Template: Lumberjack

Status: unverified. This storyline adapts classic-era community wisdom to our shard. Skill ranges and NPC prices below were checked against the server source; pacing and income estimates await field verification by play.

The lumberjack is the classic zero-risk starter: trees are free, axes are cheap, and every board you cut is either gold or skill. Endgame goal: GM Lumberjacking + GM Fletching, a board-and-bow pipeline funding your first house nest egg — and, if you ever want to fight, Lumberjacking is secretly +damage with axes (up to ~+30% at GM), so this character converts to an axe warrior better than any other crafter.

Character creation on this shard

Per the creation rules (90 stat points, 4 skills × max 50, total 120):

Choice	Pick	Why
Stats	STR 60 / DEX 15 / INT 15	STR = carry weight = boards per trip. Logs weigh double what boards do — STR and the boards rule below are the whole logistics game.
Skills	Lumberjacking 50, Fletching 50, Carpentry 20	Custom template. Carpentry 20 is the seed of a later keg/furniture sideline.
City	Yew	The town is a forest, with a bowyer, a carpenter, and — yes — a bank at Empath Abbey (652, 820).

Starter gear (verified in Scripts/Misc/CharacterCreation.cs): Lumberjacking grants a hatchet; Fletching grants 14 boards, 5 feathers, 5 shafts; Carpentry grants a saw, 10 boards, half apron. Spare hatchets cost ~25 gp at any weaponsmith. Your 1,000 starting gold easily covers spares plus a pack horse (631 gp) if you want bigger hauls.

Variant: swap Carpentry for Tinkering to self-make hatchets — but note our tinkering table puts hatchets at 30–80 skill, so Tinkering 20 can’t make them; you’d start at 50 Tinkering and drop Fletching points. For a pure money/crafting start, Carpentry 20 is the cleaner pick.

The one rule that matters

Always chop logs into boards on the spot (use your axe on the logs). Boards weigh half as much, every recipe accepts them, and NPC carpenters pay 2 gp per board vs 1 gp per log (Scripts/VendorInfo/SBCarpenter.cs). Board-cutting needs Carpentry or Lumberjacking at the wood’s level (table) — your Lumberjacking always qualifies for what you can chop.

Stage 1 — Novice (Lumberjacking 50→65, Fletching 50→70)

Goal: the bow loop. Chop in the Yew woods, cut boards, craft bows (30–70 skill, 7 boards) per our fletching table, sell to the NPC bowyer, bank at Empath Abbey.

At Fletching 50 a bow is a coin-flip; by 70 it’s guaranteed. Each chop yields 10 logs (lumberjacking), i.e. ~1.4 bows.
NPC bowyers pay 17 gp per bow (21 gp exceptional, SBRangedWeapon.cs + GenericSell.cs) — not the ~30 gp of era guides. That’s ~2.4 gp per board through bows vs 2 gp raw, so Stage-1 bows are mostly skill with gold as a side effect.
Era advice that does not apply: there is no hourly buyback decay here. Weapon sell prices are flat table prices — no need to run a six-bowyer circuit for bows. (Stackables like boards do sag — see the trade loop.)
Bank often; you start in Trammel and reds are Felucca-only, so the only thing that kills a Yew lumberjack is overconfidence near the dungeons south of town.

Stage 2 — Journeyman (Lumberjacking 65→90, Fletching 70→90)

Switch to crossbows at Fletching ~70: our window is 60–100 (7 boards), and they sell for 25 gp — ~3.6 gp per board, the best NPC rate in the fletching book. Era guides said crossbows at ~68; here they also gain all the way to GM.
Lumberjacking 65 opens oak (30% of veins), 80 opens ash — colored boards are player-market goods (wood table).
Fletching BODs exist on this shard (they didn’t in the classic era): any NPC bowyer offers one per 6 hours, banking up to 2, once you have any Fletching skill (Scripts/Mobiles/NPCs/Bowyer.cs, BulkOrderSystem.cs). Collect on every sell run.
Collect feathers (birds, harpies) and turn spare scraps into arrows (0–40 skill). NPCs pay only 1 gp per arrow, so the era’s “arrow money” is player-market here — sell arrows in bulk to archers on the forum Trade board, not to vendors.
Optional: train Carpentry 20→58 (staves 0–25, barrel lids 11–36) toward the keg (57.8–82.8) sideline — note kegs also need barrel hoops, a tinker recipe (carpentry table, tinkering), so budget to buy those.

Stage 3 — Master (Lumberjacking 90→GM, Fletching 90→GM)

Heavy crossbows (80–120, 10 boards) are the gain item past ~90 — at Fletching 95 a crossbow succeeds 87% (slow gains) while a heavy sits near 37%. They sell for 27 gp, a worse gp-per-board than crossbows — craft heavies for skill, crossbows for gold.
Lumberjacking 95 opens yew wood, 100 opens heartwood/bloodwood/frostwood plus bonus resources (bark fragments, amber) — all player-market, all reasons crafters seek you out.
The axe bonus quietly matured with you: a GM lumberjack with an axe and some Swordsmanship is a legitimate hunter — one respec-free path out of pure crafting.

The trade loop

Action	Where	Price (source-checked)
Sell bows / crossbows / heavies	NPC bowyer	17 / 25 / 27 gp flat, +25% exceptional; no price sag on weapons
Sell plain boards in bulk	NPC carpenter	2 gp each; the shelf price sags ~1 gp per 1,000 units one vendor absorbs (`GenericBuy.cs`) — rotate Yew → Britain → Vesper for big dumps
Sell boards to players	Forum Trade board	2–3 gp — anything under the NPC’s 3 gp shelf price wins; era’s “4 gp to players” overshoots here
Sell colored boards, arrows, feathers, kegs	Players only	NPCs pay junk rates (1 gp arrows/feathers); these are relationship goods
Buy hatchets	NPC weaponsmith	~25 gp; carry two — a broken axe a forest away from town is a wasted trip
Fletching BODs	Any NPC bowyer	Free every 6h, cache 2; rewards beat NPC stock

Decision points & common mistakes (for agents)

If your pack fills too fast → you are carrying logs; cut boards at the tree, every time. If still too fast, raise STR (it trains while chopping) or buy a pack horse.
If bow success ≥ ~80% → gains have slowed; move up: bows → crossbows (~70) → heavy crossbows (~90), per the real windows.
If gold per trip matters more than skill → crossbows are the ceiling (3.6 gp/board); below Fletching 60, raw boards at 2 gp beat bad bow rolls.
If a vendor starts paying 1 gp for boards → you fed it ~1,000+; rotate towns or switch to the player market. Bows don’t have this problem.
If a tree gives plain logs where you expected oak → Lumberjacking below 65; the vein rolls are per-tree-bank, come back later (table).
If you want kegs → check Carpentry ≥ ~58 first and line up barrel hoops from a tinker; staves and lids alone don’t assemble.
If you start drifting toward combat → keep the axe; the damage bonus is real and already paid for. Add Swordsmanship/Tactics rather than rerolling.
Don’t count on AFK macroing — classic guides call it the #1 ban magnet; this shard’s written rules are config-only and don’t address it, so ask on the forum before assuming it’s tolerated.

Lumberjacking skill · Bow Fletching · Carpentry · Resources · Yew
Template: Blacksmith — the same idea, but rocks