart. Townstead registers the profession before the registry freezes.
Villager work	A registered profession, a POI that villagers can reach, a Profession task, and a matching Job or work engine in code	Villager AI. A player who does the same block-interaction Job by hand also earns the Career XP. See Player Work.
Villager trades	Root contributions and optional Path contributions in trade/	Merchant levels are Minecraft levels 1 to 5. They do not depend on Career ranks or Path levels.
Dialogue for blocked work	feedback.json, files in feedback/, and a language file in data/<namespace>/lang/	Townstead chooses the voice from the villager’s personality and Root.
Career and dialogue text	data/<namespace>/lang/<locale>.json	Townstead uses these strings in its own screens and dialogue.
Profession name in Townstead and other viewers	entity.<namespace>.villager.<path> and entity.minecraft.villager.<namespace>.<path> in assets/<namespace>/lang/<locale>.json	Townstead mounts the client assets of a global Career pack. Viewers such as JEP use the second form, which they make from the full registry ID. A language file in data/ does not add these client keys.
Pack name	townstead.pack.<namespace> in assets/<namespace>/lang/<locale>.json	Optional. A name that players see, such as Your Studio Careers. Townstead shows it when it groups content by namespace, and gives it to supported viewers such as Jade. The name applies to all resources in that namespace. It is not a Jade setting or a Profession ID.
Profession clothing	An optional clothing list, MCA clothing catalogues, and client textures	The list chooses from the installed clothing. The clothing catalogue sets the gender and the outfit weights.
Chronicle work totals	Job and task IDs, which Townstead counts automatically, and optional chronicle_work_history estimates	Do not declare counters in the Profession.
Chronicle stories and headlines	Chronicle event templates that refer to the counted work	Townstead does not make story events from totals alone.

work_sound is optional. In a definition that Townstead reads at startup, it is the work sound of the registered villager profession. Without it, the profession has no work sound of its own. The Career data still loads.

For example, a Beekeeper pack can define the Career, Paths, Skills, feedback, offers, a job-block POI, and a new profession ID. Install that pack as a Data Pack in the profile. Then the profession selector and registry viewers such as JEP can find the new profession. A block-interaction Job lets villagers harvest a hive. A player who harvests a full hive with the same item gets the same Beekeeper XP.