Best/most useful intelligence skills?

[Magenta]

You can choose between Arcana, History, Investigation, Nature and Religion, but I have no idea if they are any good like stealth, sleight of hands, persuasion, intimidation ect, or if they just add some flavour to the character, so it would be cool to hear some opinions, peace.

[swbrandt]

There are a fair number of Arcana checks in the game. The others are used less often but all of them come up from time to time, in dialogue or when interacting with the world.

Edit to add: in Act 3 there is a legendary staff that you can only get by passing an Arcana check. Just as an example - sometimes the skills are just for role-playing but sometimes they are really useful.

[wendigo211]

The most valuable skill in the game is probably Perception, you'll miss some content if you don't make some Perception checks. After that Sleight of Hand, although brute force can substitute for a lot of those checks. Following those two, it's the social skills Persuasion>Intimidation>Deception. Then you have the active skills like Stealth and Athletics which can be very valuable depending on build. Survival gets used for finding those buried mounds, but I don't think I ever found anything unique in one of them.

After the skills I mentioned, you have the others which get used less often. Unless if you're a Bard, I don't think Performance gets used for anything other than busking. Religion probably gets used the most of the intelligence skills followed by Arcana and then History. Failing an Arcana or History check normally doesn't result in you missing any content but, IIRC, there are a couple of plot critical Religion checks.

[mrauseti]

You can choose criminal or charlatan background for rogue stuff, Other backgrounds cover persuasion and intimidation. You also need a decent amount of dexterity for rogue background or charisma for persuasion and intimidation for them to be helpful.

[Ironwu]

Originally posted by Magenta:

You can choose between Arcana, History, Investigation, Nature and Religion, but I have no idea if they are any good like stealth, sleight of hands, persuasion, intimidation ect, or if they just add some flavour to the character, so it would be cool to hear some opinions, peace.

Almost nothing in the build arena for BG3 is 'flavor'; it all has use. The key is that in order to know if any *would* be of use, one needs to know what the build is going to be and what the goal of the build is going to be.

But, in BG3, nothing in your build is permanent (except race and such), so feel free to experiment. :)

Above all, Have Fun!

[Mewsha]

Arcana is worth it. There are a lot of environmental arcana checks in the game, but also there's arcana checks for a lot of quests and items related to magic, and they can often have a high roll requirement. It's worth it if you aren't going to have Gale in your party or save scum and your main character has high intelligence.

It's similar to Persuasion and Slight of Hand. One character in the party should have it if your main character doesn't. Perception is a skill that's good on almost everyone, but if you walk past something chances are that at least someone in your party will have a successful roll.

History and Religion can mostly open up certain dialogue options that don't really lead anywhere most of the time. Take it for that if it's something that interests you roleplaying wise. Investigation is nice to have, but not necessary. There's always a way around it. Nature is not that useful.

[Xhaiden]

Honestly I didn't find knowledge skills to be that critical. They usually provide more lore and the occasional dialogue option. History, Nature and Religion I don't remember coming up that much. Arcana comes up from time to time and there were a couple of places where I couldn't do something because I couldn't pull off the Arcana check. But I don't remember Nature, Religion or History gating anything on me. Basically just pick one if you want extra flavour/lore in that particular topic in dialogue.

Some knowledge checks are proximity based so every party member will roll for them. Having them personally just helps with some dialogue. But none of them are as useful as Persuasion or Sleight of Hand. I used those two constantly.

[Metallicus]

I have used all of the intelligence skills during my playthrough. If I had to rank them by importance it would be History, Arcana, Religion, Nature and investigation.

[Elizabeth]

I'd rank them from most to least useful as: Arcana, Nature, Investigation, Religion, History. Arcana is the only one that hard-gates unique loot and events, so is FAR more valuable than any other. Nature and Investigation both contribute to (mostly random) loot, so handy if you're a loot goblin but never truly vital. Religion and History just give you some extra lore tidbits here and there, and maybe an extra dialog option once in a blue moon. Religion seemed to trigger on some slightly bigger lore chunks, which is why I'd rate it a hair higher, but they're both pure fluff.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Int skills are the least useful.