Skills

## Introduction

The **skills** of a character are specific abilities a character has acquired through learning. Learning skills can be done via studying and/or training. Skills evolve as the character develops. Together with attributes and knowledge, skills determine the ability of both player and non-player characters to perform tasks effectively and/or efficiently. For this page we only look at the game embedded skill mechanics, and not at so-called "player skills".

### Skills

While players may have different opinions about which skills makes up the best Champion or Explorer, every character is made of their own combination of skills that span seven top-level categories. In general, Champions will be made up predominantly of Combat Skills, Explorers of Survival Skills, Producers of Crafting Skills, Suppliers require various skills and fields of knowledge that support gathering materials form various sources, while Bards will rely mainly upon Art trees, with Lore and Guile that are not particularly related to a specific role at the moment. However, any of these skill trees can be mixed and matched with others, all coming together to form or fit a unique character, play-style, or identity.

### Player Skills

For player characters, player skills also add to the equation. Player skills relate to their ability to read their characters environment, predict what will happen in the near future and their abilities to act and respond using their keyboard, mouse and/or console. Such skills can also all contribute to the effectivity and efficiency player characters can perform tasks. As those skills are not in the scope of the game design, apart from the goal to provide decent user interface and system support, player skills are not discussed on this page.

## Skill Trees

 Combat Skills | A character’s ability to fight | * Unarmed fighting
* One handed and two handed weapons
* Thrown and ranged weapons
 Crafting Skills | A character's ability to produce goods | * Creating consumables such as food and drinks
* Creating armors and weapons
 Guile Skills | Those less savory, riskier skills that may aid in surviving more urban areas | * Stealing, including pickpocketing and purse cutting
* Crafting false identities
* Forging documents
* Lockpicking
 Lore Skills | Relating to scribing, inquiry, and medicine | * Studying pharmacy and anatomy to perform surgery
* Calligraphy
* Reading ancient languages
* Forensic Analysis
* Creating maps
* Writing contracts
 Survival Skills | A character's ability to survive in the wilds | * Finding food and water
* Tracking prey
* Bandaging wounds
* Navigating your way through the wilds

### Skill Hierarchy

Beneath the top level of each skill tree there are secondary and tertiary skills which are referred to as Parent Skills. For example, below the Combat Skills skill-tree lie the parent skills Melee Combat and Ranged Combat. Each of these is a Parent Skill which contributes to the successful execution of skills below.

**Consider this skill tree:**

* Combat Skills
	+ Melee
		- Unarmed
			* Striking
			* Grappling
		- Blunt Weapons
			* One-Handed
				+ Flails
				+ Hammers
				+ Maces
			* Two-Handed
				+ Hammers
				+ Maces

In the above example, One-handed Flails, Hammers, and Maces are all type of One-Handed, Blunt Weapons. Since improving in One-handed Axes causes one to improve their One-Handed Blunt Weapons, when training their one-handed hammer skill, one would see a smaller gain in one-handed flails and maces.

## Skill Tiers

Skills Mastery in Chronicles of Elyria is divided up into tiers with a percent mastery for each tier. The tiers are broken down as follows:

1. **Novice** (0% - 29%)
2. **Apprentice** (30% - 39%)
3. **Journeyman** (40% - 49%)
4. **Expert** (50% - 59%)
5. **Artisan** (60% - 69%)
6. **Renowned** (70% - 79%)
7. **Master** (80% - 89%)
8. **Grandmaster** (90% - 98%)
9. **Legendary** (99% - 100%)

The percentage mastery reflects how proficient you are with a specific skill, but it also inversely reflects the percentage of people who will ever attain a specific skill tier. In other words, based on the amount of time it takes to level a skill, you can expect distribution of mastery across a server for any given skill to look like the following:

1. **Novice**: 100% of all people will achieve Novice
2. **Apprentice**: 70% of all people are likely to achieve apprentice in a skill
3. **Journeyman**: 60% of all people will achieve journeyman
4. **Expert**: 50% of all people will achieve Expert
5. **Artisan**: 40% of all people will be Artisans
6. **Renowned**: 30% of all people will achieve Renowned
7. **Master**: 20% of all people will achieve Master
8. **Grandmaster**: 10% of all people will achieve Grandmaster
9. **Legendary** : 1% of all people will achieve Legendary

Put differently, the Soulborn Engine monitors progress and provides bonuses as necessary to ensure the top 1%, 10%, of players in a skill will eventually reach the Legendary or Grandmaster tier for that skill.

One should also note that those skill tiers reflect the percentage of *players* and not *player characters* that reach these skill tiers. It will, in general, take a player a single character's lifetime to become a Master, multiple to become a Grandmaster, and even more to become Legendary.

## Skill Advancement

 **Instruction** | None | Characters with the Scholarship skill can teach you other skills they know. This is generally an interactive process requiring both people to be online. However, sufficiently skilled characters can teach others via their OPC.
To continue to gain knowledge through formal teaching, it's necessary the teacher have both sufficiently high Scholarship skill, and sufficiently high proficiency in the skill they’re trying to teach. In this way, it gets harder and harder to find good teachers the better and better you become.
 **Practice** | Skill > 0% | Once your skill goes above 0% you can begin practicing most skills on practice equipment. It’s assumed people will use these practice tools while offline via their OPC.
* In the case of combat skills this will often be practice dummies.
* For other types of skills there are specific practice tools available which, through repeated use, can help slowly advance your skills.
* Practicing crafting professions that would normally consume natural resources in other games does not do so in Elyria.

Practice tools cannot be used to increase skills beyond the Journeyman skill level.

### Rewarding for Failure

In an attempt to discourage endless grinding, Chronicles of Elyria will institute a system called "rewarding for failure" when practicing a skill.

* If you attempt a skill that is too easy for you, such that you can never fail, you won't learn anything and will never improve.
* In contrast, if you attempt something just beyond your current skill level, you’ll see a lot more character growth. After all, we learn a lot more from our failures than we do from our success.
* Attempting a skill with a skill rating of 0% will always result in failure, without the chance for skill advancement. In other words, all skills in CoE require a minimum amount of training (via books or instruction) before they can be practiced.

### Impact of Tribe

The Tribes will vary in their innate ability to learn new skills and to perform those skills.

For example, the skill curves and predilection for acquiring new skills is slightly higher in Neran, with this tribe receiving approximately a 20% increase in the rate of learning new skills. Note that learning new skills doesn't necessarily increase their capacity to perform such skills.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Caspian, Adventure Intro: From Pre to Alpha, 18 July 2018
2. ↑ Caspian, DJ #8: Character Roles and Skill Advancement, 14 October 2015
3. ↑ Caspian, Tribes: Neran, 1 June 2017