Let's Talk About Skills!

BlackLotusDragon

Another excellent update by the Forged Chaos team, this time covering ToA's skill system:

As promised, we’ve put together an article on skills for you all! Once again I was permitted into the terrifying mind of the head-honcho, Brax, to pick the fruit of knowledge and share with you.

Let’s first start off by saying that, like crafting, skills only apply to the humans of TerVarus. Dragons will have various mechanics involved in their growth stages and raknar will improve themselves through ability and attribute increases involving their spiderlings. The how of these mechanics will be future topics, I promise!

With that out of the way; Skills are involved in nearly every aspect of human play and the players improve their characters by advancing the skills they choose to pursue . While we won’t see eating, drinking, sleeping, jumping, or running skills, just about everything else a human can do involves a skill. These skills can be broken down into several categories for the sake of discussion; combat, health and well-being, crafting, gathering, general, and subterfuge.

All skills start at the “Unskilled” rank. As a player practices a skill, a progress bar in their skill window advances until they reach the next rank. There aren’t any vendors that need to be paid to unlock future progress, or unrelated tasks to perform in order to earn points to distribute. It is simply organic progression that you get better at things you find yourself doing often!

Going from Unskilled to Novice won’t take much effort at all, perhaps half a dozen uses of the skill. But each following rank will take progressively more effort. But don’t think you can just sit there and repeat the same thing over and over again to increase your skill! At some point in the player’s efforts they’ll reach a point where they will need to challenge themselves to progress in their skill rank. In return for their effort, the player gains increased success in their endeavors, greater quality in crafting, more accuracy in ranged combat, and greater critical strike chances in melee.

Once a skill reaches Artisan rank, it can be considered naturally capped, as it will require an intentional choice by the player to advance the skill any further. To advance a skill past the natural cap, the player must go into their skill window and unlock the skill for further advancement. The number of skills a player can unlock this way is limited to 16 Expert, of which 6 of those skills can be advanced to Master, and of which one of those Master skills can be advanced to Legend. Another way of looking at this is to say that a player may have 1 Legend skill, 5 Master skills, and 10 Expert skills.

Skills are in no way required to perform a desired task; we’re not going to limit your freedom by doing so! Instead skills affect how well you perform an action, be it gathering an herb, crafting a shoe, or wielding a dagger. That being said, certain aspects of those tasks will be reserved exclusively for those dedicated enough to reach the rank of Legend in their chosen skill.

For example, Legends in gathering skills can gather Flawless versions of raw resources. Crafting skills such as Smelting or Leatherworking can use those Flawless resources to refine them into Flawless components or craft them into Legendary items. For crafting skills such as carpentry or drafting, where “Legendary” walls or floors are impractical, you will instead see certain specialty patterns or designs that can only be successfully produced by a Legend in the skill. Legendary healing skills will result in faster healing rates when used to treat the appropriate type of injury or illness.

Remember that our current skill list is still a work in progress! There are many more skills that we would like to add in before launch. What skills would you like to see added and why?