Learning Rules

The server checks these rules before it records a skill for a player or a villager. The Field Reference lists the fields that the rules read.

Learning Rules

The server checks all of these rules before it records a skill:

1. The character has the career that offers the skill.
2. The character has reached the Path level of the Skill in that career.
3. The character has learned every skill in requires.
4. No learned skill conflicts with this skill through exclusive_with, in either direction.
5. Every evidence counter has reached its target.
6. The character has enough unspent Insight for the cost.

All careers share one Insight total. Each career adds the Insight that its Career XP has earned, and each skill in any career spends from the same total. For example, Farmer ranks can pay for a Cook skill. The rank, prerequisites, exclusivity, and evidence still apply to each skill separately.

A Path level lists choices, but a character who learns one choice can still learn the others. Use exclusive_with when two choices must never go together. Without it, a second choice only costs more Insight.

Townstead saves each learned skill for players and villagers. When normal retraining removes a prerequisite, Townstead also removes each learned skill that needs it. retraining: locked stops normal removal. Currently, costly takes no cost and works the same as free. Do not use it to promise a payment.

Prerequisites And Exclusivity

{
  "requires": ["gentle_hands", "clean_smoke"],
  "exclusive_with": ["example:beekeeper/field_keeper/rushed_harvest"]
}

Every skill in requires is required. In a prerequisite cycle, no character can reach any skill on the cycle, and Townstead reports an error.

Townstead checks exclusivity in both directions. To make the data clear, declare the relation on both skills. Then a reader sees the full choice in either file.

Use exclusive_with for two skills that can never go together. Do not use it only to make a path. Insight already limits how many skills a character can take.

Evidence

evidence makes a skill need recorded work, not only a rank:

{
  "evidence": [
    { "key": "townstead_work:cook", "at_least": 25 }
  ]
}

key is a Chronicle counter. It is usually the activity key that Townstead records for a Job or task engine. See Completed-Work History. at_least is a positive count. Every entry must be met. The Career record shows each requirement with its current count. For this reason, evidence is a short list of counters, not a free condition.

Skill Groups

skill_group lets a character learn several skills but use only one at a time:

{
  "skill_group": "example:smoking_style"
}

Several learned skills can name the same group. Only one of them is active at a time. When a character learns a skill in a group, that skill becomes active. When the character chooses another learned skill in the group, that skill becomes active, and the character keeps the old skill.

A learned skill with no group is always active.