Wether it be attacking or being attacked, hiding or pick locking, you will regularly see something underneath your three bars in the upper left hand corner have something that looks like this:



And when you look at your menu screen you see this:



So what are these skills and what can you do with them.

First thing to note about these skills are that there are two types, ones for combat, and ones that are not. Conveniently the game has combat skills at the top with non-combat skills at the bottom, if you refer to the above screenshot

All weapons in game have a lower to higher damage in their description. As you increase your skills, the weapon can produce higher damage points on enemies. Note: This is according to my personal experience, and it is what i think is happening.

The weaker a weapon used, and the higher difficulty the enemy fought with said weapon, the better or more easier the skill increases.
EDIT 2: The above sentence is utter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!! To increase any skill inlcuding the non-combat skills, one needs to perform an action a total of three times to grow a level for that skill. FOR EXAMPLE, by hiding three times, the stealth skill increases, and since in teh pc version you can rapid fire the hide button, this makes it the easiest to increase. Or if you hit an enemy with your sword three times your sword skill increases. This means taht if you use a weaker weapon against a yeti or similar, then you can deal a lot of hits, the QUANTITY of hits increases and thus your skill rises that much easier.

Let me use a light elm bow as an example weapon and a boar and yeti as example enemies. With a light elm bow, four - five hits on a boar cause a bow skill increase, yet with a yeti only two hits are necessary. This is due to the light elm bow being a weak weapon and the yeti being a strong enemy. Vice versa, no matter how many goblin grunts you kill with the gem sword or skull sword, or any other high end weapon, you wont increase the blade skill. EDIT 2: again please ignore this bull i wrote, i miscounted the hits like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

This holds true with all combat skills, if you use a goblin shield with a tough enemy your defend does get better and so on and so forth. EDIT 2: again as always, please ignore

There are two non combat skills, pick lock and stealth. There is already a guide on how to increase your stealth skill easily. In the tablet version of Ravensword: Shadowlands, A good pick lock skill is needed. However in the pc version you can pick lock with only one click so an increased pick lock skill is not needed

Trainers can be paid a certain amount of money to increase your skill, these prices are exponential so at higher skill levels the price is in the 100s. There are 6 trainers (of which i know of).

NORTTH AVEN:

House Pellemon:





House Carrowen:





Trevor (Trevor's House):


That's just to show you where it is located.



CRAGS:

Cribbons:

There is a method to increasing your combat skills. As said before in the section on combat skills, a tougher enemy is needed and a weaker weapon is needed. And as said before, i tested the bow on a yeti. This was done at level 5. Now how did i shoot a yeti and live to tell the tale? The answer is that enemies in general have no idea how to jump.

In The Terraces, there are three flight of stone steps to reach the floor at the bottom where deer, wargs and yetis can be found. When hit an enemy homes in on your location no matter how far you hit them by (stupid right). Stay on the steps, and proceed hitting a yeti with your bow, he wont reach you and your skill goes up. Now what about melee? The closest you can be to yeti without being hit is here:


from here attack only once then hold 'S', for melee weapons only, to make sure you dont fall in front of yeti. By doing this you can rack up the skill points that will be useful on better weapons. For ranged weapons, climg back up the steps and you can hide again, so you can dish out a sneak attack as many times as you want. Seriously, back away from the stationary yeti and hide, and it will work!! Some of the game mechanics are just stupid but at the same time fun

Thank you for sticking through with me through this guide and i hope you gained some sort of benefit from reading it. I am very sorry if i have made any stupid mistakes or the such. This is my first guide on any game to date and hopefully it does its job well.

This is only version 1 of this guide and so for the time being i have not included screen shots of certain things, this will be changed in the next version.

EDIT: Now screenshots of everything described have been put where needed including trainers. there are still some things that need to be cleaned up but for the most part it is ready

EDIT 2: So as you can see i have made a few changes, namely the places where trainers can be found and the fact tha skills advacne on how many times you use them not anything else. The reason i left my past changes in is so that you can see how my thinking changed as i went from version 1 to version 2 (wiht pics) to this version

Once again, thank you for taking time and reading my guide, hopefully you stuck through till the end. In closing i really enoy this game which even i think is a bit wierd but i have clocked many hours just playing around with all the options, so i hopw you have as much fun with this guide as you do the game