Hi Vitarians! As you know, we have been building on our skilling system to reward and incentivise doing things in-game relating to a skill.

We recently introduced active skilling as a step towards this, though have heard feedback around this. Some of the themes we heard were:

  • Getting past level 15 feels impossible
  • Active skill objects demand constant clicking, easily fail if you miss it or look away, and are consuming too much time
  • Skills can decay faster than you can work on them

We don't want you to feel like you have to endlessly skill or keep clicking a button, and as a result we are making some changes / accelerated some other elements we've previously discussed into the game.

Reversing Level 15 Cap

The first thing we are going to do is reverse the Level 15 cap for AFK skilling. Bookcases and mirrors will allow you to get all the way to the top levels again.

Using these AFK/idle routes is a slower way of doing it, but you can now do this again.

Active Skill Objects Changes

Secondly, Active Skill Objects will no longer punish you. No more failure states such as fires or your persona pee'ing themselves! The interactive prompts stay and these objects will act more like our Money Objects. Answering the prompts will still offer you a faster skilling rate, but ignoring them entirely just means you skill at the normal rate.

So, instead of punishing you, we will simply reward when you have the ability to interact.

This does mean the failure states have been removed and we will find alternative places for these comedic outcomes to occur in-game!

Doing Activities Increases Your Skills

Thirdly, and something we've been talking about a lot, is doing activities related to skills will now contribute to your skill. This has already been the case with gardening but now expands to all skills.

Cooking a meal will increase your cooking skill, repairing an object will increase your engineering skill, or using player-to-player interactions will increase your Charisma - for example. This will continue to expand to more objects and as we add more gameplay, and offer noticeably more skill XP compared to using items like the bookcase.

Doing activities in-game will offer a significant increase on skilling over time compared to the more traditional routes. Gardening has been a great example of this - engage with gardening gameplay by planting, watering and harvesting enough plants and you'll find yourself climbing the skill at a much faster pace.

Skill Decay Changes

Finally, Skill decay is being rebuilt. The previous approach drops every skill gradually - excluding the points you have locked - and can make it hard to maintain your skills.

Going forward, decay will only apply to skills you've stopped using for a longer period. It will also be much less prominent and slower. You can maintain skills by doing - such as cooking or gardening - and your skills will never drop below level 12. If you have several skills at the top level, they will need a little more work to maintain.

As before, decay never happens if you are offline and, if you lose any skill you've previously earned, it will come back 3x faster than it took to earn - as if you were refreshing yourself with something you knew before.

With that in mind, and the new floor for skills, skill locks no longer feel like a necessary feature. They existed to protect you from decay and - with these changes - it no longer has a purpose.

Skill Speed

We've made it easier to understand the speed at which you are skilling by changing from "1.0x - 10.0x" to showing you the exact amount of Skill XP you have. You will see this progress in real time.

Nothing has changed about how skill speed works - just the way we present that information to you.

What to expect next

We hope these changes make skilling much less of a repetitive activity! You can continue to expect new objects that allow you to skill in different, meaningful ways, and more interactions which allow you to progress your skills through actual gameplay and doing.

We want Vitare to be a social game where players are able to enjoy gameplay we have to offer. We want skills to be something you can earn from enjoying that gameplay.

Please continue to share your thoughts and feedback on this via the in-game feedback toggle, or in the #suggestions tab on Discord, so we can continue to learn and evolve the game.