Skills

Combat in The Exiled is based around **skills** and skill-combinations. Depending on what weapon and armor you are wearing, you can choose a total of 10 different skills for your character build to play with.
Skills can be looted in the Open World and then learned at the Dojo. Here you can also change your assigned weapon and armor as well as your current skill build.

### Skill Casting

All skills are cast via hotkeys and aimed with the mouse. All skills in The Exiled are variations of "skill shots", meaning that instead of locking on to a target, a skill's projectile or hit area will always follow your mouse. In order to successfully hit a target, make sure to always correctly aim at it!

### Friendly Fire

In addition to having to aim manually, every skill can hit every target on the screen: heal skills can hit enemies, damage skills can hit allies - including yourself! There are a few exceptions, however, because some skills can not be cast on yourself.

Since in the heat of battle, targeting yourself for a heal can be tricky, you can lock on to yourself with the "Target Self"-Button(default: [left shift]).

#### Cast Modes

Patch 0.43 introduced different cast modes that help with targeting skills correctly. They can be changed in the Skills Overview (default: [K]), where you can also assign a global default value.

The different casting modes are:

* Instantly: The skill is being cast as soon as possible.
* Cast on release: The skill is being cast when releasing the corresponding hotkey.
* Cast on confirmation: The skill is being cast after pressing the skill button and confirming it with the left mouse button.

### Skill Properties

All skills share similar properties that influence how a skill works both during and after casting it. Some of these are influenced by your character's Attributes and they can be found on the top of the skill's description.

#### Skill Level

The Skill Level refers to the amount of pigments spent on this particular skill. A skill's Scaling Properties are influenced by this.

#### Energy Cost

Energy is the base resource of a character and determines whether or not you can actually cast any chosen skill. Energy equal to the amount of Energy Cost will be removed upon casting a skill, independent of its success.

#### Cast Time

The Cast Time refers to the time it takes to activate a skill. Some skills can be cast while moving, others will lock your character in place. The Cast Time is modified by your character's Ability Speed.

#### Cooldown

The Cooldown determines how long it takes for a skill to recharge, allowing you to cast it again. This is modified by your character's Cooldown Speed.

#### Scaling Properties

In addition to the standard properties, most skills have more specific properties that get better with every skill level. These are listed below the skill's description.

Some examples are:

* (Minimum) Damage: This increases the amount of damage a skill inflicts at minimum. Skills that do not have a damage range will just inflict more damage in general.
* Duration: If a skill causes an effect on a target, this effect will last longer.

## Skill Progression

### Upgrading And Learning Skills

See the Progression page for a detailed description on how to upgrade and learn new skills.

### Creating Skill Builds

Skill builds refer to your character's combination of weapon, armor and your chosen skills. You can pick up to 10 skills from your chosen gear, however this number is restricted in the early levels. Also restricted is the amount of armor and weapon skills you can choose: Starting with 3 each, later on you will be able to use heavily-specialized builds that rely on more weapon than armor abilities and vice versa.

## Skills List

### General Skills

Every character in The Exiled has three general abilities:

* Gank(default: [0]) is used to finish off people that are knocked-out. Ganked players will be teleported to their binding tree and drop their inventory. Note that gear is dropped by chance, but not always.
* Revive(default: [8]) is used to help knocked-out players get up again. Note that players get up once they reach full health, gaining buffs at certain stages. Players don't gain all buffs when being revived.
* Return(default: [Z]) is used to return to your latest binding tree by yourself. You drop all your inventory, but not your gear.