What Are Some Useful Ways To Train Up Skills?

[Spartan Delta 27]

I am kind of hoping that if one of my Colony Saves get large enough in Population, I will be able to train them up to Skill Levels similar to the Colonists I choose at the beginning of the Game.

The issue is: I am not sure how to best train up those who have limited or no Skill within a certain area, nor how long it will take. Also, I am somewhat concerned about the Skill Decay Rate and how long it takes for that to damage learned Skills.

Does anyone have good tips for Leveling up the individual Skills well? These are basically my thoughts at the moment.


Shooting (Shooting at Small Animals for Food. Apparently each attack gains Experience, Hit or Miss.)

Melee (Melee Attacking At Rats and Other Small Animals?)

Construction (Building Lots of Wooden Stuff, Then Probably Deconstructing It.)

Medical (Stabilizing Patients and maybe Advanced Surgical Procedures I figure.)

Mining (Mining probably works best with Mining through Mountains or Small Rock "Hills".)

Taming (Taming Animals probably works best I would think?)

Social (Reducing Prisoner Resistance, Probably Recruitment Actions Too.)

Growing (One Field Per Colonist is usually enough good work for one or two Days each Harvest.)


I might be missing Skills, but I would appreciate any tips or Feedback on this so that I might better train Colonists in sufficiently preparing for work ahead.

[HunterSilver]

Every unit of relevant work provides experience for a skill, with the exception of some crafting projects such as cutting stones that do not. Some tasks also provide large lump sum bonuses for completion.

For medical, any kind of surgery provides a Huge exp bonus for completion. Attempting 2 surgeries a day will put you at the daily exp softcap and you can quickly get doctors to skill 14+. Due to the risk of injury and death, it's usually best to perform early surgeries on prisoners and save surgeries on your colonists for when you have proper beds, clean rooms, and proper medicine.

For construction and art, building with stone is worth a lot of experience because of the amount of work that stone adds. Every construction takes a long time. You can get multiple builders to lv20 construction with even a single flame of passion if you make all of the floors fine stone tiles.

For social keep prisoners around for the sole activity of breaking their resistance and talking to them. This is the most consistent way to train social.

For mining, set up a deep drill to mine out stone. The biggest loss of time and work for mining is traveling to work locations. A deep drill next to a stone cutter worktable is ideal.

For Animals keep cows. Cows produce milk daily and need to be worked by a handler.

Shooting just kind of happens. Raids will quickly train everyone with a gun.

For melee, have your melee units kill centipedes. Skipping centipedes into your melee units is a great way to prevent centipedes from dealing Massive Damage and gives your melee units a lot of experience as they beat on them.

For most other skills there isn't any kind of 'best' way to train them. Like cooking and growing just sort of happen. Your chefs and farmers generally are already working around the clock and the only bottlenecks for them are your tiles of farmable land and cooking ingredients.

[Hoki]

persistent tasks (those where the progress wont reset when stopped) dont really care about how you do it but how fast and how long.

good examples for these are construction and mining. as your pawns are doing these tasks their xp will increase and it doesnt matter what materials are involved.

in his mining advice Hunter mentioned the pretty much the most important thing about leveling up: traveltime is lost time.

shooting gets lots of xp per shot and the best way to level would be hunting animals you can safely kill without much problems. raids give as much xp but you rarely have full control over 1 pawn all the time. in that case the other pawns will most likly steal precious xp.

handling includes pretty much all animal interactions. the beforementioned cows offer a lot of interaction besides training. in case you cant get your hands on cows pick animals you can train.

[olympe]

For shooting, give the pawns who still need to learn how to shoot weapons that shoot multiple shots at once. Every shot counts. (Or so I read somewhere, haven't verified it myself.)
For melee - some weapons are quicker to use than others. Spears, I think, should be pretty quick. And I assume that even here, every hit counts. Also, some small animals are easy to kill with one hit. Rats, for example. Avoid squirrels, though, they fight back viciously.

@HunterSilver That idea about putting a deep drill beside your stone-cutting table (which, of course, is next to the art bench) is a great idea that I'll probably steal pretty soon. :D

[Hoki]

Originally posted by olympe:

For shooting, give the pawns who still need to learn how to shoot weapons that shoot multiple shots at once. Every shot counts. (Or so I read somewhere, haven't verified it myself.)

IIRC its xp per shootcycle therefore the number of bullets doesnt matter but warm-up and cooldown time. in that regard pistols and revolver are very good if youre only looking for xp

[Spartan Delta 27]

Thank you very much for the comments, especially your comprehensive list HunterSilver.

Those are definitely some excellent tips for improving the Skill Gains and I will probably experiment with implementing at least a few of them during my next Run. The Cows and Mining Drill sound particularly useful for their associated Skills and I will probably work at obtaining those for training up some of my Colonists.

[Xeno42]

Hunting animals is a good way to level shooting. also have a prisoner or 2 to beat up can level melee and then your doctors get medical xp as a bonus. though its important to note that by end game melee colonists become kinda irrelevent but they do make good makeshift defensive lines if they have shield belts

[HunterSilver]

Originally posted by Xeno42:

by end game melee colonists become kinda irrelevent

I cannot stress enough how untrue the dlc makes this.

[brian_va]

Start a drug farm/human leather duster business and purchase every neurotrainer you can from traders from the profits.

[Xeno42]

Originally posted by HunterSilver:

Originally posted by Xeno42:

by end game melee colonists become kinda irrelevent

I cannot stress enough how untrue the dlc makes this.

oh i forgot about the dlc melee gear. yeah it does make it way more viable

[olympe]

And the winner is.... *drumroll*

Originally posted by brian_va:

Start a drug farm/human leather duster business and purchase every neurotrainer you can from traders from the profits.

[Xeno42]

drug farms are very good it just uses a lot of work time to make a lot of yayo or flake

[brian_va]

And all of that levels them up

[Xeno42]

farming would increase but the labor to refine the drugs counts as unskilled and they dont gain xp

[Praeceptorem Poloniae]

Originally posted by Xeno42:

farming would increase but the labor to refine the drugs counts as unskilled and they dont gain xp

not necesearly - rolling joints, making wort and tea raises cooking and others plus medicine making (I think, haven't checked) raise intelectual stat a bit

[Xeno42]

Originally posted by Praeceptorem Poloniae:

Originally posted by Xeno42:

farming would increase but the labor to refine the drugs counts as unskilled and they dont gain xp

not necesearly - rolling joints, making wort and tea raises cooking and others plus medicine making (I think, haven't checked) raise intelectual stat a bit

what patch was that?