Skilling‎ > ‎ Theories

Basic Skilling Theory

1. Always keep an eye on your SAU- and Skillgains.

• Attack skills are dependent mainly on the weapon SR (and ammo type) you are using, but also a little on the right mob/maturity.
• Healing skills are dependent on the HK and avoidance skills on the mob.

No SAU gains is a clear message: "Something is wrong!"
Average of 3 SAU is good, avg 3+ is super

Found a good way to get SAU and skills?
Then use it! It is your window of opportunity and it won't last long.

2.  Always use the item with the highest SR.

     Following these 2 rules is the fastest way possible.

Advanced Skilling Theory

Skills affecting SR and Effectiveness are not exactly the same.

This becomes extremely important when you find yourself in a situation where you can't unlock all skills.

In this situation you have to prioritize which skills to unlock first (others should be chipped out a little to avoid them getting locked)

it depends mainly on your chosen profession: hunter, miner or crafter.

Following chart, made by Mou Moose, shows what skills are gained using different items:

 

The "common" or "overlapping" skills allow you to advance in Rifles using a Melee weapon, for example.

However, raising the SR on the Rifle using a Sword will obviously raise your Effectiveness with Rifles significantly less than your Effectiveness with Swords.

The skills that do raise your effectiveness are called "effectiveness-skills"

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We cannot be 100% certain that all skills that can be obtained only by using this certain item are also raising it's effectiveness level.
Also, we can't be 100% certain that there is no skill that can be obtained with both melee weapons and rifles, that could raise effectiveness on both,

We can't be sure, but it's highly likely, and it's the best theory we got, so far...

All the lists below are based on that assumption.

Rifle effectiveness-skills are:

• Aim
• Ballistics
• Fire Arms
• Fire Burst
• Inflicted Damage
• Mechanics
• Rifle

Melee effectiveness-skills are:

• Blades
• Close Combat
• Fencing
• Melee
• Weapon Aim

Rifle/Melee overlapping skills are:

• Accurate Eye
• Determination
• Intrepidity
• Weapon Grip
• Weaponry

Rifle/Melee overlapping skills that are also gained/used when healing or avoiding damage:

• Anatomy
• Coordination
• Fauna

Rifle/Melee overlapping skills that are also gained/used when healing, avoiding damage or scanning:

• Attention
• Concentration
• Focus
• General Tools
• Knowledge
• Response
• Science

Your final goal is to get maximum amount of effectiveness skills.

It is not important how exactly you will achieve this, as long as there is next higher level item you can skill on.

You will never lose any skill, even if you skill "wrong".

Your effectiveness levels can only stay the same or go up, they can never drop.

No other skills you gain, in any amounts, can affect it in any way.

You can be at stage 0 in avoidances, HK and melee

You can be at stage 30 in avoidances, HK and melee

Your effectiveness with rifles is still exactly the same

Only difference will be the final amount of the effectiveness-skills, once you reach the last item on the skilling ladder:

• rifle Kashtan ZB-11
• sword Xayerim Legend
• metal scanner M.O.S.K. OT-338 Mercury 
• mineral scanner Mi-Sca MT-338 Moony 

Skilling through the SR gaps

In the weapons ladder there are big "SR gaps" between some weapons/tools, where decreasing SR on the lower item and increasing SR on the next higher item will meet very low (60%-70%, and even as low as 30% in some cases).

In AfterWorld the direct route is not always the fastest way to reach your destination.. ;)

This holds true for skilling too, to gain high rifle levels at times you have to skill melee.

Most skills gained while skilling melee are not rising your true effectiveness on rifles (ability to deal damage on target and bypass it's avoidances), but they will rise your SR on rifles and help you over the low SR areas.

Once you have reached decent SR on the next rifle (above SR 75%)  you can start skilling rifle again. When SR on the rifle will start dropping you can temporarily chip out some skills (advisably overlapping melee skills) to get the SR on rifle down again.

You can repeat this process several times, if needed (depends on how deep is the SR gap), replacing the substitution skills with the skills that provide real effectiveness on rifles (skills like Inflicted Damage, Aim, etc)

Once you have gathered good amount of chipped out SNI's in your inventory you are ready for the "jump" - you will reinsert all the SNIs and start using the next, higher level rifle (melee weapon, scanner..)

This system is usable not only for rifle skilling as in our example, but also for melee skilling, HK skilling and mining scanner skilling - only the "substitute skills" are gained from different activities there (for mining mainly from refining, but also from melee/rifle skilling).

so, now we can rephrase the main rule #2 of skilling:

   always stay on the high SR

By Irkens Wiki