Skills, stats and death

There are no levels. You get better at what you do. Every skill runs from 0 to 100 and rises a tenth of a point at a time as you use it: quickly while it is low, and hardly at all on work far beneath you.

Skills

There are 53 skills in 7 groups:

• Combat: Anatomy, Archery, Athletics, Fencing, Healing, Mace Fighting, Martial Arts, Parrying, Swordsmanship, Tactics.
• Gathering: Farming, Fishing, Herbalism, Lumberjacking, Mining.
• Crafting: Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Bowcraft, Carpentry, Cartography, Cooking, Inscription, Smelting, Tailoring, Tinkering.
• Magic: Aeromancy, Evaluating Intelligence, Geomancy, Hydromancy, Magery, Meditation, Pyromancy, Resisting Spells, Spirit Speak.
• Nature: Animal Lore, Animal Taming, Camping, Riding, Sailing, Tracking, Veterinary.
• Subterfuge: Detect Hidden, Hiding, Lockpicking, Poisoning, Remove Trap, Snooping, Stealing, Stealth.
• Bardic: Discordance, Musicianship, Peacemaking, Provocation.

Open the Skills window with K or d-pad right. A message in the Skills tab of your log tells you each time a skill rises, and a card shows at every tenth point.

The cap: choosing who you become

All your skills together can hold 700 points, out of a possible 5,300. Nobody can master everything. Once you reach the cap, a skill can rise only if another one gives up a little. Beside every skill is a setting: rise (the default), fall to make room, or hold to keep it where it is. Bonuses from gear and skill trees improve what a skill does without counting against the cap.

Titles

Your best skill gives you your title: Neophyte at 30, then Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert, Adept, Master, and Grandmaster at 100, followed by the skill's own word. An Adept Swordsman. A Master Miner. A Grandmaster Athlete.

Your people's skills

Each people starts out good at two skills: they begin a little higher and rise a fifth more often for the rest of your life. See the peoples.

Skill trees

A skill decides what you can do; its tree, where it has one, decides how you do it. Every 10 points in a skill earns a point to spend in its own tree. Trees hold choices: Berserker or Duelist for the sword, Deep Delver or Prospector for the miner, and a set of specialties for each element. You can unlearn a whole tree for gold.

The trees are under Skills, then Trees, in the pause menu (or press F4). Each tree is a night sky. Its branches are constellations and its perks are stars, joined by lines to the perks they need; a line lights up once you take the star it starts from. Taken stars are filled, the ones you can take are ringed, and locked ones are dim. The biggest star in a branch is its capstone, and two stars marked “or” shut each other out. Choose a star to see what it does, what it needs and what it opens, then take a rank for a point. Along the bottom, every tree shows its skill’s icon and the points you have free. On a controller, move between stars with the d-pad and take one with ✕.

Trees exist for Archery, Martial Arts, Swordsmanship, Farming, Lumberjacking, Mining, Aeromancy, Geomancy, Hydromancy and Pyromancy. Trees for the other skills are still to be made. Coming

All 53 skills

Open a skill to see how it grows, the title it gives, and everything it unlocks: moves, arts, recipes, finds, animals and mounts.

Stats

There are three stats. You spread 80 points over them when you make your character, then they rise slowly by use, like skills.

• Strength is your health. Mining and fighting with heavy weapons raise it.
• Dexterity is speed: how fast you swing, run and jump, how soon you can dodge again, and most of your stamina.
• Intelligence is the energy behind your element's moves. Meditation raises it.

Each stat stops at 100 and all three together at 225. Like skills, each can be set to rise, fall or hold.

Stamina

Stamina is the breath behind sprinting, jumping, dodging and heavy blows. The last dodge is always there, but spending the last of your stamina leaves you winded for a moment: no sprint, jump, dodge or heavy blow until you get your breath back. A mount has its own breath; in the saddle you spend the animal's, not yours.

Gear and loot

Creatures drop gear in five kinds: common, magic (blue), rare (yellow), legendary (orange) and set pieces (green). Better gear carries more bonuses, and legendary pieces a power of their own. A body glows in the colour of the best thing it holds, and the rarest finds send a beam of light into the sky. Break what you do not want down at an anvil (U) into its materials and essences, and spend essences to reroll a piece's bonuses.

Worn-down gear that needs mending, and some set powers. Coming

Death

When your health reaches zero, you fall. A moment later you rise as a ghost where you fell: pale, see-through, and left alone by everything. Your body stays where it fell, holding everything that was in your backpack. What you wear stays on you.

1. Walk to a healing stone or a healer. Every so often the game tells you which way the nearest one is.
2. Come back to life there.
3. Walk back to your body and take your things (G or □ beside it) before it crumbles.

You lose no skill and no gold, only time and a short chill. As a ghost you can walk, look and open some windows, nothing more.