Confused about character creation assigned skills and abilities.

[cool skill]

Hello. I am a little bit into the game playing as White Wing science researcher.

There are all these skills. And each skill has a corresponding ability tree. And at the start you can choose three skills as your 'tagged' skills. OK.

So my first question is do skills have any other effect beyond just their ability tree? For example, I know Science of 30 gives you access to dialogue options at the start of the game in the elevator. But does Science do anything else in the game world? And I'm especially curious about Psionics. Because it says on the description it allows you to interact with artifacts. So do all these skills have effects aside from just putting points in them for their abilities in the tree?

I chose three tagged skills as Light Gun, Tech, Influence. However, I noticed I somehow have abilities from other skills - First Aid, Radionuclid Elimination, Hacking.

There is also Digging, Throw Bolt which says it is under Survival. But I don't see it under survival. And Scanning under science but it isn't there.

This is extremely confusing.

Also, is it ever possible to start using other abilities that aren't under your original three tagged? Thanks.

[Drokmon]

I'll take a shot at answering this.

There are tons of checks against certain attributes and skills in the game. Most of them are linked to that attribute or skill in a logical way. So yes, having a higher attribute or skill value will allow you to pass more checks. More common checks include:

Muscle - forcing things open, digging/uncovering things, intimidation (dialogue)
Perception - finding hidden things (containers, items, doors), spotting a liar (dialogue)
Guts - surviving events that might hurt/kill you (events)
Charisma - barter (trading), convincing people to do something (dialogue)
Brains - figuring out a potential solution (events, dialogue)
Deftness - surviving events that might hurt/kill you (events), grabbing a thing (dialogue)
Fortune - lucky find (looting, dialogue), negotiation (dialogue)
Psyche - examining anomalies/relics/artifacts (events, dialogue)

Psionics - see Psyche
Piloting - driving / performing maneuvers in vehicles (events, dialogue)
Medicine - healing (events, dialogue)
Tech - crafting, repairing things, finding solutions (events, dialogue)
Science - crafting, hacking terminals, finding solutions (events, dialogue)
Criminal - lockpicking, pickpocketing, detection, being a criminal (events, dialogue)
Influence - see Charisma
Survival - reconnaissance, see Guts

Tagging skills during character creation simply grants you +30 points in that skill. There is nothing stopping you from adding points via level ups or perks to other skills in order to gain abilities from those skill trees. As you've noticed, sometimes ranks in other skills are required to make the abilities in a skill tree work (eg. Lockpicking in Criminal requires Tech 15).

Abilities that all characters can access include Force (relies on Muscle), Dig (sometimes relies on Muscle, normally requires a shovel), Scan and Throw Bolt. I have no idea why they are placed under the skill line headings that they are. Probably just seemed like a logical place for them.

Hope it helps!

[Drokmon]

Some useful tidbits that I wish I knew when I first started playing:


XP
- doing just about anything earns you XP. The amount you gain is proportional to the rank needed to complete it (ie. Lockpick 50 check = 50 XP) or the value of the item you get out of it (ie. crafting a grenade worth $100 = 10XP). You get XP for kills as well.


Crimes
- when you lockpick/force something with a red icon, it counts as a crime. Once you do it, there will be a short timer before anyone nearby notices and starts searching for you. Stay in stealth and move away to keep from being caught. If you can move to another map, wait ~10 minutes (hit Y to choose how long to wait) and they'll normally forget about it.

- pickpocketing works like lockpicking above, but it takes ~60 minutes before they forget about it. During that time, the items you take will have a "STOLEN" tag in your inventory and cannot be traded.

- committing murder works like lockpicking above, but I don't know how long it takes to be forgotten. The crime icon will appear even against hostile targets, but that mostly serves to alert their allies so that they keep an eye out for you.


Stealth and Detection
- if you're in stealth and step into the red circle around a target, the mask icon over your head starts to deplete. The higher your Detection (based on Criminal and some items/skills), the longer it takes for them to spot you. Moving out of detection range causes the mask to start refilling.

- if you commit a crime and someone notices, their red circle tends to grow in size and they start wandering around, looking for you. Get out of range to keep from being spotted.

- some actions taken whilst in stealth have a Detection Penalty (ie. opening a trash bin whilst in stealth has Detection Penalty 3). This makes the mask deplete faster. If the mask doesn't fill back up before you take too many of these actions (or you're in the red circle of someone nearby), you'll be spotted. Check the tooltip for your action first.

- attacking whilst in stealth has a Detection Penalty, too (check the tooltip for the attack). If your Detection is high enough that you can attack and move away before being spotted, then you can remain hidden. Some weapons and attacks make it impossible to stay hidden.


Bartering
- when trading, items you sell go for 25% of their listed value. You can improve this with one of the Tech 90 passives as well as improving your reputation with that vendor. To improve reputation with a vendor, either raise your reputation with their faction, give them more from a trade than you gain out of it, or bribe them (check the Bribe icon on their portrait during a dialogue with them). When you offer something as a bribe, you'll see how much it affects your personal reputation, which affects their faction reputation).

- when trading, items from vendors go for 100% of their listed value. You can reduce this with the Barter passive (Influence 30) and raising your Influence skill. A Charisma 1 perk can also reduce it by 20%, but then you cannot get the Barter passive.


Other Bits
- a lot of things that can be lockpicked can also be forced, but not everything (ie. Lockpick 50 doors in Concord can also be opened with Force 100).

- right click on a weapon and click upgrade to enter the weapon upgrade crafting menu. You can see what parts of a weapon will get upgraded before you do it. Weapons range from tier 1 to tier 10 (check the number in the corner of the weapon icon). Weapons tend to gain upgrades other than damage at tiers 5 and 8 (eg. more ammo, bigger range, less jamming, etc). Higher tier upgrades require higher crafting skills.

- different workbenches can be found (stoves/fires, gunsmithing, chemistry, science) which let you craft different things. As of now, you can ignore the crafting skill requirements for most of these. If you have the materials, you can probably craft it.

- hit J to open a personal crafting menu. This is limited to a few items: weapon repair kits, mechanical repair kits, plot items, sometimes special items.

- finding hidden things counts as exploration. One of the Survival 60 passives grants triple XP for exploration. Lots of potential XP there.


Hope it helps!

[cool skill]

Thank you. This is really helpful to know because I wasn't sure about the various functions of the stats.

Yes I figured out how OP pickpocket is when messing around in a test run. I left Concord station after getting like $4K, all four psi gloves, additional gear - backpack, gloves, visor, belt, etc. All from pickpocket without paying for anything.

I'm totally confused about how bribing works. I don't understand what you mean about trading 100% of listed value.

Also, there is this perk for teleportation that I don't understand. Which replenishes fatigue. But I can't find anything for teleportation. The Phase Shift spell doesn't seem to work on self. There is a contraption for teleportation that I know of. I haven't used it, but it seems to deal damage.

[Drokmon]

Originally posted by cool skill:

I'm totally confused about how bribing works. I don't understand what you mean about trading 100% of listed value.

So when you try trading with someone, any item you try to sell to them will normally only sell for 25% of its listed value (ie. a grenade worth $100 will only get you $25 when traded). You can raise this percentage by raising your personal reputation and your reputation with that person's faction. Bribing lets you raise both reputations by basically giving away money and items. A Criminal 90 passive improves the effectiveness of bribes by doubling the reputation you gain from doing it.

Originally posted by cool skill:

Also, there is this perk for teleportation that I don't understand. Which replenishes fatigue. But I can't find anything for teleportation. The Phase Shift spell doesn't seem to work on self. There is a contraption for teleportation that I know of. I haven't used it, but it seems to deal damage.

There are a few ways to make the Invigorating Teleportation perk work. Some areas have teleporters built into them that you can use. The personal teleporter contraption will work, but you'll take some damage. The best way is the the Castling psionic skill (Psionics 30, requires an electrokinetic glove). It lets you swap places with a target without damaging them. It has a low detection penalty, so you can use it without breaking stealth. Note that it costs 50 Fatigue to use, which will hit you AFTER using the skill. Still, it's great since it's effectively free Fatigue management with that perk.

Note that you'll need Psyche 8 to hit 100% hit chance with Castling. Also, any target with Defense Class (which has a chance to negate any hit) has a chance to make Castling fail.

[cool skill]

Thanks very much for the info. I'm probably not going to do the Teleportation thing. My last question before I start is because I'm leaning towards going Erudite. Biochem damage does seem pretty significant in the game compared to the others. Do you know more about this and how it plays into the game? Thanks.

[Drokmon]

Originally posted by cool skill:

Biochem damage does seem pretty significant in the game compared to the others. Do you know more about this and how it plays into the game? Thanks.

It's more about playing into enemy weaknesses. When you examine a target (right click, hit the eye icon), you can check enemy resistances to different damage types. It's normally best to keep a few weapons and/or attack skills on hand to hit low resistances to maximize damage, especially if you start hitting 80%+ resists. Generally speaking, weapons tend to deal more mechanical damage than other types, but mechanical damage resist is also more common.

There are also passive skills (in Tech and Science, mostly) that boost all damage types individually, except for mechanical, by 10%.

[cool skill]

Originally posted by Drokmon:

It's more about playing into enemy weaknesses. When you examine a target (right click, hit the eye icon), you can check enemy resistances to different damage types. It's normally best to keep a few weapons and/or attack skills on hand to hit low resistances to maximize damage, especially if you start hitting 80%+ resists. Generally speaking, weapons tend to deal more mechanical damage than other types, but mechanical damage resist is also more common.

There are also passive skills (in Tech and Science, mostly) that boost all damage types individually, except for mechanical, by 10%.

I was trying to find out about the significance of Biochem from the game. Not dealing damage to enemies. Otherwise, I don't really see the purpose of the design for giving Erudite additional Biochem resistance as a benefit. But that helps to know about keeping additional weapons.

[Drokmon]

Originally posted by cool skill:

I was trying to find out about the significance of Biochem from the game. Not dealing damage to enemies. Otherwise, I don't really see the purpose of the design for giving Erudite additional Biochem resistance as a benefit. But that helps to know about keeping additional weapons.

Oh, I see. Yeah, it kinda fits with the scientific theme of White Wing, but mechanically, it's not a terribly great benefit.