While I have done checks to be sure that every skill has places it gets used (some do come up more than others but everything is useful somewhere) I'm curious what the perception of the skills is at this point.
What's a must-have skill for you?
What's more useful than you expected?
What do you never bother with unless forced to take?
1. The Interaction skills
2. Menace. It's often easier to just blackmail someone than do their quest, especially if the person already doesn't like you. The time limit feels really tight in this game so saving a few turns feels worth it despite the risk of more assassins appearing. Science helps with saving time (and I also really find Stoyan and Arrahil very entertaining) but after finding out you have to keep the stat low for *certain events* to happen I had to think of ways to play without early fast movement speed anyway.
3. I tend to neglect Domination and Environment
Piloting, Stealth and Rhetoric are vastly more necessary than I expected. (And so are the Engineering skills but I scrape by, taking only just what I need)
I still fall back on using Interaction/Emotion a lot, but I'm liking high Rhetoric more than high Etiquette, and I did not expect to get so much mileage out of Menace. Not necessary, but incredibly fun, and very useful.
Most non-Stealth physical skills that aren't Condition or Body Control I only bother with if I'm angling to succeed a specific personal quest. which so far I haven't really done. I haven't done an Arts run either but it should be right up my alley.
Must-have: Interaction (especially Etiquette) and Emotion (especially Empathy—knowing who likes and dislikes me feels vital). Any time I skimp on these I suffer for it.
Useful: Piloting comes up more than I'd expected! Also Engineering and Arts, and Endurance specifically in the Body Control category.
I'm not yet at the point of writing anything off. I haven't yet focused on Stealth, but I've failed enough Stealth tests to see that it can be useful. Domination seems limited, but there are several quests where it also seems necessary. I haven't explored Combat, Condition, or Environment yet.
For the most part I neglect knowledge skills for Zorana and focus on hiring skilled advisors (with a couple of exceptions—I'll learn a bit of Spirituality just to make good impressions, I'm currently experimenting with Galactic Relations, and the super-Intrigue run I did was interesting even though it was a little immersion breaking that everyone had identical military/intrigue/spirituality stats). Science and Bureaucracy are the most vital in my experience—the movement speed and extra social action are both super useful.
The interaction skills.
Empathy feels like it's necessary for your first few playthroughs but Its also feeling like something you might be able to drop later if you just memorise who likes and hates you.
I will say I do miss the learning boost for having the other skills in the same tree that we had in Long live the Queen. (Its probably a balance thing but I liked the way you could use it gain additional points or offset penalties when you really needed to).
Interaction and Empathy are vital, which is quite reasonable given the nature of the game. I think it's possible to work round everything else if sufficiently cautious.
Science has been incredibly useful - far more so than expected despite not taking the most obvious use for it. Whether I get it through Zorana or an advisor, it's likely to be in the back of my mind on any run now. I do like how Science being the first Skill Check (even an impossible one) subtly hints at the value of this.
I don't seem to have had much use for physical combat skills yet (apart from a couple of random ones) nor anything involving a planet's surface, although that's probably because I've so far only had 3 losses and 1 win. That can't possibly cover this game's entire possibility space, so I expect to find uses for these later.
Echoing what everybody else has said - Interaction and Emotion make the game much much easier. Interaction to try and make the best impression you can, Empathy to check your work, Menace to intimidate those who do not already love you into submission.
Gunnery has only had very niche uses for me. In general, it feels like Zorana has access to a lot more physical skills then Elodie did - which made my first few attempts at 'brawn' runs kind of difficult. I didn't know how to balance a more meatheaded Zorana.
Also, just my luck - it felt like every time I was preparing my skills so that I could beat a certain electors quest, they would end up liking me so much that they'd auto give me the vote. No, Lorkas! Stop it! I spent so many turns in wrestling class! Why would you do this to me?
Yeah I want to echo everyone else here. The brain stats have felt a little pointless like they are useful for some making friends but generally you can find other ways to do the same thing and then they are useful in certain missions you can also avoid and then dodging assassinations which you can also avoid.
It makes sense that having good social stats is key to winning this game but at the same time it does feel like you have to be overly reliant on them to function. Maybe I haven't specialised enough in the stats to double check if at a high enough check you can use stuff like endurance to survive social situations like you could do in LLTQ with composure but it certainly feels like not having social stats early is too big of a problem to avoid taking them.
I think approval penalties for Blackmail should probably be increased, yeah. Maybe if you have a high enough Deception or Intrigue stat, you can avoid some of the penalties by having the skills to 'cover your tracks' ? I like the option of having Zorana be a highly skilled blackmailer, but I do feel like I should need to earn it more then investing a bit in Menace and having a competent Media advisor.
I never use Cautious to change my mood for assassination protection, tbh. I'm usually attempting to reset with my pet or with the baby. Usually one or both of them can get me to a mood that is safe for the turn.
The interaction and empathy skills are must haves for me! I kinda expected that though. I really liked the piloting and intrusion skills and felt like I used them in more activities than I thought I would at first! I barely ever used the terrain skill I think. Also I second bluepanda's comment earlier about missing how LLTQ had learning tree boosts, I feel like those rewarded you for specializing and made it way easier to max out a tree.
Like most, pretty much anything with Empathy and Etiquette are go to skills because well. You have to converse with the nobles, kind of what this game is about!
Blade is one of my personal favorite skills though: having a blade on you (with the skills to use it) doesn't just make you very hard to assassinate directly but also does have surprising applications in other skill checks.
Must-have, early in the game : Science (to travel quickly), Rhetoric & Imperial History (for not being ridiculous during the interview, much easier to have an advisor for Imperial History + boosting Rhetoric than having the other options), Etiquette, Empathy
Must-have later in the game : Repair + Visual + Invention (mostly for not being ridiculous with the Maus), some skills for avoiding assassination (mainly Condition and Body Control skills, eventually Layout, eventually Unarmed or Blade)
Very useful early in the game : Reflexes + Tumbling, Galactic Relations
Very useful later in the game : Piloting, Spirituality
Quite useful early in the game : Operations
Quite useful later in the game : Bureaucracy, Sports (if you want Ethexae to join), Musical, Dramatic
Meh : Media, Intrigue (just stays at 75 and don't care about it), Strength, Wrestling, Stealth skills, Economics
I quite never used : Gunnery skills, Environment skills, Demolition, Hunting, Military, Sleight-of-Hand, Chain
What I found more useful than expected is probably Science, Repair, and the Arts skills, to a lesser extent Spirituality.
My go-to skills are a mix of what's useful in-game and what makes sense narratively.
Interaction skills are a must every playthrough no matter what else I'm focusing on, they're just too useful and it makes sense for an empress candidate to study them.
I feel like Kxenia and Vasily's lessons are a hint that those two skill groups are useful. At first I studied Art only beause it's an interest of Zorana's friend but it comes in handy. So does Spaceship and since Zorana lives on one it makes sense she'd learn a thing or two. Engineering and Condition are also useful, and surprisingly Hunting. In early game I easily got three votes with Demolition 50, Hunting 30 and Piloting 40.
The Knowledge skils are useful in many checks plus the movement and social turn bonus, so at first I'd raise them before getting an advisor, with the reasoning that if Zorana and advisor both have 50 Bureaucracy then it's 100 in total. It wasn't until I read a post on this forum that I learned that checks don't take the sum of values but take the higher one. My jaw dropped, I was convinced they sum up. I've since reread the in-game info and in hindsight can kinda tell which part is supposed to hint at this but the phrasing was too circumspect for me and flew over my head. Now that I know I barely touch these skills since checks will be taking the advisor's value anyway unless I specialize so anything over 20 feels like a waste of class.
As for Emotions, on my first playthrough I didn't know what Empathy is used for and didn't touch it, then was flooded with multiple 'you can't tell how she feels about you', 'you can't tell if he's telling the truth', and I instantly fell in love with the game <3 This is basically my everyday life with autism so I was instantly immersed and relating to Zorana. I later found that Empathy isn't as necessary as it seems, since having it at 0 doesn't seem to affect votes and you can get opinions via poll. Allure and Menace seem to be used for Charm and Blackmail which I don't use anyway, so I tend to leave this group alone or with minimal points. Failed some checks but nothing disastrous so far.
Yeah it's kind of sad that it only acknowledges the highest stat. It probably makes sense for balancing purposes but it super disincentivises actually learning any of your knowledge stats and sort of pushes you into picking the same candidates each run for their stats.
I wish there was a system of the lowest stat applies 1/2 rounded down to nearest multiple of 5 for example to the highest stat. Because it feels pointless to aim for like graduate or grandmaster on most of your knowledge stats because it takes too much effort and you waste many turns before a reward.
I don't know if I'm missing anything, but I feel like I very rarely train any of the weapons, terrain, etc. skills mentioned previously because it feels like you have to get them super high to pass the only few skill checks they have in the game. Personally, I would be more inclined to train them if either there were more checks that relied on them or if the thresholds to pass were much lower. Compared to the interaction/emotion/ships categories that have a ton of checks throughout the game so it makes sense to train them to the highest level. Understand there's only so much that you can balance with that though, it would be odd if you could pass every check with a 50 blade skill lol
Omg yes, sorry, I meant it would be odd if you could pass a rhetoric check with Blade 50 - sometimes you can dupe your way through checks with secondary skills (i.e. breaking into places with Deception instead of Intrusion), but I understand there's a limit on how much sense that makes writing-wise! Like, I image Zorana doing sick sword tricks to impress Erilotti at the reception and Erilotti just being like ... okay we will not be voting for this one. So blade seems to have less checks than deception, which makes sense in-story but gameplay-wise makes blade feel exponentially weaker than deception to level.
Etiquette and Empathy above everything else, especially early. First impressions are ridiculously important, I want to have at least 70 Etiquette by Turn 34 for reasons, and it’s very useful in between. I often have runs with all of Interaction and Emotion at 75 or higher.
I usually get at least Student Piloting and Operations, as it opens up a lot of options. If I want to push for Top Gun, I go up to Expert Operations. I can usually fit in a turn of Big Guns lessons while rotating through Negative on the wheel.
I usually push Intrusion to 50. There are only one or two turns of lessons I ever spend without a study bonus per run, and Intrusion 50 is important enough to be one of them.
Defensively, Reflexes, Endurance, and Contortion tend to be picked up early. Tumbling gets raised to 30 very early, often on turn 1 to stay efficient. Strength eventually gets picked up so Reflexes can be trained higher. I like to flex 30 into Chain when I have the space, to keep the right hand side of the mood wheel open. It’s not completely useless outside of this, but I do feel a little sad.
I completely ignore non-Big Guns Gunnery unless I have a very specific need. Similarly for all of Domination and Environment. Engineering and Arts also get outright skipped surprisingly often.
Intrigue 100 is fun, but there are plenty of social actions to spare, and four days is a lot. I wonder what it would be like if your cabinet bureaucrat’s bonus was “you always get the staying-put action bonus” rather than a stacking +1.
Strange, I literally don't touch reflexes,tumbling, contortion or endurance (or any other defensive or combative stat) because with a viper you can dodge a ton of assassinations simply by spending a social action with your pet then throwing a party to avoid most encounters which would need them.
I swear the viper is the strongest pet for it's use early game and how safe it can make you
There is a benefit to surviving assassination attempts rather then simply avoiding them - if you thwart them, you get to figure out who was trying to kill you and have their voting ability removed.
(Although this can also be a negative, if you've got a cabinet member who dislikes you and is trying to kill you. They still get auto-removed. I don't care if he tried to kill me, his science skill is insane, let him stayyy.)
I mean I was aware because my preference for high Emotion/Allure has so far let me run into the right checks to stop Vkvy.
I am meaning to branch out more but with the game mostly focusing on winning a lot of the time needed to actually get to know people feels like you are actively harming your chances of getting stuff done by getting the right skills to get a lot of their checks done. Like yes I could spend 3 turns getting the right stats or I could just offer a council seat.
I think that in LLTQ since stuff was coming to you regardless if you were playing as military leader or gifted musician or were rushing Lumen skills as fast as possible or decided to learn all the intrigue etc you had more time to see the other characters you could interact with do stuff and naturally get curious and try and get the skills to learn more about them/try to marry them.
In this game you tend to meet characters once maybe twice if your routing to do other things pulls you through the same area which kills a lot of space to develop a natural curiosity. I find that I sort people into how easy they are to lock a vote down early and people who would take extra time to work on end up being swiftly dropped from plans because I dont have more than 2 turns at most locations to figure out their problems.
On the occasion where you can see the start of an interesting quest you are also very aware that making connections starts a ripple effect for other unsecured votes. This has generally put me off working with Heru because it's something that would take multiple turns to get to the bottom of and it would create enemies where I don't want.
I think it's a pressure caused by knowing the goal from the beginning of the game in LLTQ you had 2 main problems: the war and the final Lumen showdown. If you decided to side quest by going with Briony to the forest and surviving (which is the biggest waste of stats to be able to do that) as long as you maxed out music and persuasion you could survive the final challenge.
In this game it feels like if you side quest (so get the right stats to actually get to know people) you put yourself far behind the main goal/start new problems/loose the game. Like the stats needed to complete a lot of personal quests are often a commitment that doesn't seem to benefit much outside of that specific quest.
I think maybe there needs to be additional downtime unlocks for those more out of the way stats like reach a certain level of intrusion and you can get intrigue lessons on the social turn. Reach certain levels of weapons and gunnery get military lessons on the social turn etc. (Maybe this costs 3 social actions to learn and forces a mood change for balance?)
