Skill

A **skill** is an ability provided by the system that can be permanently acquired via spending skill points. An awakened can only spend skill points on skills that are visible and whose requirements they meet.

## Descriptions

Skills may be portrayed differently between individuals depending on their background, class, perspective, and many other unknown variables. Rain's skills have ranges effective over *meters* while the residents of the new world have skill ranges measured in *stride*—their staple unit of measurement for length. Where a Warrior might get a detailed explanation for the **Asp Kata** in the Dagger Combat tree, a Mage may only see 'dual dagger fighting technique' in its description, but even among fellow Mages like Jamus and Rain, spells like **Levitation** are described differently within their interfaces.

## Skill Grouping and Visibility

Skills are grouped into trees which are further subdivided by tiers.

There are 144 skill trees that all awakened can see. There are also skill trees that can be created through recombination, taking skills from other trees and moving them to the new tree. The author has said on discord that there may be hidden skill trees, but it is unknown if the trees created through recombination count as such.

For each tree, only foundation tier, aka tier 0, is visible by default. In order to unlock higher tiers, an awakened must spend experience points on a per tree basis. Unlocking tier 1 costs 100 xp, tier 2 costs 1000 xp, tier 3 costs 10,000 xp, and Tier 4 costs 100,000 xp. Tier 4 is the last tier that can be unlocked normally.

There are hidden skills, such as **Channel Mastery**, that need specific requirements to be fulfilled before becoming visible.

## Skill Levels

Skills start at level one when first acquired. The default maximum level that can be a achieved via leveling is ten. That maximum skill level can be raised several different ways including via Specializations at Silver and certain classes. There is no additional benefit to reaching maximum rank in a skill.

Skill ranks can also be directly boosted. Both accolades and items can be used to do so. There is a hard cap on the skill rank that can be reached with such boosts however, at bronze that cap is rank 15 and at silver the cap is 20.

Many skills advance via experience but not all. For those that do use experience, the amount of experienced needed to progress can be calculated via the following formula, where where 't' is the tier the skill is in, and 'r' is the current rank of said skill:

* ((r2 - r) / 2 + 1) \* 2t \* 100

More detailed tables of this formula can be found here.

## Divergent Skills

An awakened may have a skill that is divergent, sometimes also known as aberrant. A divergent skill is different in some way from a normal version of that same skill. Some divergent skills are pure power upgrades. Other divergent skills have changes in functionality, such as more control over the result or providing greater information.

### Known Divergent skills

* Mahria's Froststorm
* Bluewash's Core Access
* Lellermen Green's Cultivate
* Lerith Singer's healing abilities.

## Skill List

*See the Skill Compendium for the list of known skills.*

## References

1. ↑ Chapter 173
2. ↑ SenescentSoul\_Quotes#T4\_Last\_Normal\_Tier
3. ↑ Chapter 21
4. ↑ Chapter 159
5. ↑ Chapter 83
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Chapter 188
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Chapter 247
8. ↑ Chapter 98