The best skills in Valor Mortis don’t exactly match the standard suite of Soulslike stats to invest in, opting instead to provide you with a selection of powers and abilities to purchase with each level-up. While the skills available may look simple and easy to choose, the ones that make a dramatic difference to your survivability tend to fall into the melee category, as it’s the only option available to you at all times. With that in mind, here’s our pick for the best skills to buy first in Valor Mortis.
What are the best Skills in Valor Mortis?
Here’s quick summary of the best skills for you to buy first, before we go into detail on each one further down.
- Maximum Endurance (Rank 1)
- Blocking or Parrying Impact (Rank 2)
- Melee Damage (Rank 3)
- Melee Endurance Cost (Rank 5)
Maximum Endurance (Rank 1)
Endurance is arguably more important than any other of your main upgradeable stats in Valor Mortis, as nearly everything you do (especially in the opening hours) will revolve around this resource. Pumping four points into Maximum Endurance first will guarantee that you can comfortably block, attack, and dodge more often without running out of stamina.
While you should eventually put points in Maximum Health, too, most early enemies will deal enough damage quickly enough to kill you in just a few hits anyway, so having more Endurance will help keep you engaged in learning how to block, parry, and exploit attack openings more effectively instead. In the long run, this is all but guaranteed to make you a better player.
Blocking or Parrying Impact (Rank 2)
Your next best buy is either Blocking or Parrying Impact, and the decision may come down to which of the game’s two early melee weapons feels best to you.
If you’re primarily using the Saber, Blocking is a vital pickup because it will reduce the Endurance used by blocking, as well as increase the amount of health you can recover by attacking shortly after. Four points in this can make a huge difference to your defensive capabilities.
If you’re primarily using the Rapier, you’ll find that its playstyle eschews blocking altogether in favor of enhanced parrying. Pairing this with Parrying Impact ensures that your successful parries cause more posture damage to enemies, allowing you to go in for critical hits more frequently.
Melee Damage (Rank 3)
This one is about as straightforward as it gets: Pumping points into the Melee Damage skill improves how hard your weapons hit. Whether you’re using the Saber or Rapier, this is a must-have skill that will make your adventure considerably more manageable from beginning to end.
Even if you’re relying heavily on your Fire Transmutation during the opening hours of the game (reasonably so), Nephtoglobin is a finite resource that you’ll often need to replenish by performing melee attacks, so you might as well hit as hard as you can in the process.
Melee Endurance Cost (Rank 5)
Much like Maximum Endurance from the first rank (and again later in the sixth rank), the best option in the fourth rank of skills is Melee Endurance Cost. As expected, this will reduce how much Endurance you expend when attacking with any of your melee weapons.
And again, it’s important to remember that all of your other abilities need to be replenished in various manners, so even if melee attacks aren’t your favorite way to attack your foes, it’s still an important part of your toolkit that you’ll have to maintain. Being as prepared as possible is always a good bet.
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