Skills overview

Tidebound has 19 skills, each levelled from 1 to 99 on the same XP curve. A standard skill takes about two weeks of idling to reach 99. Trade, Seafaring and Aquaculture are deliberately slower prestige skills.

The four groups

Group	Skills	What you do
Gathering	Fishing, Mining, Foraging, Salvage, Aquaculture	Collect raw materials. Aquaculture grows in plots in parallel.
Artisan	Cooking, Smithing, Carpentry, Weaving, Alchemy, Cartography, Shipwright, Pearlcraft	Turn materials into goods, tools, gear, tonics, charts, ships and trinkets.
Seafaring and trade	Seafaring, Trade	Send ships on expeditions alongside your main action; fill Harbour Orders.
Combat	Blade, Harpoon, Tidecalling, Fortitude	Idle fights in zones, with bosses and shared World Bosses.

Every skill feeds others: fish feed Cooking and Alchemy, timber becomes planks for tools and ships, cloth becomes sails and armour, and so on. Each item page lists what it is used for.

The tier ladder

Materials come in eight tiers, at levels 1, 15, 30, 45, 60, 70, 80 and 90, shared across skills (Tidecopper, Saltiron, Coralsilver, Duskiron, Stormglass, Moonsteel, Deepbone, Tidesteel for metals). Every main-ladder material is free. Ledger Pass "Reef goods" sit off the ladder and are never needed.

Bonuses

All bonuses add up per stat: speed, XP, double output, saving materials and rare finds.

• Tools: one per skill, +5% speed per tier up to +40% (tools).
• Expertise: each action has its own level 1–50 with milestone perks (Expertise).
• Tonics: a timed boost on one skill; bait raises rare odds for Fishing (tonics and bait).
• Trinkets: two Pearlcraft trinket slots (Pearlcraft).
• Curio Cabinet: complete sets for permanent XP (Curio Cabinet).
• Ledger areas: +10% XP and a skill bonus for Ledger Pass holders (Ledger areas).

Speed bonuses can never make an action faster than 40% of its base time.

Rare drops and finds

Gathering actions can drop Tide Shards and roll finds (gems, flotsam, grove finds, wreck finds) from uncommon up to legendary. The game shows every source's odds, and so does this wiki: from 1% up as a percentage, below that as "1 in N". See loot tables and rarity.