Talents

Talents are the second track you climb, beside your class's skill tree. Every class can learn every talent. None of them hit anything: they light the dark, carry you over water and up cliffs, keep you out of fights you do not want, and help your party. You earn a talent point at every level from the second, so a character at level 20 has had nineteen. There are more ranks than that to buy, so no one learns everything.

Open your talents with T. They are grouped by what they are for: getting about, sight, stealth and aggro, survival, the party, and gathering and trade. Each group shows its actions first, with a green edge, then its passives, with a blue one. Under each is how many of its ranks you have. Choose one to read what it does and what its next rank asks, and press Learn. Each rank costs a point and opens at a level of its own. A talent you cannot learn yet says why: too low a level, no point to spend, or something you already have that it cannot stand beside.

Resetting your talents

Changed your mind? Reset talents, in the Talents panel's banner, forgets every talent you have learned and gives you every point back to spend again. It costs 1 lethestone, a currency of its own: the panel shows how many you hold. Click it twice to be sure. A new character starts with

1. If you have Deep Pockets, empty the bag cells it gave you first. Your skill tree is reset with fadestones, another currency, which drop the same way.

Past the ones you start with, lethestones come mostly from zone bosses, and a zone boss shares them with everyone who fought it, not just whoever landed the killing blow. You have a chance at one if you were in the fight for at least its last few seconds: you joined at least 5 seconds before the boss fell, and you were still at it at the end, hitting it, being hit by it, taunting it, or healing someone fighting it close by. Each of you rolls for your own. The chance grows with the zone's level: 20% in the level 1–4 zones, five points more for every level the zone starts higher, and certain in the level 17–20 Wakelands.

A dungeon's keeper leaves one 20% of the time, and a region's warden 5%, to each who earned the kill (see levelling), each rolling for their own. Nothing else does.

Actions

An action is pressed, like an ability. It costs nothing from your pools, but it has a cooldown of its own and waits for the global one like anything else. Learned actions go on the talent bar above your potions. Drag one there from the Talents panel to put it where you want it, or drag it along the bar to move it. Its ten keys are unbound until you bind them (key bindings, Talents tab).

Some details:

• Wayfarer's Stride, Low Profile and Feign Death are for when you are not fighting. Attacking ends the first two. Being hit ends the Stride and Feign Death, and so does moving or doing anything else.
• Second Wind is refused within five seconds of acting or being hit.
• Whistle Lure works on a creature that is fighting nobody. It comes for you alone, and its pack stays where it was. Nothing below ground, no boss and nothing that fights for a player answers it.
• Soul Tether works only out in the open. You wake there instead of at the graves only if you die in the same zone, and it is used up when you wake.
• Rally Point offers each party member in your zone a teleport. They answer it with /rally.
• Lifeline and Cleanse act on the party member you have chosen as your heal target. Cleanse with no one chosen works on you. So does Kindred Step, which takes you to them.
• Pilfer works only on an idle humanoid, and on each only once. It pays what killing it would in coins. One above your level may catch you, the likelier the higher it stands, and then it attacks and you get nothing.
• Parley works on a creature no higher in level than you. It lets go of you and pays you no notice for a minute, nor does its pack draw it back in, unless you hurt it.
• Distract throws its stone where you face. What walks over to look takes no notice of you for a few seconds.
• Waymark and Hunter's Sense mark your minimap; your party sees your waymarks too.
• Peddler's Whistle sells only common items, and nothing goes on the vendors' buy-back list.
• Bandage works on your chosen ally if they are within a heal's reach, else on you. Any blow on them stops it.
• Dowsing and Tracker's Mark mark your minimap; your party sees what you mark too, and its plate says so.
• Salvage breaks common weapons and armour only: cloth armour into cloth, leather into hide, chain, plate and blades into ore, and bows, staves and instruments into wood, of the item's level.
• Decoy draws off only what is fighting you. Once the dummy falls apart, anything near enough notices you again.
• Wayback takes you back to where you stood before your last teleport (a rune, a dungeon's door from the finder, a rally), if that was within half an hour. Use it again and it takes you back the other way.
• Disguise works on castle soldiers and brigands, not on beasts or the dead.
• Rouse the Fallen works on a party member lying dead within twenty metres, chosen as your heal target.
• Courier opens the auction house wherever you are, out in the open, and keeps it open for two minutes.

Passives

A passive is always on once learned. Each rank adds to what it changes.

Threat and Subtlety cannot be learned together. Threat makes everything you do count for more on a creature's threat table, heals included; Subtlety for less, never under half. A warrior's own threat multiplies with Threat, so a warrior who takes it holds aggro all the more firmly. A priest's hound draws its threat on its own, untouched by either. See Combat and aggro.

Bargainer raises what you are paid, and buying an item back costs what you were paid for it. Narrow Escape leaves you on 1 health with two seconds in which nothing can hurt you. Steadfast does not shorten a Lifeline's pull. Pathfinder is your run out of a fight only. Night Eyes lifts the dark of the night, of caves and of dungeons. Kinship works on you as well as on your party.

A creature's set worn whole counts as one more rank of Pathfinder, Steadfast, Subtlety, Threat, Field Medic, Scavenger or Thick Hide, whichever its kind gives, even past a talent's last rank and even one you have not learned. A set of Subtlety worn by someone who learned Threat lowers it again. See creature sets.