Modding: Skills

This article is updated for Update 14.

Skills are defined in the skills file Skills.txt.

In this file you can define how many starting skills each survivor gets, and define what each skill does.

See Modding: Professions for more information on how to define how survivors acquire these skills.

## Starting Skill Counts

You may define how many skills a survivor starts with in three categories:

* General Skills
* Profession Specific Skills
* Negative Skills

For each you may define a range of numbers, and the game will randomly select a number from the range.

Negative numbers will be rounded up to 0, and can be used to increase the chance that the number 0 will be chosen.

Example:

```
skills.startingskills.profskill=1
skills.startingskills.negskill=-2-1
skills.startingskills.general=0-2

```

Survivors start with 0, 1 or 2 general skills, exactly one profession skill and 0 or 1 negative skills (if the random number is -2 or -1, it will still be 0 negative skills, meaning there is a chance of 3/4 to get 0 negative skills).
More starting skill sets may be added. You must modify the Professions file to use these new sets.

## Starting skill categories

Starting skills should belong to categories. By default these are "common", "uncommon" and "rare". In the Professions file you define the chance to get a skill from each category.

```
skills.categories.common=55
skills.categories.uncommon=30
skills.categories.rare=15

```

```
skills.entity.gatherer.category=common

```

In the example above, there are three categories - common, uncommon and rare. When choosing a starting skill, there is a chance of 55% to get a common skill, 30% to get uncommon and 15% rare. The numbers are relative, the chance is always the number for that category divided by the sum of all categories.

The gatherer skill in the example above is defined to belong to the "common" category.

## Defining Skills

Each skill may have effects on survivor stats and/or unlock equipment usage, crafting recipes, construction or actions.

**Note**: In addition to the skill definition in Skills.txt, each skill must have its display name defined in the Texts.txt file, using the following format:

```
skills.alienabductee.name=Alien Abductee

```

Stat effects example:

```
skills.entity.soldier.effect.accuracy=0.1
skills.entity.soldier.effect.actiongroup_patrol=0.2
skills.entity.soldier.effect.health=0.15

```

In this example, the survivor will have 10% bonus to accuracy, 20% bonus to performing the patrol task, and 15% bonus to health.

See Modding: Effect Values for a list of different stats that can be used here.

Unlocks equipment example:

```
skills.entity.weirdo.unlocks.equip.occultweapon=true

```

In this example, the survivor will be able to equip items that are defined with an "occultweapon" skill requirement. See Modding: Items for more information on defining skill requirements for equipping items.

## Cancelling Skills

Starting skills with opposite effects automatically cancel each other. For example, if a skill that gives +20% damage is selected, the algorithm will not select another skill with a negative damage factor.

However, it sometimes makes sense for skill to cancel each other even when their effects do not negate each other. For example, a Vegan should cancel a Meat Lover, whatever their effects may be.

This can be defined using the following format:

```
skills.entity.vegan.cancels.meatlover=true

```

Cancelling skills are bi-directional, so the following example will achieve the exact same result:

```
skills.entity.vegan.cancels.meatlover=true
skills.entity.meatlover.cancels.vegan=true

```