Advanced Skills (Guide)

Mid PoSI Content and Onwards

For a guide to increasing the basic four skills, see Leveling (Guide)

This is a guide to the Advanced Skills, also called MAGCATS or Esoteric Arts. These are stats that start becoming relevant in the midgame.

Many of these skills have both unlocks and training options. The difference between these is that training options only increase your skill if it's already present at level 1 or higher, whereas unlock options will provide both the first CP, and (if repeatable) further training. For example, Indulge in a quiet game on the card for The Parthenaeum improves A Player of Chess, but only if your base skill is already at least 1. If you have a Shrine to Saint Joshua or some other item which raises your Player of Chess skill, you still cannot improve it this way.

Advanced Skills all start capped at level 5, but this cap can be increased to 7 after advanced study. For more info on that, see Raising Attribute Caps (Guide). This guide is loosely based on this guide on Reddit.

All profession-associated advanced skills are useful when practising relevant professional activities.

A Player of Chess (APoC)

A practitioner of the political dark arts; one who savours a scheme and always has a countermove at the ready. A meddler in plots, a student of the hidden motive, a piece always primed to advance its position on the board.

Useful when:

• Playing chess on the Chessboard
• Working on Cover identities
• Working the Railway Board
• Seeking animals in the Moonlit Woods

How to unlock:

• Several options at The Chessboard
• Chequered Boards and Chess-Addicts at Port Cecil during the Evolution storyline

How to train:

• Playing chess on the Chessboard
• Slights
• The Parthanaeum card
• Chequered Boards and Chess-Addicts at Port Cecil during the Evolution storyline (up to level 2)

See The Chessboard (Guide) for more information about how to train this and how to raise the cap.

Artisan of the Red Science (AotRS)

A knowledge that breaks the Great Chain and makes new links on it.

Useful when:

• Duplicating and enlarging bones
• Dealing with the unknowable

The cap is increased with long studies in your Laboratory:

• Transpose the concepts of In and Out
• Inquiry into the Filtration of Light

How to unlock:

• Railway options when Discovering the Non-Existent Block

How to train:

• Experiments in your Laboratory
• Talking to April (Requires finishing Ambition: Bag a Legend!)
• Add a theologically worrisome skull to a skeleton. Requires:
  • Artisan Studies 1, by Finish your Paradoxical Inversion of Inside and Out
  • Counterfeit Head of John the Baptist, by Attending to the Needs of a Singular Plant (at 16-18)
  • Device for the Duplication of Bones
  • 10 Hand-picked Peppercaps (see Sustenance Grinding (Guide))
  • Note: you want to fail the check, as it avoids consuming the Peppercaps and the Head while still increasing your Artisan.
• (Carefully) Examine an Unlawful Device when writing a monograph in Moulin
• WHITSUN: Experiment on an Aged Egg or an illegal egg device. Note that you can study your Egg device outside of Whitsun, making this the best way for non-BAL players to train Artisan before you can deliberately fail Duplicating the Skull as described above.

Chthonosophy

The study of the root of things: a river’s source; a dynasty’s ancestry; a mountain's bones. Knowledge that knows how the future springs from the past. An art that guards against deception, denial, delusion, and doubt.

Useful when:

• Broadening one's perspective in order to talk to chthonic powers.
• Firmament, being the equivalent of Zeefaring for airships.
• Attempting to understand to organization of a rather unique library.
• And perhaps more...

How to unlock or train skill:

• Completing the Hallow's Throat portion of the Firmament storyline.
• Fully understand what it means to become a new person in Hallow's Throat.

How to train skill:

• Taking a break from wandering The Stacks to consider some Fragmentary Ontology.
• Coming to a revelation during your explorations in The Stacks after you've found at least three books.

Glasswork

The essential characteristic of a Silverer. Familiarity with the Fingerwork and knowledge of what lies behind the mirror.

Useful when:

• Doing more or less anything in Parabola

The options to raise the cap depends on which faction rules ( The Dome of Scales). Examples with the Fingerkings:

• Recognise the Fingerking
• Purchase a greater freedom of the place

How to unlock skill/train:

• Navigate Parabola
• Sneak away from your wounds in your Parabolan Base-Camp
• Apply your own knowledge when tracking the animals of Parabola -- see the Guide for details on hunting in Parabola.
  • Available as soon as you establish a base camp, this is probably the fastest and easiest way to unlock and to train Glasswork. It gives +1CP on both success and failure, with no penalty for failure, so 15 no-risk Actions of Applying Your Own Knowledge and you're at Glasswork 5.
• Apply what you have heard (Laboratory, up to level 1, only if you're not a Silverer and have not yet established a route to Parabola)

Note: This skill will decrease if you gain 8 Wounds or Nightmares in your Parabolan Base-Camp, via the autofire storylets Conflagration and Falling apart.

Kataleptic Toxicology (KT)

A recent field of study dedicated to the toxins and alchemies of the Neath. It investigates substances like Prisoner's Honey, Attar, Cantigaster venom, Uttershroom spores, and Hesperidean Cider. It is favoured by those with fierce curiosity and very steady hands.

Useful when:

• Cooking in A Kitchen for Artists
• Some uses in your Lab and when Assembling Skeletons

Kataleptic Toxicology Studies is gained through studies in your Laboratory:

• Make a deeper study of toxins
• Better understand the metabolism of poisons

How to unlock/train:

• Eat orange-apples (expensive, or somewhat time consuming grinding materials)
  • It's ~8-9 actions to grow and eat an Orange-apple for 1CP of KT, using LB Industries for Bone Fragments with Watchful 240, in batches of 6 fruit/6600 Bone Frags.
  • This grind can also be used for the 10 Orange-apples needed to Make a deeper study of toxins, to get the first point of Kataleptic Toxicology Studies.
• Study attar in your lab (time consuming)
  • It's roughly 25-30+ actions for 1CP of KT, for this 450 Research plus 15 Para-research project, assuming an average of 15 Research per action.
• Study a false-snake in your lab (requires passing a Shapeling Arts 3 challenge)
  • Preserved False-Snakes are found while laying track for the Railway.
  • Lab project needs 100 Research, so maybe ~8-10 actions per CP of KT.
• Reading a book on poisons (requires access to Ealing Gardens on the Railway)
  • 80 ( 40) to buy the book, but only 100 ( 10) in Peppercaps per CP of KT thereafter.
• Allow your Acicular Squirrel to lead you with Acicular Squirrel WHITSUN
  • 1 action per CP of KT.
• Experiment on a Percipient Egg during WHITSUN
  • Lab project needs 125 Research, so maybe ~10-12 actions for 1CP of KT. However, the project also produces an Orange-apple -- good for another CP of KT -- so it's effectively ~6-7 actions per CP of KT.

How to train:

• Have a taste of the Toxicology Exhibit (best done during an eligible Hallowmas year because of all the Wounds)
  • 10% chance to gain 1CP of KT -- and 6CP of Wounds. Failure give 1-3CP Wounds.
  • Expected results of 10 tries: 1CP of KT and 24CP Wounds.
• Slights: Leverage your extensive knowledge of exotic poisons or Drink up. Metabolize the poison (Johnny Croak or the Polite Poisoner)

Note: This skill will decrease if you gain 8 Wounds in your Parabolan Base-Camp

Mithridacy

The art of confusion and deception, of misleading the listener without a single false word.

Useful when:

• Working on skeletons to reduce implausibility
• Writing Monographs
• Many other uses

Raise the cap by publishing special editions of your Newspaper:

• Publish an edition in Defence of the Railway
• Elaborate upon your Defence of the Railway

How to unlock/train:

• Give a calculated speech on Freedom and Darkness in Ealing Gardens
• Creating Corrective Historical Narrative and Revisionist Historical Narrative, in The Waswood and Moulin:
  • In The Waswood, Compose a Corrective History or Compose a Revisionist History.
    • Available as soon as you establish a Parabolan base camp -- just leave it, and pass a Glasswork challenge.
    • Both Compose Histories require Incisive Observations to try the challenge, but award +1CP Mithridacy on both success or failure. Success consumes your Observations (which are probably rare at this point) while failing does not, so aim to fail the challenge -- note that failing increases Nightmares, however.
  • In Moulin, use the Antiquarian's shop.
• Critically examine a disquieting missive (only gives CP up to level 4).

Monstrous Anatomy (MA)

The field of study that tells you that steel knives won't work on this enemy, or that stabbing it in the lower back is likely to pierce the venom-sac.

Useful when:

• Hunting beasts in Parabola
• Assembling Skeletons

Monstrous Anatomy Studies is gained through studies in your Laboratory:

• Work toward a fuller understanding of monstrosities 1
• Work toward a fuller understanding of monstrosities 2

How to unlock or train:

• Ambush enemies while hunting in Parabola -- see the Guide for details on hunting in Parabola.
  • Available as soon as you establish a base camp, this is by far the fastest option to both unlock and to train MA. It gives +1CP on both success and failure, so 15 Ambush actions and you're at MA 5. Just make sure you can tank a substantial amount of Wounds before trying to level all the way to five.
• Finish your study of the Thorned Ribcage in your Laboratory

Note: This skill will decrease if you gain 8 Nightmares in your Parabolan Base-Camp

Shapeling Arts (SA)

A power of transformation, as applicable to the living.

Useful when:

• Modifying skeletons
• Various actions

See Helicon House (Guide) for more information about raising the cap for Shapeling Arts.

How to unlock/train:

• Finish your study of the Thorned Ribcage in your Laboratory
• Upgrading bones Below-Stairs at Helicon House
• Flute Street (FATE)

How to train:

• Complete your research in the shaping of bones in your Laboratory
• (Avoid) Getting stabbed (From slighting another player)
• Draw tentacles from the cauldron in Helicon House, 1 CP every 6 actions at the cost of 1 Preserved Surface Blooms, with Discovered: Below-Stairs and Discovered: the Mirrored Salon.
• Pilgrimages in Godfall
• Recognise its shape in Stormbones
• Whitsun iguana options when you Search your Terraria (requires railway progress for the False-Snake)
• Experiment on a Scarlet Egg WHITSUN

Steward of the Discordance

An inkling, only, of how to protect against things that should not be known.

This skill is used when dealing with the Discordance, but is not useful the way other Skills are, on purpose.

The first discordant study is encountered with a Discordant Law in the Nadir (See Rip out the words) The second is found after Unlock deeper Discordant Studies in the Adulterine Ruins. For more information, see Discordant Studies - Costs and Rewards (Guide)

How to unlock:

• When you gain Discovered: a Patch of Frozen Neath on the way to Jericho Locks or later.

How to train:

The only repeatable way so far to grind it past level 3 is to read the stones every week, then purge the law in the Cave of the Nadir, getting 1 CP, and then wait for irrigo to fade again. Note: after purging the law, you do not need to play Hurling again before reading the standing stones unless you want to change the Discordant Law enacted.

Zeefaring

How to chart a course with unreliable maps; how to steer a ship through dangerous waters; how to hold a crew together against adversity.

Useful when:

• Zailing
• Invoking the necessity of hierarchy and arbitration.

How to unlock/train:

The only way to train it is to spend Zee Legs from zailing in Wolfstack Docks

• Zeefaring Ztudies is gained by zailing. See Piracy (Guide) For ZZ 1.
• Zeefaring Ztudies 2 can be gained in The House of Snow and Brine, in Irem (Guide).