The Skill Codex & How It Works

Learn about the in-game menu interface that allows you to spend the Skill Points.

Oookay, the Skill Codex.

Many of you have heard me refer to this previously as “Skill Tree”, “Hero Abilities”, “Skill Paths”, and “Stuff You Can Do”. But now, we finally have an official name for it: Skill Codex.

If you don’t have the time to dig into this and want the TL;DR, scroll to the bottom, I’ve got you covered. Alright, back to it.

The Skill Codex is the in-game menu interface that allows you to spend the Skill Points each Hero earns upon each level-up on skills the Hero can bring into PVP and PVE. This is akin to how World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV have established their skill acquisition methods, so hopefully it feels a little familiar. Don’t worry, the menu will look super cool in-game and will definitely not involve post-its on my office wall.

In short, when you access a Hero’s Skill Codex, you will be presented with 60 skills split into 8 Tiers (the orange post-its): 30 skills from your Main Class (the blue post-its) and 30 skills from your Subclass (the green post-its).

Each Tier corresponds with a Skill Point cost (the integer written in sharpie) and since you earn 1 Skill Point per level, you’ll need to progress in the game to buy more powerful skills. The higher the Tier, the more powerful the Skill and, in turn, the greater the cost.

Beginner Level Skills and Magic

Tiers 1-5 represent the “beginner” story arc of your Hero’s adventuring anime series; they’ve entered the town of beginnings, checked out the guild, walked through the village square, and are now spending each day training hard and learning the basics of their class. In turn, you can expect these skills to be foundational elements of the class, but also relatively weaker compared to some seriously powered late-game skills. That being said, these lower tier skills also do not cost nearly as much mana to cast, so they could come in handy when you're in a bind at high levels.

Your Hero can select and unlock only one (1) skill in each of Tiers 1-5 in your Hero’s Main Class Codex. Furthermore, each Tier must be unlocked sequentially, i.e., in order to unlock a skill in Tier 3, the Hero must have a skill in both Tier 1 and Tier 2 unlocked already.

So! By the time your Hero hits Level 15, you will be able to purchase one skill from each of Tiers 1-5, assuming you have not already placed any Skill Points in your Subclass Codex.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what that will look like:

Tier 1 = 1 Skill Point
Tier 2 = 2 Skill Points (3 Total Spent)
Tier 3 = 3 Skill Points (6 Total Spent)
Tier 4 = 4 Skill Points (10 Total Spent)
Tier 5 = 5 Skill Points (15 Total Spent)

Advanced Level Skills and Magic

After that, your Hero will embark on improving on its beginner skills and upgrading them to any of six (6) advanced skills in Tier 6. From this point and beyond, things get a lot more flexible.

The first thing to consider when upgrading a skill is that you must own the original version of the skill in order to upgrade. Since this Tier is all about improving the skills you learned in the town of beginnings, those upgrades are discounted. Let’s say you want to upgrade your Tier 2 skill to a 10+, the cost of that upgrade is 10-2 = 8 Skill Points. Take note, that upgrade replaces the original skill.

Lastly, due to the flexibility of post Tier 6 life, this Tier is even optional and you can skip right on over to Tier 7 if you feel like it, however, there are some spicy savings to be had here that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Adventurer Level Skills and Magic

After Tier 6 awaits Tier 7, which represents your Hero’s mastery skills. They are now straight-up full-on adventurers that know the ins-and-outs of every aspect of their class and are ready to take on all sorts of magical beasties. As a result, these are the omega time spells – we refer to them internally often as “ultimates”, in fact. Expect these to be big, loud, and flashy, and will likely feature the core spells you’ll expect to use in every fight.

Furthermore, you can buy as many skills on these tiers as you would like, as long as you can afford it.

The Capstone Skill

For those Heroes with the same main and sub classes (Archer/Archer or Knight/Knight, etc.), there is a special 15-cost skill in Tier 8 just for them, we call it the “Capstone”. Since pure classes don’t have access to a subclass Codex, it was very important when designing each class to provide a balanced way to level the playing field. In turn, this special skill is very powerful — on par with approximately 15 skill points worth of power in any given sub-class.

Main and Subclass Codexes

There are three major takeaways when it comes to how a Hero’s main and sub classes work together:

1.) A Player can spend up to 100 skill points on a Hero's Main Class ability tree.

2.) A Player can spend up to 15 skill points on a Hero's Subclass ability tree.

3.) As soon as you have acquired a skill within a given Tier in a Hero's Main Class Skill Codex, the corresponding Tier unlocks in that Hero's Sub Class (noting that Tiers 6 and 7 are considered combined for the purposes of unlocking those Tiers in the Sub Class Skill Codex), rather than requiring sequential unlocks, meaning you could take a 5 and 10 point skill from the Subclass Codex without taking 1-4 point skills.

What this means is that a Player does not have to spend 15 points on their Hero’s sub if they do not wish to, which means you can spend all of a Hero’s Skill Points on your Hero's main class if that’s your ideal strat.

On the other end, if you spend 15 points on your Hero’s sub, you only have the remaining 85 points to spend on your Hero’s main. Or, if you spend 4 Skill Points on your Hero’s sub, you have a remaining 96 Skill Points to spend on your main.

Keep in mind that each Hero earns 1 Skill Point each time you level them up, so in order to have a budget of 100 Skill Points, the Hero would have to be Level 100.

In the above example, we’re rocking a Level 55 Hero that has a budget of 55 Skill Points to spend. I chose to spend 40 of those Skill Points on my Hero’s Main Class and 15 points on my Hero’s Sub Class. You can see that I chose to skip around with my choices.

This skipping around is possible because as soon as a Tier is unlocked in a Hero’s Main Class Skill Codex, the corresponding Tier unlocks in that Hero’s Sub Class.

TL;DR
- The Skill Codex is the in-game menu interface that allows players to spend Skill Points on skills for their Hero in PVP and PVE.
- The menu is split into 8 Tiers, with 30 skills from your Hero’s Main Class and 30 skills from the Subclass.
- The higher the Tier, the more powerful the Skill and the greater the cost.
- Tiers 1-5 represent beginner-level skills, while Tiers 6-7 represent advanced-level and mastery skills.
- Players can spend up to 100 skill points on a Hero's Main Class ability tree and up to 15 skill points on a Hero's Subclass ability tree.
- The choice of how to spend points is up to the player, but as soon as a Tier is unlocked in the Main Class Skill Codex, the corresponding Tier unlocks in the Subclass.