Skills - how to earn and could we get tool tips for how they are gained?

[Nilanth]

I can't say I have a ton of game play time (10-11 in game days, 6 hours game play worth), yet I cannot figure out how to effectively earn skill with several skills or find information on it - Thus its hard to tell if their unreasonably slow and costly to earn, bugged or I am just doing it wrong.

This isn't a complaint, the game is very fun and challenging and completed the first which was quite fun - I just wish there was more detailed information in game on various mechanics.

I know community members you recruit have capped skills, this is with the main character you begin with (and my coop friends character).

From my very limited observations on playing for earning skill on a character:

• Fitness - sprinting and lumbering (And other manual labour) appears to raise it fairly well.
  
  
• Hand to hand - Hard to tell if this is successful strikes, damage or killing a zombie/human, but it at least goes up fighting zombies reasonably. I also cant tell if this is level of damage inflicted or number of hits or just the kill.
  
  
• Archery - Never seen this raise, used some 40-70 arrows, leg shots, body shots...Friend crippling a zombie to shoot it on the floor shots, head shots, zombie killing blows. My character started with 2 archery and felt like I could barely aim shotgun distances or seem to earn skill, got around 10% of the bar - my friend tried with 0 archery and couldn't hit anything, going as far as to kill rabbits with a katana amusingly with 3 stealth.
  
  
• Firearms - Not actually used these yet, so can't really comment on it
  
  
• Stealth - I can't tell if this is sneaking near zombies/rabbits, stealth kills or what - but in 10-11 ingame days of mostly using stealth, wiping out towns of blue/red and white stain, 0 points I got this halfway to the first. with +2 skill from a book/camo pants.
  
  
• Construction - Found this raises when gathering wood, and is actually almost quite generous at first when making chests or wood fencing and campfires, Honestly this feels like an easy skill to raise.
  
  
• Farming - Not farmed yet, so can't really comment on it.
  
  
• Medicine - I started with 2 medicine (alongside my 2 archery), figuring this would be the hardest to raise, and short of getting shot at and preying one lives bullet hell, given characters auto-bandage/rag themselves rapidly and I had no community, short of medicating a random trader and myself (which gave at most 7-12% progress to a third point) with a total of 4 (2 books), not sure what would be a good way to earn this and what forms of healing earn it.
  
  
• Cooking - My friend started with 1 cooking, and had a book. He found this skill easy enough to raise to 2 (3 total w/ book) cooking rabbits and such. Seems simple enough, cook food to raise.

With 2 archery, and 2 stealth. I killed a total of maybe 2 rabbits in 3 in game days of hunting? both checking wind direction and attempting to use foliage where possible, By the time the aiming reticule starts getting smaller is about the distance I immediately lose my hidden state. I know there are traps and means for bait (ie. carrots), but its still a good time investment trying to hunt and feels very difficult to get the perfect circumstances (With the range of the bow at 2) to hit a rabbit given their near insane senses.

[sf]

archery and firearms raises with weapon use, just VERY slowly.

I think stealth increases with stealth kills as well as the special assassinate. (from previous posts)

farming increased with planting and watering... not sure about harvesting as I did not inspect it carefully. Just start with "low level" plants like carrots to build up your skills first, if not you won't get seeds when you harvest.

cooking is the tough one if you start below 2. without books, the only way I found early on was to hunt rabbits, then pay some NPC to skin it, then I can cook the skinned rabbit to increase the skill until I can skin rabbits myself. There may be easier cooking if you have farming... but by that time, it may be easier to just recruit somebody with cooking skill or get a book.

re:rabbit hunting... was forced to do that again in winter when carrots runs out.
I find that the main problem is the rabbit's orientation wrt wind direction. If the rabbit happens to be facing downwind, you will have a problem, because both directions are "blocked" by sense of sight and smell. If you are patient though, you can wait to see if the rabbit eventually changes directions... keep an eye on your stealth meter and quickly retreat if it starts reducing to keep the target from running away, then you can try the approach again...

The easiest way I found though, is to rely on bushes which supposedly buff your stealth, and the even easier but depends on terrain trick is to use uneven terrain to hide your approach, keeping the rabbit out of sight as your approach e.g. below the other side of a bump in the terrain (but keep your bow aimed at it). The moment the reticule goes from grey to white then quickly to red, fire and it will almost always be successful.

Given a choice though, I'll go for rabbit traps...

[Candarian]

just a test
1 day
naked
started with 3 stars in close combat
with knife bow and arrows

result
2 rabbits shot (and around 7+ that i missed :( but then again its what i expected)
oh and i choked one blue zombie :) and blundered him with my fist then before i died by a mistake(shouldnt have tried to sneak through a blue zombie horde with zero stars in stealth)
BUT i nearly succeed(at least i tell that myself all the time)

by the way i nearly got 1 start in stealth

[Nautixx [GER]]

Stealth raises when you damage someone when hidden. For example you can hide in the woods and cripple shoot a zombie. That would be enough tho earn some exp in stealth.

[Realm]

I got a star in stealth by semi-regularly assassinating people with a hunting knife. For cooking, it raised quickly but I had a farm providing vegetables and a good stock of human meat to make weeks worth of stew. Farming went up a point reasonably quickly as well.

Archery took a few days but went up without any real issue, would have sucked without an initial point in it. Firearms seems the hardest to grind and even with a few points in it, pistols still kind of suck.

[Brontanius]

Construction is the easiest to level, You can get it by doing any form of crafting or building. Early game i like to strip the dead zeds early on and turn their tops/trousers into cloth or crafting molotovs will get you up relatively easy. The next easiest way to train it is to take over stuff when you clear enemy camps. Just using resources to take over a base i beat, i got to 3 star relatively fast.

Farming is leveled by planting and watering but not harvesting. EXP is determined by the quality of the planted crop, thus its better to do it with books.

Fitness is only levelled by sprinting and labour intensive stuff like wood chopping or mining, i have seen it rise very slowly while doing building or at least i think i did.

Stealth is only levelled by damaging/killing enemies during stealth. Strangely enough im pretty sure tossing a moly while stealthed levels it as you are killing from stealth

Archery/Firearms are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to level and are only on successful hit/kill, with kill being the majority. I prefer to just get books as you will generally get 2-3 per skill if you raid all the towns.

Medicine is upon healing wounds or infecting yourself. I like to carry a large sum of bandages and green antigens and leg a zed, then purposely injure and infect myself over and over to level it up.

As for hand to hand im pretty sure it is on successful hit for low xp and kill for majority xp.