Advanced Skills (Guide)
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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]
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)[edit]
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:
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
- Experiment on an Aged Egg or an illegal egg device WHITSUN
Chthonosophy[edit]
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.
- Nothing else, yet
How to unlock or train skill:
- Completing the Hallow's Throat portion of the Firmament storyline.
How to train skill:
- TBD
Glasswork[edit]
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:
- Navigate Parabola
- Sneak away from your wounds in your
Parabolan Base-Camp - Apply your own knowledge when tracking the animals of Parabola
- 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)[edit]
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:
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 (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[edit]
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:
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:
- Critically examine a disquieting missive (only gives CP up to level 3).
Monstrous Anatomy (MA)[edit]
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:
- 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 (This is by far the faster option, both to unlock and to train, just make sure you can tank a substantial amount of wounds before trying to level it 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)[edit]
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:
- Complete your research in the shaping of bones in your Laboratory (if you already have a point from equipment)
- 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)
- Draw tentacles from the cauldron in
Helicon House, 2 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
- Complete your research in the shaping of bones in your Laboratory
Steward of the Discordance[edit]
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 by Nadir, getting 1 CP, and then wait for irrigo to fade again.
Zeefaring[edit]
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).
- ↑ An abbreviation of the original seven advanced skills, though increasingly less apt as FBG has added more — see Abbreviations and Terms (Guide).
