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Skills Overview

Skill cap: 700 soft, 720 hard

700 is where every character starts — the soft cap, the total skill points you can hold across all skills at once.

720 is the hard ceiling. Nothing takes you past it. You close the 20-point gap with Skill Cap Balls, one point per ball.

UO Sagas features the classic UOR-era skill set. Every character can train any skill — your build is defined by which skills you raise within the overall skill cap. The caps, gain rates and training rules are all further down this page; Skill Masteries is the PvM specialization system layered on top, and Stats covers Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence.

Two columns in the tables below:

  • Cap — the highest that skill can reach. Everything starts capped at 100; the 30 skills that have Skill Scrolls can be pushed to 120. You cannot scroll them all: the budget is 120 bonus cap points per character, so at most six skills reach 120.
  • Mastery — whether the skill has a Skill Mastery, the PvM specialization track with perks and an ultimate proc. 19 of the skills do.

Combat

Skill What it does Cap Mastery
Swordsmanship Hit chance with swords and axes 100 Yes
Mace Fighting Hit chance with maces and staves 100 Yes
Fencing Hit chance with piercing weapons 100 Yes
Archery Hit chance with bows and crossbows 100 Yes
Wrestling Unarmed defense and attacks 100 —
Tactics Scales all weapon damage 120 Yes
Anatomy Bonus damage and weapon special moves 100 —
Parrying Blocking attacks with a shield 100 Yes
Arms Lore Weapon insight, passive swing speed 120 Yes
Healing Bandage healing, curing and resurrection 100 —

Magic

Skill What it does Cap Mastery
Magery Casting spells from the eight circles 100 —
Evaluating Intelligence Spell damage scaling 120 Yes
Meditation Faster mana regeneration 120 Yes
Resisting Spells Reduces hostile spell effects 120 Yes
Spirit Speak Communing with the dead 100 —
Inscription Scribing scrolls and spellbooks 120 Yes

Tactics, Evaluating Intelligence, Meditation and Resisting Spells keep their scrolled points only outside PvP — while you are flagged, anything above 100 is ignored.

Bard

Skill What it does Cap Mastery
Musicianship Playing instruments — base for all barding 120 Yes
Provocation Turning monsters against each other 120 —
Peacemaking Calming aggressive creatures 120 —
Discordance Weakening a target's stats and skills 120 —

All four feed the Barding song system.

Rogue

Skill What it does Cap Mastery
Hiding Vanishing from sight 100 —
Stealth Moving while hidden 120 Yes
Stealing Taking items from others 100 —
Snooping Peeking into other backpacks 100 —
Lockpicking Opening locked chests 120 —
Remove Trap Disarming chest traps 120 —
Detect Hidden Revealing hidden players and traps 120 —
Poisoning Applying poison to weapons and food 120 Yes

Crafting

Skill What it does Cap Mastery
Alchemy Brewing potions 120 Yes
Blacksmithy Forging weapons and armor 120 —
Carpentry Building furniture and woodcraft 120 —
Cartography Drawing and decoding maps 120 —
Cooking Preparing food 120 —
Fletching Crafting bows and arrows 120 —
Tailoring Sewing clothes and leather armor 120 —
Tinkering Tools, jewelry and clockwork 120 —

See the Crafting Overview for the shared crafting model.

Gathering

Skill What it does Cap Mastery
Mining Digging ore and gems 120 Yes
Lumberjacking Chopping wood 120 Yes
Fishing Fishing, SOS bottles and sea treasure 120 —
Skinning Harvesting hides from corpses 120 Yes

See the Gathering Overview for veins, regions and luck.

Animals

Skill What it does Cap Mastery
Animal Taming Taming and controlling creatures 120 —
Animal Lore Inspecting creatures and pets 120 Yes
Veterinary Healing and resurrecting pets 120 —
Herding Directing animals 100 —

Utility & flavor

Skill What it does Cap Mastery
Tracking Locating creatures and players 100 —
Camping Campfires and resting 100 —
Item Identification Appraising items 100 —
Taste Identification Detecting poisoned food 100 —
Begging Asking NPCs for coin 100 —

Skill caps

  • The overall skill cap is 700 points across all skills.
  • The overall cap can be raised up to a maximum of 720 using Skill Cap Balls — each consumed ball raises your total skill cap by 1 point.
  • Every individual skill is capped at 100 by default.
  • Selected skills can be raised beyond 100 — up to 120 — by consuming Skill Scrolls.

Raising a skill above 100

  • Each Skill Scroll is bound to one specific skill and raises that skill's cap by 1 point, so going from 100 to 120 takes 20 scrolls of that skill.
  • You must be a Grandmaster (skill at 100) in the skill before you can consume its scrolls.
  • Raising the cap does not raise the skill itself — you still have to train the points the normal way, all the way to 120.
  • There is a shared budget: a character can hold at most 120 points of scroll cap increases across all skills combined — enough for six skills at 120, or any spread you like (twelve skills at 110, and so on). Once the budget is full you have to lower another skill's cap first (the floor is 100) before more scrolls will apply.
  • In practice the 700/720 total skill cap is the tighter limit: six skills at 120 is exactly 720, so a fully scrolled character has room for nothing else.

Skills that can reach 120

Only skills that have Skill Scrolls can be raised past 100:

Type Skills
Animal Animal Lore, Animal Taming, Veterinary
Barding Discordance, Musicianship, Peacemaking, Provocation
Combat Arms Lore, Tactics
Crafting Alchemy, Blacksmithy, Bowcraft/Fletching, Carpentry, Cooking, Inscription, Tailoring, Tinkering
Exploration Cartography, Detect Hidden
Gathering Fishing, Lumberjacking, Mining, Skinning
Magic Evaluating Intelligence, Meditation, Resisting Spells
Thievery Lockpicking, Poisoning, Remove Trap, Stealth

All other skills — including the melee skills, Magery, Hiding, Healing, Anatomy and Tracking — cap at 100.

Tactics, Evaluating Intelligence, Resisting Spells and Meditation are a special case: they feed damage, defense and mana regeneration directly, so their scrolled points count only while you are not PvP flagged. For as long as the flag is up anything above 100 is ignored — see Skill Scrolls.

Skill gains

Your chance to gain on a successful or failed skill use depends on how close you are to the skill's cap and how challenging the attempt was. Some things to know:

  • Skills below 10.0 gain very quickly (multiple points per use).
  • Combat and magic skills gain slightly slower as they approach 100.
  • Crafting skills gain noticeably slower — Alchemy, Inscription and Cartography in particular are much harder to raise than other skills. A dedicated crafter is a valuable (and profitable) character on Sagas.
  • Citizenship town bonuses can grant extra gain chance for specific crafting or gathering skills.

Where you train matters

Skill gain speed is modified by the region you are in:

Region Gain rate
Overland (wilderness) Normal
Dungeons 20% faster
Guarded towns 10% slower
Player houses 20% slower

Special rules apply on the newbie island Adena and in the Caverns of Adena: skill gains there are doubled, but skills can only be trained up to 70.0 in those regions. See Young Players for more about starting out.

Skill items

  • Skill Scrolls — raise an individual skill's cap toward 120.
  • Skill Cap Balls — raise your overall skill cap from 700 toward 720 (+1 per ball).
  • Skill Scrolls can be stored in a Skill Scroll Almanac, available from the Vault of Eren Vendor — see Almanacs.