Press the C key to display the skills main menu.

You'll see that image displayed, click the image below to read the legends easily.



We'll now select the armor category.

The selection zone is on the category icon, click on it to access the category skill tree.

Here is the screen displayed upon selecting the armor category.




Before proceeding on explaing how the trees work, I would like you to have a close look to this image and its legend, particularly what I call "main branch" and "secondary branch".

Weapons:

Earn Weapon Skill Points by shooting at enemies.
You'll earn Pistol/ Assault rifle weapon points depending on the weapon you are using.

Armors:

Get hit by enemies to earn Armor Skill Points
You'll earn specific armor points depending on the type(s) of your equipped armor pieces.


The main character level depends on your progress in skills points earned.
You also get XP points for killing enemies.

Thus, this is giving and taking hits that you'll earn levels but not without some restrictions.

Anti "power-leveling" restrictions:

Well yeah, developers thought about us "smart head" who would look for ways to power-level, meaning getting XP extremly fast!
I'll explain what they did to prevent that:

The rule of thumb is that the character XP and skills XP gained is in relation with one's character level and the enemy's level.


Fighting enemies of a lower level than you gives no or a few XP points, be it in armor or weapons.
Fighting enemies of a higher level than you gives more XP points all around but there's still some level range involved.
If you can kill a mob 10 levels higher than you, good for you! Nice amount of character XP earned for sure!

It's not possible to earn Skill XP if the enemy is 4 or more levels less than yours.

For example, if I am level 10, fighting level 6 mobs will only reward me with a few "character XP points" but no "skill XP".
I would earn skill XP fighting level 7+ mobs.

Also, it is not possible to earn mega XP for fighting a LVL 24 enemy at LVL 7 without killing it.
I've seen a friend trying to do that; fighting lava sliders and locusts in the "Lost Desert" and he just didn't earn any Weapon Skill Points for shooting at them.


I will keep referring to the Armor Skill Category however, however, what I am saying also refers to the Weapon Skill category.


So, you've been playing for a little while, accomplished a few quests and earned a few character levels, generics and specific points in both armor and weapons.
You now know how to earn those points but you still need to know how to spend them efficiently.

You can spend these on the main branches available to increase the level of equippable items.
It will also allow you to access the secondary branches linked to each main branch levels.



At the start of the game, level 1 for each type of armor is unlocked, thus you can equip any level 1 armor piece.

With tactical armor level 5, you can equip tactical type armors up to level 5 and so on.


I strongly recommand choosing one type of armor you want to invest all your generic points into quickly.

The stats bonus provided for each level is exponential so you would be stronger with a high level armor than with multiple armor types at a lower level.

For min/max purposes, you would be better off with a full set of level 9 tactical armor than with a mix of armor types at level 6.


As bonuses provided by armors go up with levels, same goes for costs to unlock higher levels, they require more and more points.

Rest assured, you start off the game with only a small maximum in generic and specific points but this increases as your character levels up!

Secondary branches contain skills improving the efficiency of the related items.

For armors, here are some secondary skills example:

-Increase in armor durability. (damage mitigation, very important)
-Increase in shield capacity.
-Increase in maximum character health.


The same way it does for the main branch, secondary skills cost increases the more you progress.


Here's a tip about armor:
I recommend prioritizing armor durability.
In my experience, it seems to provide the most survivability among the different defensive stats.

When I was a noob, I picked the tactical armor because it provided the most armor/shield/health through secondary branches.

I'm doing ok so far that way, I just have to focus on unlocking the armor "durability' secondary skills, I really feel the difference versus an enemy after improving that value.

Also, i've been investing my Weapon Skill Points in Assault Rifle at it clearly is more powerful than pistols for now.



A map of Harbinger with the locations of many NPCs:[imgur.com]

A map of the outside with a few NPCs' locations[i.imgur.com]

I hope this guide helped you, if something was unclear, if a sentence is poorly written, please tell me!

I'm not a native english speaking person, i'm just french, sorry for being a frog eater.



Grilvhor or GrilvhorFR in the game!