Melissa has been a gamer ever since her grandpa introduced her to Yoshi's Island on the SNES when she was 3 years old.

Skills Don't Pay the Bills, But They Enhance Your Virtual Life

Welcome to Bloxburg is a game in Roblox created by Coeptus; it is similar to a multiplayer version of The Sims and involves you creating a house, going to work, and living a virtual life in the town of Bloxburg.

In Welcome to Bloxburg, your character has the opportunity to develop eight different talents, with two more on the way (programming and crafting). The skills currently in the game are as follows: athletics, cooking, gaming, gardening, intelligence, music, painting, and writing. These skills may not pay the bills (yet), but they give your character the chance to express themselves and learn something new. You will also receive a cool trophy to display in your house when you hit level 10 in a skill.

Here is a guide on how to get started with skills in Welcome to Bloxburg.

Athletics

It's time to get your character to the gym! If you like working out, you can raise your character's athletics skill. Athletics will decrease your energy and hygiene moods, so be sure to take a break and shower after. This skill currently doesn't have an in-game benefit, but if your character's roleplay backstory involves a love of exercise, go for it!

Athletics can be raised for free at the Bloxburg gym, or you could buy equipment to build your own home gym:

• For indoor exercise, you can buy a punching bag, a treadmill, and a weight lifting bench.
• If you prefer to play outside, the wooden and metal swings both raise your athletics skill, as well as the wooden playset and the "Large Organic Tree With Swing."
• There is a 3x3 patch of ice you can buy to go ice skating in your yard. The Bloxburg Gym will also get a skating rink during the Christmas and New Year's event.

When you get to level 10 in the athletics skill, you will receive the athletics trophy, which looks like a dumbbell.

Cooking

Cooking is perhaps the most useful skill in Welcome to Bloxburg, because you can make food that decreases your hunger, and you can learn a wide variety of recipes as you increase your skill. If you are very hungry, all your moods will decrease faster, so cooking is very important! Hitting level 10 in the cooking skill will earn you the cooking trophy, which looks like a milk bottle and a mixing bowl. To get started with cooking, you'll need several pieces of equipment for your kitchen:

• A fridge, where you decide what you are going to make and buy the ingredients for your recipe. There are many different fridges in the game with different sizes and looks, but the best quality and reliability comes from the commercial fridge, which costs $7000.
• A countertop will allow you to cut, mix, garnish, roll, form, and stir while you cook. Any countertop will work for this, as long as you have a surface to work on.
• To fry, deep fry, boil, bake, cook, or grill, you will need a stove. The best stoves are either the ProChef Stove, the ProChef Double Stove, or the Commercial Stove, which cost $4000, $6500, and $6000, respectively.
• A grill can also be used to fry, deep fry, or grill. Either the ProChef Barbecue Grill ($5000) or the Commercial Flat Grill ($6500) are best to use.
• A fryer can be used to fry or deep fry. To optimize your fries, use the Commercial Fryer that costs $3000.

As you cook, hit or click the button prompts on screen to speed up your production. After you are done, enjoy your meal! Most foods have several portions, so one cooking session can last you a while as long as you aren't too hungry. Below is a table of all the different recipes you can learn as you progress in your cooking journey.

Cooking Recipes

Gaming

The gaming skill allows you to play a game while you're playing a game. It's like Inception, but with games! Gaming increases your fun but decreases your hygiene and hunger over time. Take breaks to eat and shower.

To level up your gaming skill, you will need either a computer or an arcade cabinet. On the computer, you are able to play Phantom Forces (which happens to be another Roblox game in real life), Bloxborne, or Ping Pong. On the arcade cabinet, you can play ROTRIS, which seems to be based on TETRIS. Your skill will increase the same amount no matter what machine you are playing on, but some computers increase fun more than others. The best boost comes from either the EPX Computer or the EPX-Ultra Computer, which cost $300 and $400 dollars, respectively. The gaming trophy that you earn at level 10 looks like a gaming controller.

Gardening

Gardening is a useful skill that allows you to grow, harvest, and sell different types of plants. With gardening, you can grow delicious fruits that can be stored in your fridge or decorative plants to beautify your yard—like flowers and hedge sculptures.

To garden, you will need to get a planter or pile of dirt that matches the size of the plant you want to grow. You can water your plants manually with a watering can, or by placing and activating sprinklers, and they will keep growing as long as you are in the game. Your gardening skill increases when your plant becomes fully mature, so make sure you water regularly or your plants might wither. Fertilizer is an optional addition that can increase the growth speed of your plants; it can be purchased with Blockbux.

To level your gardening skill quickly, it is best to plant a lot of short grass because it is cheap and matures very fast. Your skill growth is not affected by the price of the plant you buy, so it's okay to stick with cheap plants. Once you hit level 10 in the gardening skill, you will get the gardening trophy, which looks like a leaf.

Plants You Can Grow In Your Garden

Intelligence

If you want your Welcome to Bloxburg character to be a genius, this is the skill for you! Intelligence is a skill that is increased by reading books from bookcases or book piles, or reading the news on a computer. Any method will increase your skill equally, so you don't need anything super expensive to progress. It is sometimes possible to read books while you are doing other things, so take advantage of that and stack your skills. Right now, there is no benefit to increasing your character's intelligence, but this may change in the future. Reaching level 10 of the intelligence skill will grant you the intelligence trophy, which looks like a graduation cap.

Music

The music skill allows your character to let out their inner Beethoven . . . or their inner Jimi Hendrix. With this skill, your character can learn to play the piano, guitar, or drums, and you will learn new songs to play as you get better. You can also increase your music skill by going to Beat Nightclub and operating the DJ Booth there. Playing music will increase your fun and decrease your energy. Here are some of the songs you can learn with each instrument:

Piano

• Tomorrow - unlocked with no skill level
• Opportunities - Level 2
• Memoir - Level 2
• Philosophical - Level 3
• Together - Level 4
• Pleasant Surprise - Level 5
• Welcome - Level 6
• Daring - Level 7
• Positivity - Level 8
• Dawn of Hope - Level 9
• Sweet Emotions - Level 9
• Child Memories - Level 9

Guitar

• Knowledge - unlocked with no skill level
• Progress - Level 2
• Adventure - Level 3
• Jolly - Level 4
• Forest - Level 5
• Relaxation - Level 6
• Home - Level 7
• Energy - Level 8

Drums

• Happy
• Funky
• Dramatic

Once you get to level 10 in the music skill, you will get the music trophy, which resembles a music note.

Painting

If you like making art, then the painting skill should be right up your alley. Painting can be done on the Painting Easel, which costs $650 in the shop. To increase your painting skill, simply go up to the easel and perform the painting action for a certain amount of time. You can customize the look of the painting on the easel to any picture in the Welcome to Bloxburg database, so you could make it look like you are painting in all kinds of different styles.

Painting doesn't really have any other use right now, but the usefulness and mechanics of painting might change in the future. When you hit level 10 in the painting skill you will receive a trophy that looks like a paintbrush.

Writing

Want to write the next big bestseller? Try out the writing skill! This skill is done at a computer and allows you to write books. Writing is affected by the quality of the computer you are using, so to level it up in the most efficient way, you will need either the EPX Computer ($300) or the EPX Ultra Computer ($400).

This skill will decrease your fun if you do it for too long, but there is a hack to get around this: pick up a book and read while you write to level both intelligence and writing at the same time while keeping your fun levels up.

Writing currently provides no other benefits besides bragging rights for earning the trophy at level 10, which looks like a pen. Writing may become useful for a job in the future though, like if a journalist job is added, so it may be helpful to level it up anyway.

What Could Be Added in Future Skill Updates?

In the future, it would be cool if skills could lead to new jobs being available in Welcome to Bloxburg. For example, if you're great at music you could be a performer and play the guitar or piano for an audience! Programming and crafting are being added next, but I would also like to see more types of skills become available, such as martial arts or dancing. There are lots of things that could be added, which is exciting to think about!

© 2020 Melissa Clason