Difficulty (easy); Land requirement (medium); Versatility (high)
Raise your axe for our new brother of the woods! As a carpenter, your task will be to provide much needed logs to the community in a renewable way. Also, other players will turn to you to make unique furniture and worktables.
Carpenter is a great profession to discover Eco because early on, you have many advantages and dependence on other players is low. This should give you time to shed your competitive approach of video games and learn the basics and wonders of collaboration in Eco.
You don't need a lot of space for your shop and you should use most of your early land papers to secure forests. As for the infrastructure, the carpentry table has so much low tier requirement that I usually keep mine in a dirt basement under my store. You produce two of the four basic modules early on and can make your own tier 2 building blocks without spending additional stars (with a nice addition of unique furniture again). Lastly, there is almost always demand for wood, except a drop during the industrial age up to before before a community discover advanced carpentry. Even then, you can dump your wood into charcoal production or work on another profession.
One thing you should be aware is the fact that every player need a lot of wood to make rooms and basic furniture. However, they will not have items of equal value to exchange and get all their wood from you. This is why you should also buy wood at a decent price and consider opening transportation jobs and other contracts that save you time while allowing others to make a living.
Because of this early demand for wood, it is also quite easy to apply a profit margin and make a lot of profits. In fact, it is common to see rich carpenters on servers where there is a global currency from the start. While this is a good thing for carpenters on the short term, it quickly demotivates or gives a competitive vibe on servers and lead to failure. So be careful and remember this game is about cooperation.
You obviously need access to wood so forests are a good place to claim. Consider oak, fir, cedar and other big trees. Desert and rain forests bring a bit less wood at first.
Building your home next to the forest is a logic choice. However, you can have a great start if you bring hewn production next to other players. Early on, consider keeping more than half of your land papers to protect the closest forest.
Logging is my first choice as I can quickly clear nearby trees. I then use this land for a tree nursery which will yield a lot of wood few days later... about the same time lumber production will be at it's peak. Logging also get me an immediate benefits from upgrade modules, increase trade with masons and make my skill useful for community project and general help.
Next, this profession has two other skills, but only carpentry is vital. Therefore, it is common to see players branch in other professions when they spend their third star. Basic engineering and tailoring have a good synergy with your skills. In fact, many carpenters are highly sought after for research involving basic engineering papers while others open furniture stores.
You may also choose the lone wolf path and make your own nails by picking mining and smelting. This is common, but it tends to brings you out of the trade loop and/or generates a lot of economic inequity and unbalance in the flow of resources. Nails are also a part of the revenue of smelters so you are most likely killing a citizen, weakening both iron and lumber production in the process because your own time and land papers will be divided in two core jobs.
Hewn logs are the cheapest tier 1 building blocks and almost every player needs them. Your role is to provide hewn. At this step, other players often have little to offer in exchange, except wood logs. This is why good carpenters quickly rush to make their first store and make an automatic hewn machine out of it. With an upgrade module 1 plugged in and a reasonable price on food, your base cost for hewn should be around 1.85 credits while buying wood at 1 credit. At some point, hewn will be needed to set up the government, so try to be helpful.
Your role is also to provide other players with basic upgrade modules 1. Upgrade modules tend to make a community more efficient and engaged in the game. The way you make them available at your store (profit margin and items bought in exchange) can have important effects on the trading culture of the server too. Don't cry because your iron axe and nails are costly when you literally preyed on every players with hewn logs and upgrade modules during the early days.
Shortly after logging, carpentry allows the production of most wanted furniture and worktables. Butchery and wainwright tables should be your first target. You may also craft a few small carts for players who cannot afford the big carts made by engineers or use it in mining tricks. Make sure everyone get access to modules 3. It usually takes a lot of time before the 4th module is available, so you have a great shot at making the game less grinding and reduce economic inequity by making upgrade modules 3 available to everyone quickly.
Do not forget at this point your responsibility is still to provide a good source of wood to your community. Plant new trees. Even better : make contracts for it. Once nails and sawmills are available, you will be asked to make a lot of lumber. Try to be patient and seek advanced upgrades first. In the meantime, stockpiling hewn logs and making sure the engineer unlocks pottery and glassworking might be best projects. Making tons of lumber is risky for the server balance if too many players struggle to make their home and you don't even have a government yet.
Next, the lumber stockpiles should be highly sought by smelters and busy industrial players. It is the same for your new furniture items and rich players obsessed with house XP. If you picked tailoring, this is your chance to quickly make other furniture and help hunters too.
The industrial era focus on iron, but furniture and lumber will still be needed. You may continue to focus on logging if you have advanced modules and a kiln, since you can make useful charcoal for lights, steel and the new machines. This will be done at a loss, but good tools and efficient tree farms will keep you afloat in terms of food while you stockpile for composite or just pursue another profession.
Composite will require a high-level room so I hope you learned to collaborate with other players or you have a strong and fair economy. You will again need iron and a mechanics...perhaps the same you helped setting up his first factory ?
The early town hall requires hewn for the actual building and items. If you are not interested in this project, at least make sure the other players have basic upgrades and add work to their carpentry table (perhaps in exchange from food). This way your skills will be useful and you will get additional XP in the process.
You may be more useful and help build a town center by claiming a small 1x2 area near a chef and make a hewn machine (sell hewn/buy wood). This will only require a small investment of resources for you and help other players make their first rooms. What we hope here is to help them feel welcome, so they stay on the server. Each upgrade module will help to save trees and get more players in the vicinity.
Every specialist can do this but I find it easier for carpenters and miners. The idea is your skills are better used for cutting trees than transporting wood or planting new trees. The other players need to offer you something in exchange for all your products. This is why carpenters are in the best position to create transport and reforestation contracts. The overall efficiency of the server will be better if your farmers, engineers and chefs do not always have to cut their own wood (less efficiency and they compete for nearest forests).
Buildings generally looks better with blocks of different kind. It is tempting for carpenters and masons to keep only to their own kind of block (hewn or mortared stone), but think about diversity and allow other players to exchange building blocks with you. This community effort is particularly true for carpenters as your furniture items are often cheaper than their stone version in the beginning.
Some players, such as smelters and farmers, may be far from action and struggle to make their home. This is a risk for the server since these players will either leave soon, make useful items late or even justify high prices by the fact they had to do everything alone. If you ever see someone in this situation, offer him or her to start a small production of hewn on their carpentry table. At logging level 3, the calories you will spent for the production of 200 hewn are worth about 5 stones or 10 crops. You can get fair compensation with food, plant fibers, mortared stone, credits for future tools and a lot of XP.
Stop wasting time on transport and planting: create contracts instead. You will need a community contract board, a stockpile in the forest and another one at home. Whenever you go in the woods to cut trees, add a contract to transport wood between the 2 stockpiles and a replanting contract. Giving them your money is not a problem since you will be able to focus on cutting more trees to sell them anyway. And the flow of resources will go on...
You will need a sizable amount of plant material, especially if you aim for the tailoring skill later. A good trick is to exchange them for wood with a farmer. This way, he or she harvest the plants more efficiently and you have more time to get wood (efficiently) in exchange : a typical win-win scenario of Eco.
Cooks, bakers and mechanics all need a tier 2 room quite suddenly. In inexperienced communities, this period is difficult and generates abandon and economic inequity. You might want to give a little nudge to them so that everyone emerges from these dark times. Otherwise, problems may cripple permanently or simply kill the server. A bit of free lumber, making a public factory, proposing a friendly tandem logging mission where they pick logs are all good examples that can make a difference.
Making few chests is easy for you and masons can easily make mortar on their own. Why not stockpiling wood pulp for the tailor ? You will need a lot of cellulose to make paper anyway.
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