Base Attributes

As you level up and become more powerful, you will be able to make decisions about your character by improving these attributes. As you engage in combat, dialogue, or just venture through the world, it is important that you understand what these attributes represent and how they affect your character.

Equipping items will often have a requirement on one of these attributes.
Strength increases your damage with strength-based weapons and skills, and allows you to lift and carry heavier items.

Finesse increases your damage with finesse-based weapons and skills.

Intelligence determines intelligence-based damage you deal.
Constitution determines how much Vitality you have.
Memory affects your amount of Memory Slots, which are required to learn skills. More powerful skills cost more Memory Slots
Wits affect your Critical Chance, Initiative, and your ability to detect traps and find hidden treasures.

Abilities

Abilities are split into two categories: Combat and Civil. When your character levels up, he or she is allocated a certain number of points to spend on Abilities. The choices you make are important, because they dramatically affect your character and how your character is played. Abilities can affect your use of weapons, magic and special skills, your ability for thievery, as well as social interactions. It is best to level up your separate characters differently in order to maximize the utility of your party.

Learning new skills through skillbooks will have a requirement on combat abilities.

Some game features will be locked until you have a point in the corresponding ability. To identify items, you need at least 1 Loremaster. To pick locks, you need at least 1 Thievery.

Talents

At certain times in the game, you will be given points to spend on Talents. Talents are unique attributes that give your characters advantages (and sometimes disadvantages) in certain situations. Choose Talents that complement your game experience, your character build and your desired way to roleplay. For a detailed description of each Talent, please refer to the in-game tooltip.

Some game features will be locked until you have selected a certain talent. For instance, Pet Pal allows you to speak to animals. Opportunist unlocks attacks of opportunity in combat.

Other talents are very special and change your game experience completely. The Lone Wolf talent gives you a lot of bonuses for taking only one companion with you.

Armour

Physical and Magical Armour protect your Vitality bar and blocks physical and magical statuses. For example, standing in fire while you have Magical Armour will not apply the burning status effect. An enemy trying to knock you down while you still have physical armour, will not succeed, but he will likely damage your physical armour pool.

It is a good idea to keep upgrading your gear with new equipment you find along the way. Armour resets only at the end of combat, but there are ways (skills and potions) to replenish the armour meters.

Extended Attributes

When you check out your character sheet, you will notice there are more stats than just these. These are extended attributes that you cannot upgrade yourself. They depend on other attributes and/or your equipment.

Tags

A tag is a characteristic or background story of a character. It creates new dialog options for you, and defines how NPCs see you. Most tags are selected during character creation, while some can be earned through gameplay. Origin characters have preset tags that you cannot customize.