Index
1. Tips & Tricks (<–you are here)
2. Skill Guide: A – D
3. Skill Guide: L – S
4. Review
Welcome to GamesBeat’s Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning game guide. Here you’ll find a bunch of tips and tricks I discovered during my time with the game, as well as a guide to the different skills you can choose from. If you have any questions or additions, please add them in the comments below.
Which race (character) should you choose?
At the very beginning of the game you will be given the choice of four different “races,” which are basically just two elves or humans with varying skin colors. However, each race comes packing three racial bonuses, granting an immediate bump to specific skills.
Check out the Skill page to better understand what each one does (or doesn’t).
Abusing Skill Trainers
Especially early on, you won’t have a lot of points to put into skills, so choosing which one(s) to focus on is extremely important. Luckily, there are trainers all throughout the world who can increase your skills, and even better, you can abuse the system in a number of ways to your advantage.
First, know that training is expensive. Basic trainers charge about $15,000, and this rate goes up another $15K with Journeyman trainers, and again for Master trainers. I spent more training in this game than I did on anything else, so make sure you have some coin to spare before you start.
A few rules:
- You can only train once with each trainer.
- You need to meet the requirements to train, meaning you need the minimum amount of skill level, but cannot exceed the maximum. For example, Journeyman trainers require you to have at least a skill level of 4, but no more than 6, otherwise they can’t train you.
Skills you have trained in will not be reset when you re-spec your character.
Now that you know all the basics, you can use the Fateweaver system to get lots of easy skill points quickly.
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Basically, if there’s a trainer you want to train with, you can use a Fateweaver to re-spec your character (resets all skills and ability points) to meet the minimum requirements, or drop down below the maximum in case you’ve already exceeded it. Then when you’ve trained all that you can, visit a Fateweaver again and reset your skills a second time. When you re-spec your character the way that you intend to play with, you’ll now have those extra skill points, allowing you to use non-training skill points however you like.
Early Lore Stone Bonuses
Lore Stones are magical statues hidden all over the game world. Finding one will grant you a small XP bonus and add that lore stone to your collection. When you complete a set, you will be given a permanent stat bonus, such as increased damage, health, or experience gain.
It’s easy to miss Lore Stones, as there are tons, usually tucked away in nooks and crannies, but with a maxed out Detect Hidden skill, Lore Stones will show up on your map (along with hidden objects, secret doors, and treasure chests).
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If you don’t want to level up your Detect Hidden skill but do want the bonuses (which are best grabbed early on, before they become negligible), there is a way. The Master skill levels (8-10) unlock at level 16, so as soon as you reach that level, find a Fateweaver and re-spec, putting 10 points in Detect Hidden. Now roam around each area looking for Lore Stones. This can get pretty time-consuming with all the exploring and traveling and combat in-between, but the end result will be worth it. Plus you’ll get an Achievement for finding every stone.
When you’re all done, re-spec back to however you want and proceed on with the game.
You can use the same trick for Alchemy, Blacksmithing, or Sagecrafting, if you plan to go on a crafting spree.
Learn all Alchemy recipes early
Just like with the Lore Stones, by temporarily re-specing all your points into the Alchemy skill, you can unlock every recipes in the game.
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Then you simply take note of whichever recipes you need, and re-spec back to normal. Now you can choose “Experiment,” and once you successfully create the potion(s) you want, they will be permanently added to your recipe list, without the need to buy the recipe from a shop or use the Master Alchemy skill.
Gain all divine blessings whenever you want
Divine blessings are temporary bonuses granted by shrines placed throughout Amalur. They will appear as a green dot on your map, and you should always activate them whenever you see one.
However, in the city of Ysa, which is located roughly in the center of the Western continent on your map, there is a platform with six shrines. They will drastically increase your damage output, health/mana leeching, experience gain, and reduce the cost of spells by 25%. The effects only last for a few minutes, but they’re very potent, especially when all combined.
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Once you have discovered Ysa, you can instantly fast-travel to these shrines at any time. Pretty much any time I was going to travel into new, hostile areas (usually heading from point A to point B for a question), or about to enter a dungeon, I would make a quick stop by Ysa to “power up.” It really does make a huge difference, and can even be done before some boss battles.
You can’t fast-travel from inside a building or dungeon, but anywhere else is fine. The whole process takes less than 60 seconds, but if you’re on a journey, just make sure you’ve discovered a nearby location that you can warp back to before heading to Ysa.
Do you need all these damn books/notes?
If you can add an item to your junk pile or sell it, it is not a quest item and can be disposed of. If you’re wondering why you have no inventory space, you might have picked up a lot of crap that you don’t really need!
Glitch: Wear both weapons
Despite carrying two weapons (and a shield) at all times, you only ever see one, depending on which you’ve used last. To get around this, temporarily, you can simply re-spec your skills. Weapons don’t have stat requirements, only level requirements, so after you re-appropriate all your skills and abilities and re-equip your armor, you should be left standing with both weapons visible on your body.
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This will last until you attack with either weapon, so it’s not very useful, but it can come in handy if you’re looking to take some bad-ass screenshots!
Does difficulty really affect achievements?
Yes, but only one. There is a 100-point secret Achievement for beating the game on Hard. I beat the game on Normal and then reloaded the final boss and set the game to Hard, but this didn’t unlock the Achievement. So you’ll have to start out on Hard if you’re going for 1000/1000.
Even on Hard, the game isn’t too difficult, but you’ll definitely need to spend a little more time leveling up and finding/buying/making the best available equipment.
Index
1. Tips & Tricks
2. Skill Guide: A – D (<–you are here)
3. Skill Guide: L – S
4. Review
The following is my analysis and recommendation for skills. This could be especially handy for players who are staring at the character creation screen wondering “what the hell does any of this mean?”
Alchemy
When your Alchemy skill is low, you won’t be able to pick up the majority of the reagents (plants) you see lying around everywhere. That’s probably the most annoying part, as even if I didn’t intend to use them I still want to have them.
But with a higher alchemy skill you’ll be able to create potions from the reagents you’ve found. Like in Skyrim, potions can turn a difficult battle into a cakewalk. You can also use potions to temporarily increase certain skills, such as persuasion, mercantile, or crafting,
The one major caveat is that potions take up inventory space, and may just sit around for hours or many quests being unused.
Blacksmithing
Although you can use the Fateweaver trick to max out Blacksmithing once you hit level 16, I didn’t find much use for the skill at all. After 30+ hours of play, I was carrying a ton of crafting materials (of varying quality), but the best item I could make, even with several bonuses, was roughly half as good as the equipment I had obtained long ago.
The only cool thing about Blacksmithing, in my opinion, is you can name your created gear whatever you want. Who wouldn’t be afraid of someone wielding the Disfigured Bulge?
I suggest avoiding putting permanent points into Blacksmithing (other than training), and just re-spec/use potions whenever you want to mess around.
Detect Hidden
I highly recommend keeping this skill at level 5, minimum. Your map will reveal the location of enemies, treasures, and secret doors on your map, which are all very useful. It will also allow you to disarm traps, something that will come in handy if you’re doing a lot of dungeon-diving.
Hidden treasures (level 2) are surprisingly common, and contain a lot of valuable loot. You’ll be seeing this almost as much as you see reagents lying around.
Secret doors are not as common, but they usually lead to a stash of rare items, or sometimes Lore Stones. I only came across three during the main story, but then found two in a single dungeon during a sidequest. If you plan to explore a lot of dungeons, definitely take this skill with you.
At max level, Detect Hidden will show treasure chests and Lore Stones on your map, so it’s good to eventually Master this skill, but may not be a priority over Mercantile.
Dispelling
Dispelling is the equivalent of lockpicking, but for magical chests. Some treasure chests have a spell preventing you from opening them, and must be dispelled by partaking in a little timed mini-game. Unlike the lockpicking puzzle (see below), these are actually quite difficult, especially with a low level in Dispelling.
Luckily, there’s a work around. If you fail to dispel the chest, it will simply blow up in your face, causing health damage, and often times curse you. But you still get to open the chest and take the loot.
I recommend a few things so that you never have to put a single point in the Dispelling skill:
Have full health before failing the dispel, especially a Hard or Very Hard chest.
Save before you try to open the chest, just in case.
If you get cursed, open any other nearby chests that might also give you curses, then find a healer in a town or city.
Although getting cursed sucks pretty bad, the thing about healers is that they’ll grant you temporary curse immunity when they remove an existing curse (if you do a normal heal, you’ll get a temporary 10% health boost instead). This lasts even longer than a divine blessing, so it’s good to head into any dungeons with the immunity active.
By following these steps, you’ll avoid wasting any skill points.
Index
1. Tips & Tricks
2. Skill Guide: A – D
3. Skill Guide: L – S (<–you are here)
4. Review
Lockpicking
Lockpicking should be nothing new to gamers, and especially not if you’ve played Skyrim. The lockpicking mini-game in Kingdoms of Amalur is quite similar, with one exception: it’s ridiculously easy. Even with a mere two points in Lockpicking, I never had any trouble opening hundreds of chests throughout the game, including Very Hard ones.
There are essentially five quadrants you can try when Lockpicking: far left, slight left, center, slight right, and far right. Place the lockpick in one position and then see if the slider will go. If the slider reaches the other side, walla, the chest will open. If you get some resistance or the lockpick breaks, you need to move to a different quadrant and try again.
85% of the time, just putting the lockpick slightly to the left of the starting position opened every treasure chest I came across. Quite a few times, not moving the lockpick at all was the solution, and whenever either of those didn’t work, it only took me a maximum of two lockpicks to feel out the lock.
It’s like playing hot/cold. If you immediately get resistance, the lockpick is far away from the right spot. If you get a little resistance after the slider has almost reached the other side of the mechanism, you’re very close. I can’t explain it much more beyond that, but you’ll be able to figure out pretty quickly for yourself.
The bottomline is, there’s no need to invest precious skill points in Lockpicking. Just make sure you have a lot of lockpicks (they’re cheap!) and save before any Hard/Very Hard chests, and you should be able to open anything.
Mercantile
The Mercantile skill allows you to buy items at shops for less, and sell items to shops for more. I recommend prioritizing this skill, as you’ll be hurting for money early on, especially if you do any training.
The longer you play, the more you’ll find tons and tons of loot that you don’t need or want, and you’ll eventually have amassed a small fortune. I ended up with $2,000,000 of expendable cash by the end of the main storyline. At that point you can re-spec your skill points into a different skill altogether.
Note: Some merchants will give even better rates if you do a quest for them. A perfect example is in the first town you come across, Gorhart. The shop owner of Golden Age Alchemy requires a little bit of help, and once you complete her quest she will be an excellent source to unload all your items to throughout the entire game. In fact, every time I headed to Ysa for my divine blessings, I’d make a stop at Gorhart to sell my unwanted inventory. There’s probably a shop owner in Ysa that I could have done a quest for, but I don’t like helping people.
Persuasion
While persuasion is very important in Kingdoms of Amalur, the Persuasion skill is not so much. I only had 3-4 points invested in Persuasion throughout the game, and most of my chances of persuading someone were 80% or higher.
So long as you save before any persuasion attempts, you’ll never really need to invest a lot into this skill. It may take a few reloads, but even with a 10% chance of success, you’ll eventually persuade the person you’re talking to.
Sagecraft
Sagecraft is the third crafting skill, and allows you to merge shards together to create gems and socket them into certain weapons and armor. Unlike Blacksmithing, Sagecraft can actually be quite useful, as gems permanently add notable bonuses to your equipment. I only changed my entire equipment setup three times in 30 hours, so you’d get getting good mileage out of any socketed gems. And, if you decide to upgrade your gear, you can unsocket the gems to use again (at the cost of destroying whatever they were originally set in).
However, like Blacksmithing, I would suggest re-specing points into the Sagecraft skill only when you’re about to sit down and craft a lot of gems. Sagecraft potions can help too if you don’t have enough points. That way you don’t have to waste any points in a skill that you’re only going to use once every several hours.
Eventually, when you have points to spare, I would consider building up Sagecraft (before Blacksmithing but after Alchemy) since it will lead to more frequent and higher quality shard drops.
Stealth
Stealth didn’t strike me as a viable option in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning the same way it did in Skyrim. There’s not really a lot to steal, and most of the time it’s just crappy books anyway. There’s not a lot of sneaking required. Plus most of the time it’s just easier (and faster) to run head-long into battle and merc everyone, since the game is not difficult at all.
Suffice it to say, I didn’t use stealth much, and you can still do assassinations (instant stealth kills from behind) with a single point in the Finesse ability tree. Your playstyle may vary, but this is yet another skill you might want to avoid wasting points on.
Thanks for reading our game guide, hope it helped! If you like what you see, check out our other recent tips and tricks: