Skill Ups: Planning for Mastery

One of the questions that inevitably gets asked by newer players is how they should spend their experience points.  The game tells you what you need to do, but it's unclear to folks who are expecting a WoW-esque skill experience.  This short primer will fill in some gaps that the game leaves open, and hopefully it will help you plan your mechs out.

So here's how it works:  as you play the game, you accrue experience for your mechs.  You then spend that experience in the Mech Trees tab.  You'll see that it's divided into 3 tiers - Basic, Elite and Master.  These are not called skills, but Efficiencies.

Here's the bit where it gets complicated, and you can really benefit from just a little planning.  The Efficiencies you unlock only apply to a single variant of the mech chassis, and in order to get to the next tier, you must have all the Efficiencies unlocked for that tier on three different variants of the same chassis.

So, what do I mean by chassis and variants?  Well, the chassis of your mech is the basic type.  For instance, Hunchback or Stalker.  These are groups of mech variants - the Hunchback HBK-4G is one, and the HBK-4P is another.  In order to get to the Elite Efficiencies, I must unlock all the Basic Efficiencies for three variants.  If I unlock the Basic Efficiencies for the HB-4G, the HBK-4J and the HBK-4P, then I can unlock the Elite Efficiencies.  The same goes for the Master tier - in order to unlock it, you must have all the Elite Efficiencies for 3 variants of the same chassis.

So how does this help you plan it out how to spend your hard earned cash?  My own philosophy is not to buy mechs I don't care for, and buy three variants of each chassis.  In this way, I don't really have to worry about it...everything will get to Master eventually.  It should be said that you gain XP in the trial mechs as well, so new players can stack those C-Bills and earn XP at the same time, if they plan on buying the mech.  You can't unlock Efficiencies if you don't own the mech.

If you only want to keep one variant, you don't have to Master three.  Once you finish the Elite Efficiencies, you can sell those mechs and keep the ones you want, taking it up to Master.  The Elite simply need to be finished - you don't have to grind it out to the top of the tree.

Yet fundamentally, all this means that you're going to have to buy three of the chassis you pick, even if you don't plan on keeping them.  So if you buy a Catapult CPLT-A1, take a look at the other variants of the Catapult.  If you want anything more than Basic Efficiencies, you'll have to get two more and play those until you're satisfied.

Like I said, I don't buy mechs I don't really dig.  I wouldn't buy into a mech chassis if I didn't want to own three of them.  So when you're plotting your buys, take care.  You can lose a lot of money to lack of understanding how these Efficiency trees work.  If you have any questions, I'll be eager to answer!