skill prioritization for beginners

[goatlegjack]

Hello, I am a beginner and have a few questions about the skills. I am still at the beginning in Port Maje and have so far only Edér and Xoti in the team. Now I have reached level 3 and have to skill^^ Am a bit overwhelmed. I noticed, for example, that I could not open some chests and wonder which companion would be best suited to skill mechanics. My main character already has 1 point in mechanics, but he is just a wizard. Would it make sense to give him more points in mechanics or should I rather go for arcane or something? I don't know the other companions yet and haven't found a page online where you can see the starterskills of the companions.

[goatlegjack]

And are there any priorities for the main character in terms of skills at the beginning? I would prefer some kind of overview which skills fit to the individual companions and which skills should be skilled for the main character.

[Not So Clever Hound]

Generally speaking, playing with the natural strengths of each class in your team (i.e. focusing on skills where they get class bonuses) is a good idea but it doesn't matter a ton. If you do so with a balanced party, you'll cover everything. It is good to have a character focusing on mechanics, the natural candidate is rogue-type but others will work too. Having your primary social skill (e.g. Diplomacy) on your Watcher is not a bad idea as they're the face of your party, even if in many cases you can use your total party skill score to pass checks. You'll get many ways down the line to boost your skills with gear, consumables and quest rewards. Finally if you want to know what I usually like to prioritize early game to pass the checks I deem important: Diplomacy, Athletics, Survival, Mechanics.

[Elric Galad]

For Active Skills only.

 

Arcane is certainly the skill with the highest potential because it turns any character into a caster... for a cost. That being said catsers are the ones that need it the least because... well they are alredy casters.

Main character has skill check to do on its own, so I tend to specialize them less than others.

 

My "rules" :

- a couple of Athletic (needed for some check and helps in general) and Stealth (helps positionning) for anybody

- 1 specialist for each skill except Sleight of Hand : mechanics (the most important, but only 1 character needs it), arcane, alchemy, stealth, athletic, explosives (by approximate order of priority). Yes, you have 5 members for 6 skills, so one of them has to pick 2 skill speciality. I tend to give 2 speciality to main character since they have to do some checks by themselves and main characters ultimately get +1 to all skills.

- a couple of Sleight of Hand points to the Stealth Specialist

- spare points can be put into Arcane (the most powerful, and 3 points give access to Tier 3 Scrolls) or Alchemy (healing potions)

- try to use starting skill point to your advantage, but only Explosives, Mechanics and Sleight of Hand points tend to be lost since arcane, alchemy, stealth, athletic are at least a bit useful to everyone.

 

Finally, there are no utterly bad choices, and you can respec later. For Mechanics, I would give it to either Eder if Rogue or the "mysterious 4th party member" from Port Maje.

Edited November 24, 2022 by Elric Galad

[Not So Clever Hound]

8 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

That being said catsers are the ones that need it the least because... well they are alredy casters.

Casters also have passive abilities that improve all casting, scrolls included, which can be nice. It's a bit overkill but I've really liked playing a Loremaster with high Arcana as it fits thematically and they really, really never run out of things to cast.

Salut Elric, by the way  

[goatlegjack]

1 hour ago, Elric Galad said:

For Active Skills only.

 

Arcane is certainly the skill with the highest potential because it turns any character into a caster... for a cost. That being said catsers are the ones that need it the least because... well they are alredy casters.

Main character has skill check to do on its own, so I tend to specialize them less than others.

 

My "rules" :

- a couple of Athletic (needed for some check and helps in general) and Stealth (helps positionning) for anybody

- 1 specialist for each skill except Sleight of Hand : mechanics (the most important, but only 1 character needs it), arcane, alchemy, stealth, athletic, explosives (by approximate order of priority). Yes, you have 5 members for 6 skills, so one of them has to pick 2 skill speciality. I tend to give 2 speciality to main character since they have to do some checks by themselves and main characters ultimately get +1 to all skills.

- a couple of Sleight of Hand points to the Stealth Specialist

- spare points can be put into Arcane (the most powerful, and 3 points give access to Tier 3 Scrolls) or Alchemy (healing potions)

- try to use starting skill point to your advantage, but only Explosives, Mechanics and Sleight of Hand points tend to be lost since arcane, alchemy, stealth, athletic are at least a bit useful to everyone.

 

Finally, there are no utterly bad choices, and you can respec later. For Mechanics, I would give it to either Eder if Rogue or the "mysterious 4th party member" from Port Maje.

[thelee]

if you want a deep dive answer on passive skills, you should check out this old-ish post from @Noqn 

i think the skills to pay attention to are ones that are player-only (scroll down to third post). normally you can choose what character to do a check in storybook moments, but sometimes you have no choice and are forced to use the watcher. in these cases, you probably want to prioritize one of the passive skills with lots of checks and lots of harder checks (like metaphysics or even athletics--which despite being an active skill gets used alot in interactions) for your main character to exclusively invest in. and according to Noqn, for other passive skills you're reasonably well off just distributing points, though i don't totally agree with that analysis.

 

 

[Noqn]

Just to clarify, I think I was mostly wrapped up in Companions passive skill spread when writing those posts!

The main reason I lean heavily towards spreading points (more-or-less) evenly for Companions is that it makes it so much easier to switch party members without tilting the stat distribution. If everyone is specialized, switching members will most likely leave you with gaps in one skill and abundant points in another.

Edited November 28, 2022 by Noqn