Skills

Skills are a numerical representation of your character's ability to perform specific tasks.

There are two main ways to increase your skills: reading skill books and using skill points that you earn every level.

All of your skills have a cap, i.e., a limit on how high they can go. In most cases, you can overcome that limit via the Learning skill.

Some of the skills apply passively and some can be used directly. The table below lists the active skills' associated action point costs as well as the base cap of each skill.

Some support perks require a specific skill level before they can be acquired. For example, Educated requires Science ≥ 100%.

Skill	Default cap	Base AP use cost
Small Guns	300	-
Big Guns	300	-
Energy Weapons	300	-
Close Combat	300	-
Throwing	300	-
First Aid	200	5
Doctor	200	5
Sneak	300	5
Robbery	200	5
Engineering	200	5
Traps	150	5
Science	200	5
Repair	200	5
Speech	300	-
Barter	150	-
Crafting	200	-
Outdoorsman	200	-

Small Guns

Small Guns (SG) is a combat skill that determines your ability to handle:

• Assault Rifles
• Damage Pistols
• Explosive Small Guns
• Fast Pistols
• Range Pistols
• Shotguns
• SMGs
• Sniper Rifles
• Support Rifles

The higher your Small Guns skill, the higher your chance to hit with the listed weapon types and the less condition they lose every time you fire them.

Big Guns

Big Guns (BG) is a combat skill that determines your ability to handle:

• Flamers
• Heavy Sniper Rifles
• Machine Guns
• Miniguns
• Rocket Launchers

The higher your Big Guns skill, the higher your chance to hit with the listed weapon types and the less condition they lose every time you fire them.

Energy Weapons

Energy Weapons (EW) is a combat skill that determines your ability to handle:

• Electric Weapons
• Fire Weapons
• Laser Weapons
• Plasma Weapons

The higher your Energy Weapons skill, the higher your chance to hit with the listed weapon types and the less condition they lose every time you fire them.

Close Combat

Close Combat (CC) is a combat skill that determines your ability to handle:

• Clubs
• Damage Knives
• Fast Knives
• Hammers
• Punch Weapons
• Spears
• Various stackable objects that aren't really weapons but can be used to perform melee attacks, such as Uranium Ore or Shovel

The higher your Close Combat skill, the higher your chance to hit with the listed weapon types and the less condition they lose every time you use them.

Throwing

Throwing is a combat skill that determines your ability to handle grenades and any other objects that can be thrown (rocks, spears, etc.)

The higher your Throwing skill, the more accurate are your throws. This includes hex throwing (throwing an item in your active slot to a specific hex using the tilde (~) key.

Note that your Throwing range (the distance that you're able to reach with your throws) depends on your Strength rather than the Throwing skill.

First Aid

First Aid (FA) is a utility skill that allows you to restore hit points. It works on any target except Cyborgs.

You use it by pressing its corresponding button ("5" by default), mousing over your desired target, and then left-clicking. First Aid costs 5 APs to use unless you have a First Aid Kit or Field Medic First Aid Kit in your active slot, in which case the cost is reduced to 3.

First Aid has a base cooldown of 245 seconds; each point invested into it (up to 200%) reduces it by 1. If you have the Medic perk, the reduced value is then divided by 4. Paramedics have that cooldown set to 3 seconds regardless of their skill level.

The amount of hit points restored every time you use FA is a number between your skill level divided by 2 and your skill level, capped at 200%. If you have the Medic perk, you restore 15-30 HP extra. If you have the Healer perk, you restore 50-100 more. Soldiers suffer a -1 penalty to the amount of restored hit points whereas Priests' healing is doubled. War Event stats MED and C.MED increase FA healing by 25% each. Paramedics get a -3 penalty for each point of Perception. Having an active battle timer caps the amount of hit points that you can restore at 150 (plus the Medic bonus, plus the Healer bonus, multiplied by 2 if you're a Priest). Poisoned targets are healed for half the normal amount. Paramedics restore twice the normal amount of HP when healing NPCs.

Every time you use First Aid, the game rolls a random number between 0 and 450 (or 0 and 250 if you have Living Anatomy); if your FA is lower than that number, you critically fail and only restore 1 to 5 hit points.