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Combat Masteries

Masteries reward how you fight, not where you spend Aptitude Points. STR, WEAPON, and RANGE each begin at level 1 and reach a default cap of 30.

Default curve

The Mastery EXP needed to advance from Mastery level L is:

nearest 10 of 150 × L^1.3
  • Mastery 1 → 2 costs 150 effective damage.
  • Mastery 1 → 30 costs 156,640 Mastery EXP.
  • Progress is tracked in tenths so fractional final damage is not lost.
  • Each Mastery has its own independent EXP total and level.

The three paths

Mastery Earned by Base bonus at level 30 Milestone identity
STR Direct hostile damage while the main hand is empty +30% unarmed damage empowered fists and bare-hand ore breaking
WEAPON Direct hostile damage with a recognized melee weapon +15% matching damage attack speed, stability, openers, finishers
RANGE Direct hostile damage through a recognized ranged path +15% matching damage steady aim, range bands, finishers, marksmanship

Milestone passives unlock automatically at levels 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30. Every unlocked Mastery passive can be toggled separately.

Effective-damage accounting

Mastery credit is the final health actually removed after damage handling, capped to the target's health before the hit.

  • Overkill does not count.
  • Recovered health cannot expand the life-long credit budget.
  • The target must be an eligible hostile or aggressive combat encounter.
  • Players, owned creatures, training targets, and denied entities do not count.
  • A target with zero spawn-origin credit does not grant Mastery EXP.
  • Repeated same-type training consumes a separate persistent Mastery budget.
  • One hit chooses at most one Mastery.

How items are classified

The authoritative server resolves classification in a deliberate order:

  1. explicit deny or JSON override;
  2. datapack item tags;
  3. vanilla use behavior and known weapon families;
  4. modded class-name and capability signals;
  5. attack-attribute fallback.

Possible results are MELEE, RANGED, HYBRID, UNARMED, or EXCLUDED.

  • A hybrid weapon contributes according to the actual melee or ranged attack path.
  • A direct/hitscan launcher can count as RANGE when its held item is recognized as a ranged candidate.
  • Projectile state records the launch item, position, and sprint state so changing gear after firing does not rewrite the shot.
  • The tooltip tells the player which Mastery the held item contributes to.

Damage bonus caps

STR's base percentage and fist flat damage together can add no more than 10 damage to one hit.

WEAPON and RANGE use one shared Leveling bonus bucket per hit. The total added damage is capped to the smallest of:

  • the calculated base and conditional Mastery bonus;
  • 30% of the original hit; or
  • 30 absolute damage.

This allows milestone combinations to matter without letting several conditional nodes create runaway scaling on very large modded attacks.

STR hand-mining training

Unlocked Ore Breaker nodes let empty hands harvest supported ore tags through normal loot tables. Only successfully broken, naturally generated tracked ore can grant STR Mastery EXP.

  • Each eligible block grants 0.1 STR Mastery EXP.
  • Player-placed ore grants none.
  • The default hourly cap is 10 STR Mastery EXP from hand mining.
  • Haste, Mining Fatigue, water, and airborne penalties remain relevant.
  • Disabling a required passive immediately removes that ore tier.

See Mastery passive trees for every milestone and exact condition.