Skills
Professions
Professions are the general areas of expertise players can focus on within Eco. Inside a Profession, the player can choose among several Specialties. Professions help players coordinate their efforts by offering a basic structure for the various roles in the game. Skill Points are not needed to unlock professions. They are all unlocked from the start and there is no penalty for selecting specialties of different professions.
Specialties
Specialties are categories of skills in Eco that are discovered using research. Players may learn specialties - and gain access to the specialty's skill tree - by spending skill points. With each specialty learned, the cost of learning the next specialty increases exponentially. Skill costs increase from 0, 0, 5, 15, 50, 100, 300, 500 at the default multiplayer rate. In the game skills window, specialties are categorized by professions.