How to level up skills easily

In this guide I will show how to level up the skills in Barony in the most easy way I know

TINKERING UNDER CONSTRUCTION FOR BETTER LOOKS

Introduction

In Barony there are many skills which help you conquer the dungeon and needed to be leveled up in order to progress trough it easier.There are 6 skill ranges and tiers for skills:

0 None
1-19 Novice I
20-39 Basic II
40-59 Skilled III
60-79 Expert IV
80-99 Master V
100 Legendary VI

Certain skills when leveled up to certain tier unlock previously unobtainable things due to lacking skill requirment. In addition,when you reach T-6 you will unlock a special effect depending on the skill,which is shown in the skill panel.

Some skills also have many ways of leveling them up. Some other skills have their easy methods for getting their exp up get removed once you have reached a certain tier for obvious balance reasons.
So lets begin with:

Swimming skill

By far the easiest skill to level up,and also the most boring one to level up.All you need to do to level up swimming is to sit in water and do nothing.Disable hunger to not starve to death,but if such cheesy tactics are beneath you then use a slow digestion ring to slow down the hunger drain or bring extra food to ward off starvation.

This skill gives you is 2 levels worth of experience and better swimming speed,plus waterwalking at legend.The waterwalking effect may be undesirable in some situations if you get lit on fire and there is a water tile near you, but you cant get into it.

My personal opinion is that to level up swimming isnt worth it,the amount of time wasted outshines the benefits.Go for it if you are playing multiplayer and a party member is afk.

Leadership

A more involved skill than swiming,leadership still isnt that important unless you are a follower focused class, have follower focused playstyle or friendly fire is off and you cant kill your own followers to recruit some beefed up one.
(Tip:You can turn on friendly fire,kill your followers,then turn it off.Only if you playing multiplayer and the host is refusing to turn on friendly fire you should consider leveling up leadership a lot even if its not your class's specialty if you planning on getting a powerful follower but you have no slots and all other followers you have are too precious for you.)

The way you level leadership is:

• Recruiting followers by either right clicking or having succubus on your party cast charm monster on enemies to recruit them to your side.

• Letting followers do the final blow against enemies

• Telling followers to rest.KEEP in mind that this has a chance to level up leadership,its not guaranteed

• Telling followers to eat food.This also has chance to give you leadership exp, its not guaranteed

Leadership is used for unlocking more follower comands,meeting the requirments to recruit special monsters, increasing the chance of the charm spell to work and increasing the follower limit and giving your followers extra dexterity

Its legendary bonus is beeing able to recruit goblins,insectoids and goatman.

ITEM TIPS:You can use the plummed cap to get 10 leadership points,this
may be enough to allow usage of the rest command or interact command to get you some leadership exp way earlier than you are supposed to.

If you have the Dominate spell,you can find a good enemy for a follower, damage it near death and then dominate it for cheap cost and afterwards heal it.Congratulations, you now have obtained a very powerful follower who will help you get leadership and keep you safe

The best way to level up leadership without min maxing in my opinion is to have your followers do the final blow, feeding them worthless food like apples & cheese and using the rest command whenever possible.

A fast but food consuming method to level up leadership is to get a lot of allies that can eat food, then get a lot of food to feed them.Since you have a chance to raise leadership every time they eat that means you basicaly have a leadership farm as long as your followers are alive.The sand labirinth gives a lot of food in the forms of scarabs

The min maxing method: have a succubus,a dummy bot and a ring of conflict.Deploy the dummybot and tell the succubus to wait near it.Now you need to just to sit out of sight of the succubus but just close enough for the conflict ring to work,and when you are out of sight put on the conflict ring.The succubus will punch the dummybot,and after some punches it will cast a charm spell,which can recruit the dummybot to your side,effctively earning you 1 leadership exp.Do that when you level up swiming to maximize your experience profit per time spent.IT IS INCREDIBLY SLOW METHOD

Trading

The way you level up trading is rather simple:you just buy stuff from the shops.A rather important skill if you want to get some good stuff early on or stock up on supplies and sell some stuff at a good price.

YOU CANT LEVEL UP TRADING FROM BUYBACKING NOR SELLING

How that works is:the skill is chance is based on gold value.A wizard hat costing 75 gold has 75 percent chance to level up 1 point of trading skill.Everything which is valued at 100 or more gold will guarantee trading experience.

Buy the cheapest stuff first to try to level up trading for cheaper price and then move from the cheapest to the next cheapest until the shop is bought out or you have run out of money.

ITEM TIPS:

You can use the plummed cap,ring of adornment and rose or masquarade mask to grant yourself some more charisma to improve selling price

While unlikely,trolls may sometimes drop the golden mask early on.Its incredibly useful for trading since it gives you +10 trading,and also decreases gold weight allowing you to carry more gold without beeing slowed down.It can even be blessed to completely negate gold weight!

If you have the confuse spell,you can use it to trade with shopkeepers even if you are wanted.All you have to do is confuse them and then open inventory and use the cursor on them to begin trading with them.
Do note that this trick doesnt work if you using a controller since controllers dont have a mouse cursor.

The legendary bonus for trading is being able to sell anything no matter what shop it is,which is one of the best legendary bonuses.

Appraisal

A skill always so important,appraising is one of the core skills of the game.You will need appraisal to know which items are cursed and which are not,what item is what and so on.

The best way to level up appraisal its to start low.Start apprasing some low value stuff like moudly cheese or mail on the first floor and from there snowball to more appraisable stuff.Take everything you find and appraise it,even if its trash it still levels up your appraisal,so just throw it away once appraised.A trick you can use to indentify special items is the gold value.If for example there are leather boots costing way more than usual,then thats leather boots of speed.

A thing to keep in mind:Appraising doesnt care about gold value, or amount of items, it will always level up the skill only once.
That means that if you want good appraisal from a stack,instead of appraising the entire stack of items at once appraise one item at a time(Example:You have 2 fresh meats and you can appraise that item,drop 1 so it doesnt get appraised along with the other one,so you can get more appraisal exp.Before you could get 1 Appraisal from entire stack,now you have potential for 2)

If you lack the perception to do so however,you can try reading some unappraised scrolls or drinking some unappraised potions with 25% chance to level up your appraisal if its under 20 skillpoints.Do be wary of fire scrolls and sickness potions;Potions that cost 6 gold are sickness,scrolls that have gold value of 35 are fire scrolls.Scrolls that cost 10 and 50 gold are mail and blank scrolls,though be wary of destroy armor scroll because it has the same gold value as blanks.Consult with the compendium to check what the thing is based on its gold value.

Legendary weapons are never cursed and have their own distinct sprite,so even when unappraised they still can be used good


The Legendary Bonus for appraisal is beeing able to appraise stuff instantly,one of the best bonuses.

Tinkering

The skill is all about using the special item Tinkering kit and its system that comes with it.The whole system is about creating cool gadgets using scrap you salvaged from junk and beeing able to repair items.

The better you are in tinkering the higher will be the chance of lockpicking traps and chests and you will be able to get more scrap from salvaging items,plus the chance for finding scrap in chests you have unlocked will be higher.

These 2 sections will cover the tech part,if you want the simple method go at the end of the tinkering section,at the end of 2nd line of dashes.

Even if you dont have the tinkering kit,there is a few ways to level tinkering without it:
NOTE:SKELETON KEY DOESNT LEVEL TINKERING
Disabling arrow traps using a lockpick,NOTE:It works only if you have 20 in tinkering and the disabling chance is based on your tier of tinkering.If you fail in disabling the trap will shot you.Can level it up to 100 tinkering.Requires random traps to be turned on to be viable.[/td]
Chance is unknown.

Lockpicking automatons,the chance of a succesful attempt depends on your tinkering tier.If its unsuccesful the automaton will bug out and start attacking everything.All of the automaton activities can level up the skill to 100

Failing to sabotage it	20% chance to level it up.
Making an enemy trigger a bear trap,levels it to 100	10% chance to level it up

Alchemy

Another skill which is focus around the special item Alembic that provides a system focused around creating,duplicating and experiementing to get new potions which are usually not availiable.

The better is your alchemy,the more damage your thrown potions will do,the higher will be the chance of duplicating potions with water and the salvaging chances for empty bottles will be higher.

All potions have diferent Use Types,the easiest way to indentify the use type is to drink the potion.

This section will cover the tech part,if you want the simple method go at the end of the brewing section,its below the line of dashes .

So here is all the ways to level it up without an alembic:

• Drinking a potion which ''Use'' type is already known,chance is 16%
  
• Hitting a target with a potion;The target must not be immune to the effect of the potion,chance is 25%
  
• Identifying the Use type of a potion,Guaranteed to level up the skill

Once you obtain an alembic,you will have acess to all the ways to level up the skill:

• Brewing a potion of sickness or duplicating a potion-5% chance to level it up(Brewing sickness for leveling up the skill not recomended)
  
• Brewing a potion.Brewing a potion of sickness or decanting/duplication dont count.Chance is 50%
  
• Learning new recipe diferent from Sickness or alchemy explosions,Guaranteed skill level up

.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The best way to level up alchemy from zero in my opinion is to start low first.Get some bottles and fill them with water,while the chance for geting skill points from duplicating is low,the potions you duplicate can be used to brew other potions to help with leveling up.Drink unknown potions,though beweare of green potions since they can be sickness/acid and deal damage to you,best use an amulet of poison resistence to make sure they dont kill you.

Once you obtain an alembic you can use it to brew potions and eventually snowball to 100 alchemy.

HAT TIP:The alchemy googles can be used to get yourself 10 alchemy points at base,giving you higher chances for duplicating potions if you need 10 more points to reach the next tier.

The legendary bonus makes alembics unbrekeable and gives your potions +2 blessing.If you playing as a race which doesnt like blessed potions you can simply decant them using the normal version of the potions

Magic and Casting

Im putting these 2 skills together because they both work to create the magic system.
In order to level up the skills,you need to spam spells.The cost doesnt matter,the target of the spell doesnt matter be it wall,enemy or door.

What matters for leveling up howeves if the spell is instant use or sustained.

Sustained spells require you to spend a minimum of 5 mana when under Casting skill level 20 and 10 mana when you over that threshold to be able to level up magic/casting.It will also count the MP consumed while sustaining the spell and fizzling it,though you need to recast the spell to get the chance to proc.

Instant use spells(forcebolt,slow,sleep,etc...) dont have that limitation but cost more mana than the sustained.

As such,the best spells to level up magic and casting would be the cheapest instant use spells you have memorized.Spamming staffs also allows you to level casting and magic.

The best spells for leveling up Magic/Casting is sleep/slow,but you need to be able to cast them flawlessly otherwise you will quickly run out of MP.Cast them trough the book for flawless casting but eventually the book will break,and repairing isnt that worth it.The other best way to train for them early on is to use the Light spell,but once you can cast flawlessly stop using it and switch to sleep/slow if you have them, otherwise spam your cheapest instant use spell you have available.

You can also use staffs to level up Casting and Magic.If you dare to brave the Gnomish Mines,you can end up with a lot of staffs.A staff shop is a welcome sight for somebody who wants to level up magic and has the money to buy the stuff.Its up to you and which class you play to see which staffs have use and which get used for magic and casting level ups

Magic:You need magic to read and memorize spells from high tier spellbooks.Spellbooks have tiers at which skill values they can be read.If you lack the magical skill to read a book,you can substitute with inteligience for that
Example:Reading Troll's blood spellbook requires 40 magic,but you have only 37 magic.You can substiute the missing 3 magic skillpoints with inteligience instead to be able to read it.

Casting:The skill which helps with your mana regeneration.If you have low casting you can fumble spells and the spells you cast will expand more mana.

A way to conteract this is to spellcast using a spellbook in your offhand.Do note that having low casting level means also that trying to spellcast using offhand high tier books will make them fumble spells.

Casting helps with your mana regenration by multiplying your int to give you a better mana regeneration.The higher the skill is,the higher is the inteligience multiplier:

• Novice:1x INT multiplier
  
• Basic:2x INT multiplier
  
• Skilled:3x INT multiplier
  
• Expert:4x INT multiplier
  
• Master:5x INT multiplier
  
• Legend:6x INT multiplier

HAT TIP:The circlet can give you enough casting points to bring you to the next tier of casting,thus increasing your mana regeneration to allow you to spam spells more often for exp.If you bless it enough and if you are close to 100 casting,you might get the legendary bonus way earlier than usual,though the enchant armor scrolls should be better used for other headgear and eyegear,

At 100 casting,you gain the ability to spam forcebolt for free,which essentialy allows you to also max out magic as well

At 100 magic you learn the Dominate spell.

Stealth skill

A skill which helps you do more efficient backstabs,expands the viewing distance while sneaking and reduces the distance enemies can spot you from.

Stealth has multipule ways to be leveled up,but most of the rng ways to level it up are unreliable and as such will not be covered.Instead the best way to level stealth is:

HIT ENEMIES IN THE BACK

It doesnt matter if the backstab kills them or not,you will still get stealth experience from that.As such,if you have recruited some dumb npcs and you want to get rid off them,tell one to wait somewhere away from the other npcs and backstab them.They will turn around and hit you,so make sure you do this on targets which dont hit hard yet they are still hardy enough to tank your hits.After that they will continiue facing the spot before the backstab,which in turn allows you to score another free backstab for stealth exp.Repeat the process until they are dead,but be careful because they will randomly switch position.

Some places have sinks or other objects which might spawn enemies. In the case of sinks try to look for a pillar to lap the slimes around for free backstabs.Then once you have found your spot punch the sink for the increased slime spawn chance and then lap them around it.

ITEM TIP:If you use a potion of paralysis on an enemy,you can powerlevel stealth.All you have to do is backstab them while beeing at a specific distance which is like at the edge of their detection range ,it might be tricky to get the distance right at first,so I suggest if you dont get it to back off a bit and then go back to backstab.You will know you have done it right when you start geting tons of stealth levels.

At 100 stealth,you gain double backstab damage and invisibility while sneaking,which is pretty good bonus if you want to remain unseen by dangerous ranged enemies or want to tip the scales in your favor in battle.

Blocking

Blocking is an important skill for making sure you get good enough ac to tank foes,and because usually you can only obtain certain armor depending on the zone(iron armor in the mines,blessed armor in the swamps,etc.)you would like to have blocking as high as possible.

To level up blocking you need to block foes,but every foe will only give you 1 blocking point max.That means that to maximize your blocking gain you need to not kill every enemy in 2-1 hits and instead use your least damaging weapon.After you obtain your 1 blocking point kill them asap to not waste time because the more time you spend the higher the chance of everything to have killed each other on the floor

Blocking with torches can only level the skill to level 40,after that you need to use shields to level it up.RANGED ATTACKS CAN LEVEL UP BLOCKING AS WELL,THOUGH ITS SLOWER DUE TO THE FACT RANGED WEAPONS HIT SLOWER THAN MELEE

Here is all the ways to get blocking:

• Performing "block, attack" combos 3 times in a row ("Rhythm of the Knight" Achievement) awards 80% chance to level skill
  BLOCK COMBO STARTS ACTIVATING ON BLOCKING.That means you should aproach enemy and bump into them,wait for 1st attack and then do the combo.Attacking doesnt start up the combo and lowers the hp of the mob,which can make you skip on a blocking point if you too powerful
  
• Blocking an attack within a short time of raising your shield awards a bonus chance to level Blocking
  
  Do this if you are in a safe zone and know the rest of the enemies wont kill themselfs.Leveling up block using this method is rather slowly,and in the time you spending trying to get 1 point, the rest of the enemies may be killing each other leading to less potential blocking exp
  
  
• Blocking an enemy hit and having ally players/NPCs kill the enemy ("Thank the Tank" Achievement) awards a bonus chance to level Blocking
  
  I would suggest to not involve your allies with blocking,they will hurt the monster and that can make you lose on the point due to not beeing able to deliver the 2nd punch without you killing the monster.If you playing with other players ask them to let you level up block and then help you kill the foe

IF Rhythm of the knight doesnt get you a blocking point and the enemy is low on hp,your best bet is just doing the timing with shield and no attack without punching it until you get your blocking point.DO NOT CONSTANTLY HOLD BLOCK

TIPS:Using potions of polymorph on an enemy you have already farmed block on can allow you to get a bonus point of blocking.I usually dont recomend that due to the fact potions of polymorphs are better spent for other things such as trading or taking care of a dangerous foe,but if you desperate for more blocking thats an option as well.

You can punch sinks for increased chance to spawn slimes.Be careful around the slimes,they can deal a lot of damage if you cant run away when they start spraying acid.

So here is how to level up blocking from the start of the game:
Try to level it up using torches to block rats.If your class doesnt have enough ac to tank the rats try to kill the skeletons first because they might drop gear to raise your ac so that you can tank rats and skeletons.Start farming it as early as possible with torches to be able to block tougher foes later on,though if you are taking damage with a torch switch to your best shield.

At legendary blocking your shields wont break,leting you tank attacks indefinitely.

Combat Skills

Every combat skill levels up by chance when you hit enemies and with higher chance when you kill
enemies with the weapon asociated with the skill.
As such to level a weapon skill the best ,hit dummybots for that until you hit level 20.At level 20
you cant level up weapon skill from dummybots in that weapon category.

For melee skills, use crystal weapons for leveling up because they have higher chance to level up weapon skills ,but if you dont have them,use your worst damaging weapon on the most tanky and resistant monster for it.
For ranged while its the most efficient to use the worst damaging ranged weapon,its also very slow.If you want to get ranged experience faster its preferable to go for the crossbow,since its fast firerate allows you to get much faster skill rolls.
Just be careful-it wont be worth it if you die.Swap to your best weapon to deal with tough enemies if the situation starts to go bad.

Shopkeepers make excelent combat skill level up sponges.All you need is to break a block next to a door frame,then glitch them into the doorframe and then just punch.If you playing multiplayer ask help from a friend who is good in dodging their blasts. Charm spell or a bandit mask removes the wanted debuff(If you are a human,if you are a monster just use your monster form for murder and your human one for trading)

Note that the shopkeeper method is efficient,yet rather unfun.Sure it levels you up but its not fun sitting at one spot punching a guy to death.
The best method between fun and efficiency is ironicaly just playing the game normaly,hiting monsters and killing them.Use the crystal weapons when you have them to level up skills faster.

HAT TIP:Use the steel visor,crystal visor or the sphinx visor to grant yourself more melee skill points.If you bless them,they become even better and give you even more skill points,which is helpful for reaching a milestone to make your weapon break less and also instantly make you legendary if you are that close to 100,thus saving you time grinding skills.

If you have low weapon skill proficiency,your attacks will be less damaging(-25 percent at 0) and your weapons of that type will degrade faster.Furthermore,if you deal 0 damage you have higher chance to degrade them.

However,the better you become in that weapon skill,the damage penalty will invert itself into damage boost,the lesser will be the chance for your weapon to break and the damage variency will be more in your favor.

Every weapon skill has a diferent legendary boost

Conclusion

I hope the knowledge from this guide helps you on your future runs,and hopefuly you defeat the baron and whatever evil force awaits after him.

Just remember:You dont have to level up every skill to win.While you can level up all the skills,its a waste of time in my opinion because just focusing on leveling up your class's skills is usually sufficient for victory.

If you have any ideas how can I improve the guide tell me in the comments below,so I can make a guide worthy of 5 stars.

Credits

Barony Wiki- For providing me with the info of the leveling up chances for tinkering and alchemy
Odds calculator from Omnicalculator.com for helping me calculate the tinkering section chances from the wiki into percents

[solidius]

Those are good tips,I will add them whenever I can

[Sly-Scale]

Some addendums:
Appraisal -- at the start, the "My Journal" book on the table can be appraised. Sometimes levels the skill. Buying at shops is also good appraisal. Also, try to appraise 1 thing at a time. Meaning if there's a set of 8 tomahawks or a shopkeep is selling 5 of something, don't just grab/buy all of them at once.
Tinkering -- Treat it like a combat skill, and fight with it. It levels pretty organically.
Alchemy -- At Legend status, you can decant blessed potions to unbless them.
Magic & Casting -- Burn every staff you find. The Gnomish Mines have a lot of Excellent staves. You might as well go there, the Sphinx's Veil is in there too.
Blocking -- The "Rhythm Knight" combo only starts on a blocked hit. Don't strike first.

[solidius]

@soundtoxin Yea you cannot enter water anymore.You can only enter water with 100 swimming if you playing the Hardcore Plus mod

[soundtoxin]

You really can't enter water anymore at 100 Swimming even if you want to? Not even by sneaking or something? That seems odd.

[solidius]

@beHappyxD Im pretty certain that all weapon skills level up by the same hit rng,the weapon choice doesnt affect it(doesnt count for crystal weapons since they actually help you).So a slingshot has the same chance to level ranged as the legendary bow.Though there is something to be said about the speed you can dash trough odds.The crosbow's fast firerate allows you to get skill points faster since it goes trough bad skill rolls easier.

Unless there is really such chance,which I doubt it.There is no logic,just rng.Thats most of how you level skills in this game,pure rng.In theory you can max out every skill in the first 5 floors if you got astronomycally good rng.

[beHappyxD]

You got me right, @solidius. Just before player reach crystal cave there might be another weapons with the most worst damage.
But I was think a bit. What if each weapon in game has its own chance to level-up skill with successful interaction?
For example for level up ranged weapons I prefer slingshot, but a bow or crossbow feels like gives skill points faster.
That's mean or some weapons have its own chance or the more damage you deal that may affect.
Shall be some logic in that. Ofc we are not developers and real numbers are hidden in a back-end.
Think about it.

[solidius]

@beHappyxD I am confused what you mean?The best weapons for leveling up weapon skills are the crystal weapons(except crystal bow) because they have the highest chance to level up the skills.Or do you mean what are the worst damaging weapons for leveling it up by hitting?

[beHappyxD]

Such a good guide!
If "Every combat skill levels up by chance when you hit enemies" by the way we can figure out what weapons with lowest damage is the best to level-up combat skills. Am I right?

[solidius]

Though it can work with good con and artifact gear

[solidius]

That makes your armor break,instead of shield.So its an option,at the cost of your armor