Mastery

Overview

Mastery is the endgame layer that sits on top of the skill tree. Where the skill tree hands out rewards as you level, mastery lets you spend a currency and materials to buy permanent, stacking upgrades - deepening a specific skill or a specific ability exactly how you want.

Mastery points

Mastery points are a currency. With the Mastery Pack installed you earn one point per skill at every 15th level, from 15 up to 195, so the deeper you push a skill, the more you can invest in its mastery. Each point waits for you on the Achievements tab of the Objective Book, in the Mastery category, with each skill's levels listed together: open one and press Collect, and the point goes into your wallet. Some tracks also cost raw materials such as Essence of Life on top of points.

From MMO Skill Tree 1.7.1 with Mastery Pack 2.2.0, these points wait in the Objective Book instead of on a skill's rewards page. If you were already past some of those levels, their points are waiting for you the next time you log in or open the book, including any you collected from a rewards page before.

Server owners can retune what a level pays. Each level is an achievement under Server/ZiggfreedCommon/Achievements/MMOSkillTree/Mastery/PerSkill/: override Mastery_Point_Base (or one Mastery_Point_<level> file) by its file name in a later content pack and change its Rewards.

Both the Mastery Point and Essence of Life wallets are shared-library currencies: content lives at Server/ZiggfreedCommon/Currencies, owner overrides at mods/ziggfreedcommon/currencies.json, and /mmocurrency is a thin alias over the shared /zigcommerce command. See Currencies.

Each level's point also counts 10 achievement points, and a skill a pack adds gets the same levels. With the mastery feature switched off, none of these levels shows in the book.

The Mastery Trainer's lessons

From Mastery Pack 2.2.0, the Mastery Trainer in the Forgotten Temple has a board of daily lessons and a standing you raise with them, Mastery Trainer's Favor.

• The lessons. Once you have met the trainer, ask "Do you have lessons for me?" to open the board, The Trainer's Lessons. New lessons go up every day, all of them out in the world: fell logs, mine ore, catch fish, put down creatures, use your abilities, craft at a bench. Collect each one at the board for some Essence of Life and standing with the trainer.
• Mastery Trainer's Favor. Your standing with the trainer, shown under that name on the Reputation page and on every reward that raises it, such as "+250 Mastery Trainer's Favor" for a lesson. It climbs from Newcomer through Student, Trusted Student, Adept and Master, then on to Master II, Master III and Grandmaster. Ask the trainer "How am I doing?" to see your rank and what the next one opens.
• Mastery Points for each rank. Every rank from Student up pays Mastery Points: 3, 5, 10, 15, 15, 20 and 25 on the way to Grandmaster. They wait in the Mastery category on the Objective Book's Achievements tab until you collect them, and Grandmaster also gives you the Grandmaster title.
• More of the board as you rise. Student adds a Crafting lesson and Adept a Hard one. Master adds a Master's lesson, which pays a Mastery Point each time you finish it, and Grandmaster adds a second.
• A Week of Lessons. Once you have met the trainer, or collected What You Already Paid, it shows up in your log every week: finish any five lessons and collect extra standing from the trainer.
• The trainer's other quests raise your standing too, Essence Devotee most of all. Lessons count as bounties, so they move your bounty statistics and your daily bounty streak.
• The Mastery Tithe is retired, and the lessons take its place. If you are partway through one, you can still finish it and collect its point. Paid the Tithe before? What You Already Paid shows up in your log: talk to the trainer and you start at Trusted Student, with the Student and Trusted Student points waiting on the Achievements tab.

For server owners: to change what a rank pays, ship a file with the same name as that rank's achievement in your own pack, and to add a lesson, ship a board contract that names the trainer's board. If you retuned Mastery Points in your own command-rewards.json, take those entries out: the pack no longer pays Mastery Points through skill rewards, so a level's point comes from the achievement book.

Tracks & nodes

Each mastery track targets one skill or one ability and contains a set of purchasable nodes:

• Tiered nodes unlock in order - buy tier 1 before tier 2, and meet the node's skill-level requirement.
• Choice nodes offer mutually exclusive picks - take one and the other locks out until you respec.
• Eternal nodes are repeatable: buy them again and again for a small, stacking bonus, with the cost growing each purchase.

A node's upgrade is expressed as one or more modifiers - for example a flat or percent bonus to a skill stat, or a tweak to an ability's damage, radius, cooldown, or duration. Ability mastery modifiers feed the same system the skill tree uses, so the effect applies transparently the next time you cast.

Since 1.6.0 A track can also target a whole damage school instead of a weapon skill or a single ability - a node reads "+5% Fire damage" or "+4% Void resistance" rather than naming one thing. The free MMO Skill Mastery Pack ships seven school tracks: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Water, Arcane, Void and Poison. There is no Life or Physical track, so those two schools are reachable through gear and the skill tree but not through mastery.

What locks a node

A track or a node states what you must clear in the same requirements block every quest, shop entry and board uses, so one spelling covers every kind of condition. A skill level is a bound on that skill's level reading; an earlier node is a reading of its own (the track and node it belongs to); a permission, a completed quest, an earned achievement or an unlocked feature all sit beside them, and any of groups let a node open behind either of two earlier picks.

When you cannot buy something yet, the detail pane lists every unmet requirement at once, not just the first one it tripped over, so you can see the whole shopping list in one read.

Costs & sacrifices

• Currency - every node costs mastery points, and often a second currency like Essence of Life. A node's card lists its cost as chips that name the amount and the wallet in full, such as "2 Mastery Points".
• Raw items - some nodes also consume Hytale items (e.g. crystals) straight from your inventory.
• Stat sacrifice - a few powerful nodes ask for a permanent trade-off (for example -Max Health) in exchange for the bonus. Sacrifices are validated and re-applied on join, and removed if you respec the node.

Buying & respeccing

1. Open the Mastery page in-game with /mmomastery (or the Mastery tab, shown only when mastery content is loaded).
2. Pick a track, then a node you can afford and whose requirements you meet - a locked node lists every requirement you have not met yet.
3. Confirm to purchase; the cost is deducted and the bonus applies immediately.
4. Changed your mind? A respec refunds a configurable percentage of what you spent and frees the node up again. Refunded items go into your bags, and whatever does not fit drops at your feet.

Commands

/mastery is an alias for /mmomastery.

For server owners & pack authors

Author your own tracks (or retune the Mastery Pack's) as a content pack: one JSON file per track under Server/MMOSkillTree/Masteries/. See Mastery content types for the track/node schema, Parent reuse from an Abstract base, and the generator files that keep a dozen combat tracks down to one table each.

mods/mmoskilltree/mastery.json is the owner-side overlay, not the authoring surface: it turns mastery on or off, sets the default respec refund percentage, floors the stat-sacrifice knob (statSacrifice.minRemaining), and retunes any loaded track per leaf under tracks (the same schema a pack authors; see the owner overlay). Points and material currencies are defined as currencies.