The long overdue player skills system is finally arriving in June, and it's something many of you have been asking for. Here's a short breakdown of what to expect.
There will be 9 skills across three categories — Exploration, Combat, and Village — each with 10 levels to progress through, plus special milestone perks.
Melee Combat
Leveled up by hitting enemies or animals with melee weapons, including sneak attacks. As you progress, your attacks will consume less stamina, and you'll eventually unlock faster attack speed, a longer parry stun timer, and, lastly, double damage from your final combo hit.
Ranged Weapons
Leveled up by landing hits and headshots with ranged weapons. As you progress, stamina costs will drop, and special perks will let you craft twice as many arrows and improve headshot kills. You'll also learn to stun enemies with a bow bash, not just hit them.
Survival
It is leveled up simply by eating, drinking, and just doing your daily routine. It progressively reduces all your survival needs, and the special perks are very useful: lower stamina costs for running and dodging, and, ultimately, no fall damage at all.
Forest Mastery
Leveled by harvesting plants, chopping trees, and mining rocks. You'll be able to chop trees and mine rocks more efficiently , and special perks unlock double resources from harvestable plants, dead animals, and farm animals. The max perk also adds a chance of "Golden" variations from raised animals.
Leadership
Leveled up by creating and upgrading different building types and completing villager quests. It reduces villager survival needs over time, and special perks make your villagers work faster, improve trader prices, and ultimately allow villagers to never be unhappy.
Farming
Leveled by planting and harvesting crops. It decreases growth times, water fills twice as much, and animal traps yield more resources. Max level doubles your entire crop yield on harvest.
Crafting
Improved by crafting items at the Builder, Blacksmith, Carpenter, Weaver, and other crafting stations. Crafting speed grows as you progress, and special perks make blueprint construction faster, reduce item durability loss, and finally give a 50% chance to double the outcome of any recipe.
Cooking
Leveled at the Cookhouse and Campfire. Meals restore progressively more hunger and thirst, and special perks give the Good Diet stat real utility: cold resistance, movement speed boost, and health regeneration. Bonus: the drunk status will no longer distort your vision. Though maybe some of you like this effect :)
Medicine
Acquired at the Apothecary's Hut, using medicine, and burning Plague Sites. Healing and anti-Plague damage improve together as you level up. Special perks give you a washing-based healing, increased Plague Resistance, and ultimately, the villager infection chance is cut in half.
Skills are tied to your actions, so you'll naturally advance the ones that match your playstyle. More details on exactly how progression works are coming soon — stay tuned.