So for this first bit, I want to dig further into how skills work in Sacred 2. One major thing to remember is that Skills are different than Combat Arts. Combat arts are individual moves or spells you can learn. Skills allow you to choose the way that your character plays and what their strengths are. For example, a Skill might be Sword Weapons. This skill makes your character more proficient with swords by increasing the speed and attack rating of your character when using a sword. This skill also makes it so that you can use higher level swords than you normally would for your level.

On the other hand you have combat arts. These typically are moves or spells that you can use in combat, for example the Shadow Warrior has Demonic Blow. This combat art (called CA in the rest of this article) does a single hit on an enemy that does a great deal of damage. It does not matter what weapon you are using, it simply works with whatever you happen to hit the enemy with.

In this article, I am going to focus mainly on Skills.

While adventuring in the world of Ancaria, you will run into many monsters to battle and while fighting you will inevitably level up. At certain levels you will be given the option to learn a new skill. In total, you can learn 10 skills on any one character. Now there are many more skills than this available, but you can only learn 10. You cannot unlearn a skill, so choose wisely. The levels in which you are given the option to learn a new skill are:

Levels at which you get to learn a new skill: 2, 3, 5, 8, 12, 18, 25, 35, 50, 65

As you level you will also be given points that you can use to increase the power of your skills. Each point you put into a skill increases it’s influence. For example, once I learn the armor lore skill, each point I put into armor lore increases the of armor bonus I get from my equipped armor, but it also increases the level of armor I can wear, that way I can wear stronger armor that is made for higher level characters. As you level, the higher you get, the more skill points you get per level. Below is a listing of the number of skill points you get at each level.

Level 1-4: 1 Skill point per level
Level 5-11: 2 Skill points per level
Level 12-24: 3 Skill Points Per Level
Level 25-49: 4 Skill Points Per Level
Level 50-200: 5 Skill Points Per Level
So all together a little over 900 skill points will be gained if you take your character all the way to level 200.

When learning new skills you will also notice that some skills are grayed out at first. These are called secondary skills and they can only be learned once you have put 5 points into any of the primary skills in that group. So for example, if I want to learn the Dual Wield Skill as a Shadow Warrior, I first need to spend at least 5 points in other offensive skills like Sword Weapons, Tactics Lore, etc… It does not have to be 5 points in any one skill, just a total of 5 points spent between any of the other skills in the offensive skills category. This adds to the planning you need to do. If you want a particular skill, and it is a secondary skill for your class (grayed out) then make sure that you pick a skill to put some points in that you are actually going to use. Don’t just pick any skill, and dump 5 points into it just to get to the skill you want, if you do that, you have just wasted a skill slot.

There are 4 Categories of Skills:

Class Skills – These are skills where most of them are specific to your class, Shadow Warrior, Seraphim, etc…
Offensive Skills – These are skills usually tied to combat and weapons, Sword Weapons, Hafted Weapons, Ranged Weapons, etc…
Defensive Skills – These are skills usually tied to keeping you alive, Armor Lore, Constitution, etc…
General Skills – These are skills that do not fall into the other categories, Alchemy, Devine Devotion, Blacksmithing, Riding, Enhanced Perception, etc…

Depending on your character class, the skills in the Class Skill category will be different. The other categories will be mainly the same, but your class defines which skills are primary (available to learn right away) vs. what skills are secondary (require 5 points in other skills in the category before they can be learned). So while dual wield might be available right away for an Inquisitor, it is a secondary skill for Shadow Warrior and so requires that you have 5 points in other skills in the offensive skills category before your Shadow Warrior can learn it.

When choosing your skills first think about how you want to play your character, look at each skill and read the description of it. You cannot undo skill choices so make sure you plan ahead. The next article will go a bit more into how skills work with your Combat arts and how they can effect your character overall.

Till then…