The Skill System in Neon Giant’s debut game The Ascent (which is doing incredibly well) is an interesting one. It looks very simple at first glance, but the further you get into the game, the more you start to understand each Skill's complexity. Sure, some of them are obviously better than others, but they all serve a purpose. Plus, each of these Skill stats also affects your Attributes, what weapons/augments/or tactical equipment you’ll use, and even your overall appearance.
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So, to get you into this twin-stick ARPG with the most information possible here’s a brief explanation for every Skill and Attribute.
Tactical Sense: Your Tactical Charge Rate
This first Skill quite simply increases how fast your Tactical Gauge fills when you inflict damage on enemies. Each Skill Point invested into Tactical Sense gives you a higher return of Tactical Gauge meter for the damage you dish out, maxing out at 200 percent. Players might want to specialize in this if they:
- Want to throw grenades all the time – though there are plenty of other Tactical Equipment options.
- Find that none of the Aug Slot Abilities suit you.
Critical Hit Rate: The Rate At Which You'll Critically Hit, Obviously
About the most self-explanatory Skill of the bunch, does exactly what you think it does, which is that it increases the chance any shot will crit the enemy, maxing out at a 20 percent chance increase at max level. Generally, we wouldn’t recommend full tunneling into this Skill right away, but the type of players who will love it are:
- Those who love playing Assassin-type characters or one-hit KO-type characters.
- Players who like passive buffs to their character that they don’t really have to think about much.
Weapon Handling: Your Reload & Swap Speed
Like the Critical Hit Rate stat, Weapon Handling is a Skill that pretty much does what it sounds like it does, increases the efficiency with which you “handle” your weapons. To be more specific, each point in this reduces the time it takes to reload any weapon and to switch between your primary and secondary.
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And, as we're sure some of you already know, having a high Weapon Handling Skill makes a huge difference in whether a certain weapon is overpowered or forgettable.
- This stat is used by just about every player. After all, this is a twin-stick shooter (a dying breed of game) with infinite ammo, so Reload/Swap Speed are the only things hindering your barrage of bullets.
- Some weapons, especially Heavy Weapons, take a while to switch between and to get started shooting, so this Skill helps reduce that time.
Aiming: Your Spread Reducer
This one is a bit less noticeable than a lot of the other Skills, especially at lower levels. The description for the Aiming Skill makes it sounds like it’ll increase your aiming overall,but what it actually does is reduce the time it takes for your reticle to recover from expanding after each shot.
- It's great for players using Handcannons or Snipers. And, is generally beneficial for all weapon types even for those using the Minigun.
- The reduction rate of this reticle expansion only starts becoming noticeable after investing five or so Skill Points into Aiming. Thankfully, the percentage reduction gets exponentially bigger, starting at 92 percent and finishing off at 1,700 percent at the max level.
Balance: Your Tanky-iest Skill Stat
While the Aiming Stat seems to be targeted towards players using lighter and more precise weapons, the Balance Skill is all about Heavy Weapons. Investing Skill Points into this stat has a percentage reduction on a couple of specific stats such as being staggered, knocked back, or stunned. It also reduces your movement speed penalty while firing Heavy Weapons. Basically, it helps turn you into a walking tank that can keep firing uninterrupted. So:
- It’s perfect for players who love playing “heavy” characters that use big weapons and swing slow.
- While the movement speed buff is only beneficial for players using Heavy Weapons, the stagger, knockback, and stun reduction is good for just about any build.
Evasion: Your Method To Roll As Much As Possible
Evasion is the other Skill that plays into the Frame Attribute alongside Balance, but it's sort of the exact opposite in terms of purpose. Where Balance is meant to help players with builds prioritizing tanking hits and moving slow. Evasion is all about moving quickly and dodging damage altogether.
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There’s no sprint option in The Ascent, and the fastest way to get around (aside from using a Taxi) is to roll around all Ocarina of Time style. The Evasion Skill simply reduces the cooldown between dodge rolls:
- Great for impatient players that want to move even five percent faster.
- Honestly, just a great Skill for just about any build, since it lets you dodge more often, increasing your overall survivability.
Vital Signs: Your Actual Health
While Vital Signs might seem like a bit of a fancy term, all it really means is “Max HP”. Putting Skill Points into Vital Signs just increases your overall health, plain and simple. Frankly, it’s another one of those stats you can’t really ignore investing in unless you’re confident you can dodge every bullet coming your way.
- It increases your Max Health by quite a lot per Skill Level, just about doubling your HP at about eight or nine Skill Points.
- Allows you to fight higher-level enemies early on, as your damage output usually isn't the problem, but your survivability is.
Body Battery: Your Energy Meter Manager
Last up is the Body Battery stat, which is just the Vital Signs Skill, but for Energy. Every point invested increases the max amount of Energy you can hold at once. Energy is what you use to trigger the Aug Slot Abilities, and it’s measured by the gauge in the bottom right on the exact opposite side of the HP bars.
- Some Aug Slot Abilities quite literally can’t be used until you upgrade your Body Battery at least a little bit, as their default Energy Cost is higher than your default amount of Energy.
- Great for players who want to experiment with all the Aug Slot Abilities or just play around with different builds.
Attributes: What Your Skills Play Into
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Attributes might seem confusing at first, but they’re basically just a way of categorizing all the Skills into fewer categories and color-coding them by their functions. Every point in a Skill tied to an Attribute increases that Attribute as well, which in turn increases the benefit certain Aug Slot Abilities gets from the Attributes they’re tied to. There are only four Attributes, each of which encompasses two Skills and represents a different part of your body. There’s:
- Cybernetics (Head): Tactical Sense & Critical Hit Rate
- Motorics (Upper Body): Weapon Handling & Aiming
- Biometrics (Internals): Vital Signs & Body Battery
- Frame (Lower Body): Balance & Evasion
Now, what people sort of seem to be struggling with in terms of understanding Attributes (and some other aspects of the game) is the color coordination, and this is sort of Neon Giant’s fault.
In any other game, the colors green, blue, purple, and orange would denote the “rarity” of a certain item, weapon, or piece of armor. But, in the Ascent, each color is tied to a different Attribute:
- Cybernetics are Green
- Motorics are Blue
- Biometrics are Orange
- Frame is Purple
And, to help teach you which color is tied to which Skills/Attributes, we've color coordinated all the images in this list as well!
Additionally, it’s still not 100 percent confirmed, but it seems like your Attribute score is what’s tied to actually changing your character’s default appearance little by little, so keep that in mind as well. That said, all this really means in terms of gameplay is that if you see any item, Skill, Aug Slot Ability, or anything else with a name bathed in any of these colors, the item is affected by the correlating Attribute.
NEXT: Things That Make No Sense In The Ascent
