Attributes and Skills

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures features 80 levels of character advancement, and every level is reached by gaining experience points through completing quests and killing enemies.

Questing is the primary way of gaining experience, allowing you to see the world and experience the stories of Hyboria while advancing your characters. Killing enemies also provides experience points, and this is based on how difficult the enemy is.

Every time you gain a level, you will have to make a range of decisions that impact your character’s future:

• Attributes: Your attributes will gain automatically when you gain new levels.
• Skills: You will gain a certain number of skill points that you can invest in your various skills.
• Feats: You will gain a certain number of feat points that you can use to buy new feats or strengthen the feats you’ve taken before.
• Combos: Depending on your character’s class, new combos may become available when leveling up.

Skills

Depending on your character's class you have a set of skills that are either working in the background while you play, or you will have to activate them yourself by using various abilities. When you gain a level you may also gain a set of points you can invest in these skills to make them more potent. You invest skill points through the character window.

Here are some of the most important skills:

• Perception: Determines how well you observe the environment around you. May allow you to spot hidden enemies or even dangerous traps.
• Concentration: Determines how prone you are to having your spell canceled if distracted.
• Hiding: This skill allows you to hide and become invisible to others. A higher skill allows you to hide better and become more difficult to spot.
• Climbing: Determines the difficulty of objects (such as ladders) and slopes that you can climb. You may climb by using climbing spots in certain areas.
• Taunt: The higher your skill in taunting, the greater chance of making enemies aggressive towards you. The maximum number of points you can invest in a skill increases as you gain new levels.

Feats

At the core of the character development system in Age of Conan are the feats. This allows you to use points gained when leveling up to give your character new capabilities and more existing ones more potent. It can be compared to the talents system found in other games, usually being a tree-shaped system to display the various talents.

Every character has three feat trees and they can be viewed at any time by clicking the appropriate icon in your interface. There is one general tree specific to your archetype (Soldier, Mage, Priest or Rogue) and two trees specific to your class.

(Above: Dark Templar Depravity feat tree)

Abilities

Last, but certainly not least you will find the combos, the spells and the stances that you will acquire through leveling. As you gain new levels you will be able to find shopkeepers who sell spell scrolls, and some might even be found through adventuring. The stances and combos, however, will be automatically granted to you as you level up.

(Above: a Barbarian's combo bar.)

Combos and spells can increase in effectiveness, for instance by investing in certain feats. For instance, the Glowing Embers feat for the Demonologist will make the Flamestrike spell do more damage, while the Boiling Blood feat for the Barbarian will make all his Berserk combos do even more devastating damage than usual.

Your character has a set of base attributes that are automatically increased when you gain new levels. Attributes have a direct impact on your character's abilities and powers.

Attributes

Here are some of the most important attributes:

Strength

Strength gives you a bonus to  Combat rating when using melee weapons (except daggers), bonus to your armor, and a bonus to your stamina. Strength also increases your Natural and Out Of Combat (OOC) stamina regeneration.

Dexterity

Dexterity gives your a bonus to your Combat rating with ranged weapons and daggers. It also gives you a bonus to your Evade rating, a bonus to your Stamina, and to your Natural and Out Of Combat (OOC) stamina regeneration. 

Intelligence

Intelligence gives you a bonus to your spell damage that are based on the Intelligence attribute and a bonus to your Mana. Intelligence also increases your Protection from Electrical, Fire, and Cold magic as well increases your Natural and Out Of Combat Mana regeneration.

Wisdom

Wisdom gives you a bonus to your spell damage that are based on the Wisdom attribute and a bonus to your Mana. Wisdom also increases your Protection from Holy and Unholy magic as well increases your Natural and Out Of Combat Mana regeneration. 

Constitution

Constitution gives you a bonus to your Health points by a number depending your class and to your Stamina points. It also gives you a bonus to your Natural and Out Of Combat (OOC) stamina and health regeneration.

Armor and Protection Mitigation

The Armor and Protection Mitigation system is for both physical and magical attacks. Your items (and some spells) will sometimes give you armor, which will mitigate damage from all physical damage types (i.e.: slashing, piercing, crushing, and poison damage). You can also get items and buffs that give you protection, which will mitigate damage from all spiritual and elemental damage types (i.e.: holy, unholy, fire, cold, electrical). 

Rating System

The Rating System is a core set of statistics that scale with your level and can be found on various items or inherited from classes or feats. The system offers even more passive defense versus melee and magical attacks in the form of ratings that scale. The ratings are also branched based on play styles such as Player-versus-Environment (PvE) and Player-versus-Player (PvE) ratings.

Core Statistics:

• Combat Rating – giving you increased damage with melee and ranged attacks
• Evade Rating – giving you the chance to evade melee and ranged attacks
• Immunity Rating – giving you the chance to fully resist magical attacks
• Hate Increase Rating – giving you increased threat generation
• Hate Decrease Rating – giving you reduced threat generation
• Fatality Rating – giving you increased chance to perform fatalities
• Offhand Rating – giving you increased chance to do offhand attacks
• Hit Rating – giving you increased chance to hit a target
• Critical Rating – giving you the chance to critically hit. 
• Critical hits will now give you 50% extra damage
• Critical Damage Rating – increasing the damage of your critical hits

PvP Statistics and Ratings

Several stats will also have a PvP specific version that will exist on PvP gear. The effects of these stats will include the normal stat.

PvP Statistics:

• PvP Evade Rating – giving you the chance to evade melee and ranged attacks
• PvP Hit Rating – giving you increased chance to hit a target
• PvP Immunity Rating – giving you the chance to fully resist magical attacks
• PvP Armor – increasing your mitigation versus physical damage
• PvP Protection – increasing your mitigation versus magical damage