Skills

Skills represent various abilities used in Stoneshard. Currently only players and enemies are able to use skills. Some enemies (mainly humanoids) can use the same skills as the player, but most of them have their own specific skill set, which isn't available to the player.

Skill Types
Skills can be active or passive. Active skills need to be used before their main effect happens. Most active skills cost Energy to use and have a Cooldown before they can be used again. Passive skills always apply their bonuses.

Skill Effects

 * Some skills have instant effect (like Detect Traps).
 * Some skills require a target to be used on, usually attack skills.
 * Some skills can be used on an empty tile (like Fire Barrage).
 * Some skills affect multiple tiles, these are called Area of Effect (AoE) skills.
 * Some skills affect only the user (like Taking Aim), and some skills affect only the enemies of the user (like Rune of Enfeeblement).
 * Some skills cost Energy every turn until they are deactivated (Runic Boulder).
 * Some skills change how other skills work (Rune of Fortifying) or add additional effects to other skills (Rune of Binding).
 * Finally, certain skills have requirements before they can be used. For example, skills from any Weapon tree require that you are wielding that Weapon type before you can use these skills (Swords, Bows, ..).

Stances and Tactics
A special mention goes to the Stance Training from Combat Mastery. It also changes how other skills work, but it affects skills outside of the Combat Mastery tree, and depending on which  you have active, your  will work differently.

Tactic skills are as follows:
 * Offensive Tactic
 * Defensive Tactic
 * You can only have ONE tactic active at any time.
 * Activating a Tactic skill will overwrite any previous Tactic skill you had active.
 * Tactics also only stay active if there's an enemy in your Vision. So if there's only one enemy and he enters the shadow behind a wall or behind a tree even for 1 turn, you lose all benefits from Tactic skills.

Stance skills are as follows:
 * Fencer's Stance in Swords
 * Massacre in Axes
 * Hammer and Anvil in Maces
 * Painful Stabs in Daggers
 * Feast of Steel in Two-handed Swords
 * Rampage in Two-handed Axes
 * Slaughter in Two-handed Maces
 * Suppression in Ranged Weapons
 * Defensive Stance in Shields
 * Unwavering Stance in Staffs
 * Pikeman's Stance in Spears
 * Concentration in Dual Wielding
 * You can only have ONE stance active at any time. Stances have a duration, so they work like any other "buff" skill.

Player skills
Player skills are abilities that your character has learned. When you level up, you gain Skill Points which represent the time your character spent in order to learn a certain skill. Skill points can be spent in order to learn the skills you choose. Before you can learn a skill, the skill needs to be unlocked first, this represents the need to find out about a certain skill or move first. Locked skills are faded out and show a small lock icon over the skill icon. Your character will start with some skills already unlocked, but most skills will be locked. You need to find and read Treatises to unlock new skills.

image of skill points, image of skill tree list

Skills are divided into different skill trees. A skill tree consists of different amount of skills, which are connected by lines. When you have unlocked skills in a skill tree, you can only spend Skill points into the skills at the very top (sometimes called Tier 1). Lower placed skills will be faded out, and you won't be able to put skill points into them. When you spend Skill points into a Skill at the very top, any other skills that are connected by lines to this skill will light up. In order to spend Skill points into the lowest placed skills, you might have to spend several skill points into different skills first.

image of any skill tree with no skill points, then image with the same tree with skill point spent, showing how the skill lights up

Each skill point spent into a skill tree also provides a small passive bonus, either for your character as a whole (Crit Chance), or for this particular skill tree (Cooldown reduction).

Active player skills must be placed into your Skill bar to be used.

The skill trees are divided into three categories:

Enemy skills
Enemies always come with a fixed set of skills. The skillset changes based on which enemy type you're facing. Certain low level enemies (like Goons) have no skills at all, and certain high level enemies (like the Prologue boss) can have many different skills. You can always check the skills of an enemy by right clicking them and selecting the Inspect option.