Skill Masteries

Skill Masteries are special abilities granted to characters who train a skill to at least 90.0 real skill (skill from items does not count). Each eligible skill has its own mastery — a set of passive and active abilities — and characters access their masteries through a Book of Masteries (or, for bards, a Book of Bardic Masteries; both books work for all skills). Skill Masteries were introduced in Publish 81 (October 2013) and re-shape the late-game skill ladder by giving every supported skill a useful active ability that scales with mastery tier and base skill.

Only a single skill's mastery can be active at any one time. Switching active skill: left-click the Masteries book → "Switch Mastery." A character with multiple GM/Legendary skills must choose which active mastery to carry into a fight.

Mastery tiers

Each skill has three tiers of mastery, gated by Mastery Primers that the player consumes to unlock that skill's mastery at that tier:

You do not need to read all three primers in sequence: a Tier 3 primer grants you Tiers 1, 2, and 3 in one read. A higher-tier primer never lowers your active tier.

Your tier level controls the intensity of the mastery's effects — damage scaling, duration, area of effect.

Skills with masteries

The mastery system covers seven skill families. Within each family, individual skills have their own masteries:

Barding skills

• Provocation — Resilience Mastery
• Discordance — Tribulation Mastery
• Peacemaking — Despair Mastery
• Musicianship — Inspire Mastery

Combat skills

• Swordsmanship — Onslaught + Focused Eye
• Fencing — Pierce + Thrust
• Mace Fighting — Stagger + Toughness
• Archery — Flaming Shot + Playing the Odds
• Throwing — Called Shot + Elemental Fury
• Parrying — Body Guard
• Wrestling — Knockout + Fists of Fury + Rampage

Warrior specialities

• Bushido — Whirlwind / Perfection-related
• Ninjitsu — Death Strike / Animal Form-related
• Chivalry — Holy Smite-aligned

Spellcasting skills

• Magery — Spell Triggering Mastery (Wraith Form / EnemyDamage)
• Necromancy — Sacred Mastery
• Mysticism — Mystic Cleric Mastery
• Spellweaving — Wildfire Mastery

Thieving skills (currently mastery-supported)

Many thieving skills not yet supported — see "Skills without masteries" below.

Wilderness skills

• Animal Taming — Combat Training Mastery
• Poisoning — Injected Strike Mastery (debuff)
• Bushido / Ninjitsu — covered above

Skills WITHOUT masteries

39 skills currently have no associated mastery. These include all the crafting skills and many secondary/utility skills:

Crafting skills (none have masteries) Alchemy · Blacksmithing · Bowcraft / Fletching · Carpentry · Cooking · Inscription · Lumberjacking · Mining · Tailoring · Tinkering · Imbuing

Useless / utility skills (no masteries) Arms Lore · Begging · Camping · Cartography · Detecting Hidden · Evaluating Intelligence · Fishing · Focus · Forensic Evaluation · Healing · Hiding · Item Identification · Lock Picking · Meditation · Remove Trap · Resisting Spells · Snooping · Spirit Speak · Stealing · Stealth · Tactics · Taste Identification · Tracking · Veterinary · Animal Lore · Anatomy · Herding

The Stratics-side documentation explicitly enumerates the 39 (a stable count for the Pub81+ era).

Active vs passive masteries

Each mastery has both:

A character not using their active masteries is still benefiting from the passive — but the active abilities are where the build's late-game punch comes from.

Mastery title

Each skill mastery also allows the selection of an associated title (e.g., "Mage Master", "Bardic Master", "Knight"). Access via: left-click your player → "Open Titles Menu" → select from your unlocked mastery titles.

See also

• Mastery_Primer — the unlock items
• Champion_Spawn — Mastery Primer drop source
• Charybdis · Scalis — sea bosses; Mastery Primer drops
• Power_Scrolls — companion late-game progression system
• Pet_Training — pet-side mastery system
• Provocation · Discordance · Peacemaking · Musicianship — bardic masteries
• Bushido · Ninjitsu · Spellweaving — major active-mastery skills