Seeking advice on skills

[Lotion]

I like the game (minus a corrupt save), but still not sure where to allocate skill points. Which non combat skills are best to level and thus yeild the best in game results? Should i focus on two or three of them or keep spreading around the points? Any help would be appreciated.

[Capitan Maximum]

This is the thread you seek: http://steamcommunity.com/app/215630/discussions/0/792924952526702290/

[Lotion]

Thank you capitan. I did read that post earlier, but still wondering what some people belive to be the best skills. Was also wondering about the importance of the social skills in quest completion and rewards.

[imminence]

Until chapter three I didn't raise my skills related to active combat. I took the two right columns of passive skills. For the fights in said chapters the parry ability and the hit after rolling were enough, together with my ice bolt and the throwing weapons.

I started to invest heavily into blacksmithing, lockpicking and intuition. The stuff you get from chests is useless for you, but sells for good money, but you must "see" them (intuition) and sometimes be able to disarm traps / open locks.

Thus, I had always enough money to buy the "best" weapon/armour/jewellry available at the market.

Starting with chapter three I put points into the "maneuvres", the active fighting skills. I decided to go with a sword and took the most left branch of the skill tree, down to "death blow".

As potions are rare and *very* expensive, I put some points into plant-knowledge and healing.
The only point of the healing skill seems to be to learn some new recipes. Later you will have the opportunity to heal some persons to get some good items from them, but IMO this is the skill with the least importance. It is NOT a self-heal!

Persuasion may give you the opportunity to ask for better rewards and sometimes you can slightly influence the way a quest will progress. Handy, but certainly not a must-have.

The same with haggling: Nice, but you will have enough money.

After chapter three I finally started to raise my stats, such as stamina, agility and strength.

You will see, that wtih the progression of the game the APs come flowing. So you really have enough to raise anything.

One last thing: The jewelry gives you +1 for a certain skill. But to raise a skill like persuasion you need 4 steps. Now let's say, you have a necklace +1 (persuasion), then you need to invest 3 steps yourself. Plus the bonus you will now have the next level.

Please, this was vaguely my way. I don't say "this is the right and only way", I came along just fine, died not very often and when, then during the first chapters, when I had to learn the game.

I hope, I could give you some useful pointers.

[ElokoMs]

If you expand the skill, which raises your speed and gives you a magic shield, the char is almost invincible in late game. You only have to cast it, then fill the blue bar with melee attacks and when the the duration is almost over cast it again. Nobody, not even the final boss, will be able to hurt you.

[Krypthild_Fuxfell]

Hello Lotion and imminence. Thank you for the question and thank you very much for the detailed guide through the Exploration talents! I think it will be very helpful for any player.

Just to add to your information a few notes on the talents themselves:

LEGEND LORE:
This talent has several applications. Most importantly, you can identify not-identified items yourself and don’t have to pay a merchant to do this. It also lets you learn the recipes for potions that buff your stats (they are called ‘Stimulant’ in the Alchemy menu) and you can boast in dialogs with your knowledge about the TDE lore, which comes down to different dialog options and rewards that are worth loads of silver.
Last but not least, you can gather information about enemies that is strewn across the levels and might aid you in developing the right strategies for the right enemy.

PLANT LORE:
This talent lets you pick valuable plants in the Shadowlands, which you need to brew your own potions and poisons. Also, you learn the recipes for ‘Healing items’ and ‘Poisons’ (found in the Alchemy menu). Note that Plant Lore and Legend Lore make a good combination, since you can use the picked plants to brew the stimulant potions you learn with Legend Lore.

MEDICINE:
This is indeed a very strong talent. For each rank you raise medicine, every healing potion you use will last 1 second longer and thus gives you back more Vitality. For example, when you Medicine rank is 3, each potion will last 3 more seconds. The ‘Contaminated Healing Potion’ will now last 13 seconds instead of 10 and thus yields 26 HP instead of 20 HP.
Also, the Medicine talent gives you an HP auto-regeneration rate after fights. You start out with 0%, that is no auto-regeneration. But each rank adds a few %-points. When surviving a fight, you will receive an amount of HP, which corresponds to the current auto-regeneration-% multiplied by your current maximum Vitality. For example, a Medicine rank of 3 corresponds to an auto-regeneration-% of 12%. If your current maximum Vitality is 31 (the value you start with) and your Medicine rank is 3, you will receive 0.12 x 31 = 3.72 HP back (we made it a round 4).
The last way to use Medicine is healing people that are sick or wounded. These people are very grateful for your help and will reward you for this, too.

PERCEPTION:
The Perception talent enables you to see hidden objects. This can be hidden treasures or traps. While you can only find the treasures when you actually increase your Perception rank (hidden objects have a blue interaction graphic around them when Cairon has the Perception rank to spot them), you could see the traps without Perception, if you are lucky. Normally they are hidden, but Perception will make them very obvious for you, so you don’t walk unawares into them. Please note that each hidden object (treasure and trap) corresponds to a Perception rank, which determines when you will be able to see them.

FAST TALK:
This is a talent that is only available in dialogs. It unlocks new dialog options that normally yield unique or very valuable rewards as well as different story turns as you can influence the dialogs in an otherwise impossible way. Again, rewards for this talent are worth a lot of silver or just not available otherwise.

HAGGLE:
The Haggle talent is also worth a lot of silver. It simply improves all the prices at any merchants at the rate the talent’s text shows. For example, a rank of 3 gives you a merchant discount of 13%. That means, for a ‘Contaminated Healing Potion’, which is normally worth 100 silver, you would now pay only 87 silver (-13%). Also, if you possess a ‘Contaminated Healing Potion’ you want to sell, normally you would receive 40 silver for it. With rank 3 in Haggle you’d receive 45 silver (+13%).
So Haggle saves you A LOT of money.

PICK LOCKS:
This talents lets you pick the locks of locked chests you can find along your way as well as open a gate now and then. Normally the rewards you find behind the locks are really worth the effort.

BLACKSMITH:
The Blacksmith talent also has a variety of applications. One of the most valuable of those is the disarming of traps which enables you to retrieve the treasures behind them. In addition you can improve weapons and armor items with the corresponding Upgrade and Glyph items yourself and you don’t have to go to a merchant for this.
Also, you might find a rusted mechanism now and then you can only move using the Blacksmith talent.

Lastly a short note on traps:
Although the Perception rank necessary to see traps and the Blacksmith rank necessary to disarm traps normally range around the same number for each trap, there are cases when a traps is far easier or harder to see than to disarm. So be careful where you walk.

So as you can see there are several applications for your talents and we made sure that each yields the same amount of AP and roughly the same amount of silver. In the end, the decision is up to you and depends on your preferred play style. Just make sure you skill some of the talents, if you don’t want to run into money problems.