AP: about Abilities (skills) and level-ups

[Art Blade]

When you're new to the game you're probably experimenting a lot and may be wondering on which ability to spend your AP points. During Gray Box (tutorial) and the Middle East campaign you'll find out if your choice was good, and if not, you'll get the chance to re-distribute all your AP points after that campaign when it comes to specialise. That means that you'll have to choose a profession with three prefab ability branches each that can be upgraded to level 15 compared to level 10 of the remaining abilities . If you want to freely choose three abilities that can be upgraded to level 15, you can play as Operative.

My personal favourites are Stealth, Pistol and Technical Aptitude (specialised abilities).

Stealth enables you to sneak around silently and you can turn invisible for a certain amount of time. Very handy almost always during any mission. The more you level it up, the better your skills become, and some of them switch on automatically when needed (like when someone is about to spot you, you'll automatically turn invisible for a brief amount of time).

The Pistol ability is very useful if you're a precision and stealth type. The pistol is the only weapon that can be equipped with a silencer and which can fire tranquiliser rounds. Personally, I never use the 15th level (6 shots can be fired at once or less shots once 30 seconds are up). Time doesn't really stand still when you use that skill, it is very slow. That means, if you aim less than 6 shots, you'll have to wait up to 30 seconds and at that time targets may have moved slightly, rendering your shots useless. And I basically never had to fire 6 rounds because a) you won't see 6 targets at the same time and b) most targets can be killed with less rounds (so every extra round ruins your accuracy stats) -- so waiting for up to 30 seconds is incredibly long if you have nothing else to do but to wait and hope no one moves in the mean time. The same skill one level down the ranks still fires 5 rounds during 15 seconds -- more than enough and a bearable amount of time to hold still. Both skills have 45 seconds cool-down time, so there is no difference. Skipping the 15th level saves you 5 AP points you may be grateful to be able to spend it on something else.

When you used one of those "hit a button to temporarily enable" skills, they have a "cool-down" timer, which means you can't use them as long as the skills cool down.

This is when the Technical Aptitude ability comes in handy: "Brilliance" is the most powerful skill, I believe, because when activated it resets all cool-down timers of skills that are still cooling down. Example: You switched on invisibility, walk past a guard and hide again, then the skill wears off and you can't use it again for some time. Now that guard comes walking back right at you.. good idea to use brilliance. Whoosh, your skill is cooled down, you can use it again and walk away invisible.. very useful.

So the trick is to learn how to combine various skills (like a temporary health boost combined with furious martial arts) and if you're a techie, use brilliance to be able to start over quickly. While you're using your freshly and instantly cooled-down skills, the brilliance skill will cool down.. resulting in cooling down in turns so you can create a chain of skills used in a row.

The tech ability also adds additional pockets for gadgets to your armoured suit, adds endurance (some sort of stamina or shield), increases ammo capacity of your weapons and, and, and. Check out this wiki entry for the tech ability to see all the benefits.

By the way, even if you cannot (yet) upgrade an ability, you can still click on the next level(s) to check what is waiting for you and check out if this or that ability/skill may be useful or not -- perhaps before you have to choose your three main abilities.

I hope this post helps sort it out for you, abilities are an important part of the game  :) :-X

[PZ]

Nice - now I'll be able to structure my time from the beginning of the game much better than if I had to start with zero knowledge base  :-X

[Art Blade]

 :)

I mean, knowing how a game works technically may tip the scales. Rather than having to struggle with how something works you may now just plan ahead, as you said "structure" it.

Of course, the tips I gave match my style (stealth, precision, strategy and tactic, proceed analytically) but anyone will be able to patch something together that matches a different style. That's what makes this game great, apart from other things, that you can play it the way you like it. :)

[Art Blade]

One more thing: If you have levelled up the tech branch until you've unlocked "Brilliance" (which gives you the cool-down reset) you will be able to do the Brayko Mansion mission in a special way: You can both get the Halbech data AND rescue your partner, you'll get the option "infiltrate" to do so.

That is only possible with either Brilliance unlocked or playing the veteran career.  :-X