Skills

**Skills** basically are the options you can choose in battle. You can learn them with skill points you earn by gaining levels. What pprtions of skills are available to you at the moment depends on stances you're adopting and your stamina.

Don't forget to read their description in combat. There are hundreds of skills, so only particularly useful ones are described.

## Short guide to skill usefulness

By the purpose of the skill you roughly can divide them into **attacking** skills, **defensive** skills, and everything else.

#### Attributes

* **Bonus damage** (*bonus power*) — count of the skill's basic effectiveness: the damage power, or the armor sundering power, or the healing power, or the seductive power.

* Basic power of skill depends on: Strength for melee attacks, Magic for spells, Charisma for seduction.

* **Stability cost** — the loss of stability points when you attack with this skill. It's mitigated by higher Agility. To let stability recover, stop attacking. If it reaches 0, you trip.

* **Stamina cost** — the loss of stamina points when you attack or grapple with this skill. It's mitigated by higher Endurance. To let stamina recover, stop attacking, additionally use *Second Wind*. If it reaches 0, you trip and can't use skills.

* **Total defense** of a skill consists of three stand alone levels of defence that decrease incoming damage for you when you use it. It never is 0, even attacking moves have some defense.
	+ *Evade* is a portion of damage you will ignore.
	+ *Parry* is a portion of damage you will deflect, losing some grip on weapon.
	+ *Block* is a portion of damage you absorb if you have a shield, while losing some of shield's durability.

* **Height** of attack is an indication of what portion of body it will hit. Majority of the strikes target Middle height (chest section). If you expect to hit at certain height, you need to destroy armor at this height for it to be effective.

#### Additional conditions

Some skills have stated conditions that, if met, give a skill boosts (example: can get + bonus power; +% of evade/parry/block; +Bleeding point, +% chance of Disarm etc.). It may significantly raise their usefulness.

The most common condition, of course, is *For each skill level*, — meaning per each rank of this skill you learn, you get one more bonus.

Another common condition: *The faster you are than the enemy*, — meaning you get stated bonus if your Agility stat is higher than of opponent.

There are, of course, other specific conditions.

## Useful skills

Those are the skills that may certainly come in handy. They're grouped by stances they're in.

#### Balanced

* **Spring Attack** — common attacking move to change stance to Offensive. Has fair defense.
* **Low Attack** — not particularly strong attack, but you can spam it before decide to defend. One of a few attacks that target legs (low height of attack).
* **Block** — changes the stance to Defensive. Lets you guard with a shield to block all the damage and wait through offense. You can also wait for your stability and stamina to recover while blocking. But remember: your shield has durability.
* **Fade Away** — changes the stance to Defensive. If you're faster than the enemy, blocks fairly good. It also deals good damage at low height. Also can sometimes give you Evade Up effect that raises evasion for three turns.
* **Aid** — magic. Weakest healing spell. Its advantage is it's casted from Balanced stance in one turn. The more Magic you have the more it heals.
* **Quickcast** - magic. Immediately gets you into Deep Casting, which is useful to cast the Paralysis spell quickly.

#### Defensive

* **Careful Attack** — changes the stance to Offensive. Has a good level of defense and deals a bit of damage.
* **Guard** — basically same as *Block*.
* **Second Wind** — best skill to quickly recover stamina.
* **Parry** — it can lead to Counter stance.

#### Counter

* **Disarm** — if you are faster then the enemy (Agility is higher), use this skill while the enemy makes an attack. They'll lose their weapon, which will make their melee attacks much weaker. Don't let them Equip it back for easy win.
* **Trip** - if the enemy doesn't use an attack, tripping them then attacking while they're getting back up is another option to use your superior Agility for an easy win.

#### Offensive

* **Tempo Attack** — predictable, but still useful for damaging chest section of opponent.

* **Crushing Blow** — the damage gets pretty high if the opponent is lying on the ground or staying Kneeling. It's even higher with two-handed grip on weapon. Also can distabilize with the heavy blow. Shifts you to Balanced stance.

* **Combat Dodge** — after you get faster than the enemy and invest skill points to rank it up, it can give you 100% evasion without changing a stance. Though you need pretty high Agility as this move costs 7 stability.

* **Combat Guard** - if you're unable to safely use Combat Dodge, this is an alternative to get a good amount of defense while changing stance to Balanced.

* **Armor Crusher** — the only skill that damages armor specifically. Hits at middle height. Has three ranks, each raises its effectiveness by 100%. However, it requires the Reel Back stance to use it. Sunderer perk is an alternative to it.

* **Overrun** — makes your opponent lose stability, which in turn will force them to stop attacking until they recover. The skill can neither be blocked nor parried. Forcing the enemy to completely trip may not be your aim, though, as they can stand back up with full stability in one turn (unless their stamina is very low).

* **Leg Sweep** — This skill has even higher chances of tripping the opponent than Overrun if you're faster than the enemy (even more so if they suffer the Predictable status) alongside 50% evade — at the cost of not dealing any damage and changing stance to Kneeling.

* **Berserk** — this stance leads to **Rage** (a very powerful offensive move) and **Enrage** (which greatly increases Strength)... but you will only stop using the stance when you trip. The Titan Strength magic is an alternative to the latter skill.

* **Blitz Attack** - changes to the Blitz stance and inflicts one level of Bleeding on the enemy the faster you are than them.

* **Change up** - thanks to its good damage and defense, it's a much safer move than Hold Back to change stance to Offensive. It could be a good idea to spam this skill alongside Blitz Attack to quickly stack bleeding on the enemy.

* **Assault** — moderately useful Blitz stance skill available in Offensive. It is powerful, ignores all defense and destabilises the enemy. But you will have to waste a turn to return to other stances. It also lacks in defense.

#### Kneeling

* **Grab It** — if you want to make someone limp without losing your Purity. But you'll need Agility to be fast enough, or they'll make an obvious move, with the height on which your head is now...

* **Uppercut** — the only way to go offensive from Kneeling. Useful to damage Harpies, which tend to spam Fly. If you end up on your knees often, maybe it's worth a skill point.

1. ↑ When they're on the ground, you attack their middle section. If they're standing, and you still decide to use the skill, you attack the low section.