Advanced Skills (Guide)

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Microscope2small.png 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[1] 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)[edit]

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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:

How to unlock:

How to train:

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

Artisan of the Red Science (AotRS)[edit]

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

Useful when:

The cap is increased with long studies in your Laboratory:

How to unlock:

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:
  • (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[edit]

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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:

How to train skill:

Glasswork[edit]

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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:

How to unlock skill/train:

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)[edit]

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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:

Kataleptic Toxicology Studies is gained through studies in your Laboratory:

How to unlock/train:

How to train:


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

Mithridacy[edit]

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

Useful when:

Raise the cap by publishing special editions of your Newspaper:

How to unlock/train:

Monstrous Anatomy (MA)[edit]

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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:

Monstrous Anatomy Studies is gained through studies in your Laboratory:

How to unlock or train:

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

Shapeling Arts (SA)[edit]

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A power of transformation, as applicable to the living.

Useful when:

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

How to unlock/train:

How to train:

Steward of the Discordance[edit]

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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:

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[edit]

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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

  1. An abbreviation of the original seven advanced skills, though increasingly less apt as FBG has added more — see Abbreviations and Terms (Guide).