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 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, as well as further training (if repeatable). For example, Indulge in a quiet game on the card for The Parthanaeum improves A Player of Chess whether you win or lose, 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.

They're originally capped at level 5, but this cap can be increased to 7 after various actions. For more info on these, 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)

Skill in political strategy

Useful when:

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

How to unlock/train skill:

• Several options at The Chessboard

How to train skill:

• Playing chess on the Chessboard
• Slights
• The Parthanaeum card

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, often leading to impossibilities

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 Dicovering the Non-Existent Block

How to train:

• Experiments in your Laboratory
• Talking to April (Requires finished 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.
• Experiment on an Aged Egg or an illegal egg device WHITSUN

Glasswork

Knowledge about navigating Parabola

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
• Apply what you have heard (Laboratory, up to level 1)

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

Kataleptic Toxicology (KT)

Knowledge about poisons and how to cure them

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)
• Study attar in your lab (time consuming)
• Reading a book on poisons (requires access to Ealing Gardens)
• Study a false-snake in your lab (requires passing a Shapeling Arts 3 challenge)
• Allow your Acicular Squirrel to lead you with Acicular Squirrel WHITSUN
• Experiment on a Percipient Egg during WHITSUN

How to train:

• Have a taste of the Toxicology Exhibit (capped at level 3, best done during an eligible Hallowmas year because of all the 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 without telling lies

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.
  • In Moulin, use the Antiquarian's shop.
• Critically examine a disquieting missive

Monstrous Anatomy (MA)

Knowledge about monsters and their anatomy

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/train:

• Ambush enemies while hunting in Parabola
• 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)

Knowledge about transforming (living) things

Useful when:

• Modifying skeletons
• Various actions

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

How to unlock/train:

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

How to train:

• (Avoid) Getting stabbed (From slighting another player)
• 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 about how to protect from what shouldn't be known.

This skill is useful when dealing with the Discordance.

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 by Nadir, getting 1 CP, and then wait for irrigo to fade again.

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.

This skill is useful when zailing.

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).