Raising levels/abilities guide

[PostBot]

First... If you are in Load Out screen. Top Middle of screen next to the suitcase icon is a flowchart icon. This is your Ability Tree.

Next. Click on that icon to bring up your abilities. You will be shown where your tree starts. Awakening. It always starts there. Notice the slide bars on the bottom and right side of the chart so that you can move it around and zero in on different Main abilities.

If you click on Awakening the chart changes to Awakening and it's specific tree. All Main Abilities have specific trees. Operative, Soldier, Hacker... and so on...

If you wish to raise an ability, say awakening, click on it so that it's text appears in the window to the right, and then click on the "+" sign to raise the ability. If you wish to add sub-abilities like head-butt or others THAT YOU HAVE (I'll get to buying abilities in a minute), just double click on the ability that you want load into your character.

Now, very important. Look at the tree and study it very carefully. decide the path you initially want to take and write down if you have to what you need to get where you want to go. For instance. If you want to learn Kung Fu. You must do the following.

First, run lots and lots of missions, to get info points. Then, goto Mara, or Tabor, or Appolyon SouthEast to the item vendor (people will be there just ask them to point them out to you) and start buying the abilities you need to go in the direction you want...

I want the Kung Fu skill. So I need to raise my Awakening (actually, you don't but raising awakening is always a good idea), so I look at my ability tree and move up to Operative and click on it. On the far left of the Operative miniview is Combat Insight. I notice that to become Operative I need Overhand Smash and Body Shot, but to get those I need Firearms and Martial Something (forgot... sorry). Combat Insight needs to be rank 4 to get the firearms and the martial, and both firearms and the martial need to be rank 5 to the the overhand thrust and the bodyshot.

Important: You can not raise an ability past your current level, so in other words, if you want to be an Operative, you have to be level 5 minimum.

Ok, so you raise your Combat insight, to 4. Time to hit the ability vendor for martial expertise (I think that's what it was) and firearms. Buy both... run back to the hardline either double left click or right click and select Upload. Then right click again and select abilities. Bingo - your abilities tree is there and you don't have to jump back into the load out screen. you can do it right ingame. so move up to operative, double click on martial expertise, raise it to 5, double click on firearms and raise it to five, run back to the vendor and buy over hand smash and bodyshot and then run back to the booth and bring up abilities and double click on their spots on the tree, and then run back to the vendor and buy Operative, run back to the phone booth, upload the ability, and then bring up the abilities screen and double click on Operative, and viola... there you go... you're an Operative now.

VERY VERY IMPORTANT: EVERY ABILITY YOU BUY FROM A VENDOR MUST FIRST BE UPLOADED BEFORE YOU CAN USE IT IN YOUR ABILITY TREE. GET IN THE HABIT AFTER EVERY MISSION OF FINDING THE NEAREST HARDLINE AND DOUBLE LEFT CLICKING OR RIGHT CLICK SELECT UPLOADING TO UPLOAD EITHER BITS OF CODE YOU FIND DURING MISSIONS OR ABILITIES YOU BUY TO UPGRADE!!!

If you want to do it the easy way, save up all your cash, buy what you need, because the ability vendor can show both what you can use, and if you click at the bottom of his screen he can show everything that he has for sale, most of which you can't use cuz you're n00blar... buy it all at once if you have the cash, and then you have to upload it only once. Then bring up the abilities screen and just select what you want, raise it to what you need to get the next ability in the chain, and then add the next one...

I'm level 13 right now. I've spent the last 2 weeks trying to attain Martial Arts Initiate. Unfortunately, one of the skills you need needs to be rank 15 (15th level)

I know all of this sounds a bit confusing, and it was when I first tried to figure it out... but it's not to hard once you get the hang of it.

Oh, and if you have something and it won't add, make sure you have your points high enough and also double click on the preceeding ability to get rid of it and then double click on the spot to bring it back and then try adding what you want to add. I've had to do that a couple of times...