The Pit: Infinity – Stats & Skills Leveling Guide

There are few guides currently up for this game and information outside of The Pit: Infinity is limited – and generally only derivable from Sword of the Stars: The PIt (or SotS), which is this game this is based on. This guide is here to help shed some light on the game – specifically on Stats and Skills and spending points gained on level up.

That Said:

To give a quick disclaimer – I never really played SotS. I briefly playing the SotS Demo a while back to get a feel for how that game played but otherwise never purchased the rogue-like to play past that. My knowledge therefore of what The Pit: Infinity was based on is limited.

I have however played The Pit: Infinity and at the time of writing this guide have a Singleplayer Marine Easy Difficulty Win, Cooperative Engineer Easy Difficulty Win, as well as several hours of experience in Normal Difficulty. I don’t tout myself as an expert, but simple as a player that has adequate enough ability to help give a basic gist for playing this game and helping a newbie get started.

It is worth noting that I am trying to verify how things in the game works through gameplay; but some of the details here are derived from the SotS Wiki and I can’t tell you for sure if something like every point in Brains helps with trap detection or how much Might helps you ward off things like Disease. I also haven’t included the detail about Might increasing Inventory space either as I’m not sure if does.

There are three stats that your character can spec into Might, Finesse, and Brains. One will notice that each stat will have several skills associated with it, and that the value of each specific stat will tie into the final overall value of the skills in their umbrella. Note this is for both good and bad, and having a detrimental effect that reduces a stat will hamper the accompanying skills as well.

To give a breakdown of the stats in detail:

Might – Essentially your characters physical prowess and endurance, Might can be seen as a combination of the classic RPG attributes of Strength and Constitution. Might governs the Mechanical, Blade, and Melee skills and every 5 points in Might increase these respective skills by 1.

Might helps your character overcome common status ailments that may affect your character throughout your game, including Poison, Disease, and Stun. IE, when making a check to overcome a status ailment, your Might skill will help determine if you shrug of the status ailment or not. Higher Might will also mean you have a larger Food Pool to exhaust before starving.

Finesse – Where Might is your Strength and Constitution attributes, Finesse could be described as your Dexterity attribute. Finesse governs Assault Weapons, Electronics, Heavy Weapons, Knife, Lockpick, Pistol, Rifle, and Traps skills and every 5 points in Finesse increases these respective skills by 1.

Unlike the other stats, it doesn’t seem Finesse provides any benefits by itself so pro-tip – unless you can raise Finesse by 5 points you may want to bank your unspent stat points in case you decide to spend it on Might or Brains instead.

Brains – It should come as no surprise that Brains is essentially any and every mental attributes you can think of. Brains governs Biotech, Computer, Decipher, Engineer, Foraging, and Medical skills and every 5 points in Brains increases these respective skills by 1.

Brains can be an important stat later down the road when your character begins to encounter hidden mines within the pit. Each point of Brains will help you detect these hidden traps, helping you in avoiding them – or if you are feeling particular daring, disarm them.

Might is a pretty interesting stat – being that unlike Finesse or Brains, you don’t really get a high amount of skill benefit from investing in it for improving its associated skills as there are only three of them, but rather for the benefits you get from the stat itself.

Generally in any run I play through, I will invest my stat points on Might immediately with most characters I play – unless the character in question already has a decent score in the stat. Most of the benefits one can get from Might will come early in helping to offset the problems associated with Poison and Disease.

To go over the Importance of each skill:

• Mechanical – One of the most used skills in the game, Mechanical will be checked whenever prying apart a rusty locker or opening a freezer. Mechanical can help you with getting food to eat and ammo to shoot at things. You don’t need a lot of Mechanical either to open most items – but every point helps to improve your success rate so it doesn’t hurt to increase your chances on those tasks by raising this skill.

  Mechanical is an important skill to invest in early on as you’ll be making checks against it immediately upon getting into the first level of the pit, persisting until the final level into the game. If for some reason you don’t make a single check during the course of a character level then you might consider banking the skill points. You should aim to be fairly successfully is most checks against this skill so be sure to level it quite a bit.

  In multiplayer, it is possible to designate one player to perform such skill checks if desired – but this is a pretty easy skill to get a high success chance in for a few points so you might level it if you just want to save time in coop (and not have to wait on your buddy).

• Blade – Blade weaponry tends to pack the biggest punch and pierce through armor the best in Melee combat. Compared to Knives they also tend to have better durability; though they do take up an extra slot in the inventory.

  Investing in Blades might be worthwhile if you are already skilled with them and use them a lot, or happen upon several Blade weapons or a good Blade weapon in a run. You might be inclined to ignore it though if you prefer to keep out of melee range of enemies however, or if your character is more oriented to Knives.

  In multiplayer, investing in the Blade skill may be worth looking into – even if none of the characters are good with Blades. This can help make use of any good Blade weaponry you find while others can opt for a Knife.

• Melee – Ultimately this skill is all about punching things in the face. Your fists are not necessarily all that good for damaging things and mainly the purpose of using your fists is just to conserve durability on your weapons or punch down a door.

  I don’t consider Melee to be worth investing in. You aren’t going to be using your fists to kill hard targets (or even moderately difficult ones) and time isn’t that big of an issue in regards to beating down a door. Invest those skill points in actual combat skills – or invest in Biotech to improve your chances at crafting food items to help feed yourself while punching down a door instead.

  The situation for not investing in Melee doesn’t really change in multiplayer.

  *Sidenote: Grenades are classified as being governed by the Melee skill and ‘may’ be impacted by its value. I’m not sure of this but it doesn’t really matter – you don’t really find enough grenades and their use is somewhat situational as they tend to blow up equipment if you throw them inside of a room and tactically using them while something is charging you down can be difficult.

Unlike Might or Brains, you don’t get any real direct benefit from the Finesse stat, rather you get the indirect benefits of improving the skills associated with it – Finesse governs the most skills in regards to the other stats.

Specifically in regards to skills, Finesse encompasses all your Combat Skills outside of Blades and Melee and a few really important skills for getting access to rooms and being able to make use of its contents. Finesse is a worthy stat to invest in after any expenditures in Might; even on characters with good Finesse to begin with.

In regards to the many skills that Finesse governs:

• Assault Weapons – The best weapon available at the moment this guide was being written, the Mag Rifle, falls under this classification of weapon.If you search hard enough it is likely you’ll find a Mag Rifle in any given run. Unfortunately unless your character comes pre-trained, the value in this skill will be dismal to start; you’ll also have to find the Assault Weaponry too.

  In my opinion, it is worth investing in Assault Weapons – at the very least when you find one, but sometimes before you do. This is both true for those not very good with Assault Weapons and those that are. You can use Assault Weapons to bring down hard targets extremely quickly; or everything else if you have enough ammo and durability.

  In multiplayer you might avoid investing in it if someone else is going to be making use of them or if your group is trying to diversify who uses what weapon. That said, if you find multiple Assault Weapons and have the ammo for it, you can rip through things with them if more then one of you is using them.

• Electronics – Electronics is important because a lot of the alien equipment you’ll come across will have a high chance of being damaged – meaning unless you successfully fix them with your Electronics skill, you won’t be able to make use of those objects. There are tools to help you with Electronics tasks though so you might be able to get away from having to train the skill too much.

  Whether or not it is worth investing in Electronics really depends on if you find those tools to help you successful complete those Electronic tasks. Much like with Mechanical, you’ll be doing a lot of Electronic checks throughout the game, but other skills could be prioritized if desired or needed. It might be worth skipping Electronics if you for some reason don’t perform any Electronic checks before a character level but other skills you are using and looking to invest in.

  In multiplayer, you can designate a player in the group to perform Electronic checks in multiplayer too; thus allowing the other players to focus their skill points in other areas. This is probably very useful as some characters have completely dismal values in Electronics, and shouldn’t attempt such tasks.

• Heavy Weapons – Heavy Weapons are undoubtedly the worst types of weapons in this game. An uncommon find and one that can take a lot of space in the inventory away from more useful equipment, let alone one part of a skill that any character will have any value in, this is a skill that should be ignored.

  Don’t invest in Heavy Weapons. I can’t say I’ve found Heavy Weapons to be useful – the inventory space for them could be better used for other things and even with some skill in Heavy Weapons, they don’t do enough damage to justify carrying them around.

  Even on multiplayer, just ignore Heavy Weapons.

• Knife – Knives are essentially smaller Blades in this game – smaller damage and armor penetration, smaller in taken inventory space too. They can be a nice weapon to use in an emergency situation, on characters already somewhat talented in them, to beat down doors faster, or just to preserve durability of your other weapons.

  If you are going to melee, you probably want to aim for Blades; unless your character is already somewhat skilled with Knives. Knives aren’t bad weapons but Blades just beat them out in all aspects for the most part.

  In multiplayer, it might be useful to level Knives if your friends are more geared to Blades or if you are more inclined to use Knives to melee things.

• Lockpick – Hands down the most used skill in the game – at least outside of combat. Doors tend to be locked quite often wherever you go in this game; and then on top of that the Lockers you loot might be locked as well. You do get three attempts to open up doors though when attempting to pick their locks, can use lockpicks to help improve your success rate, or just force your way into a room with brute force; but I certainly wouldn’t ignore this skill by any means.

  Getting some increases in Lockpicking will definitely make life a lot easier – you won’t burn down as much food spending time trying to break into rooms and if a Locker is locked then you will have a higher chance of getting some sweet loot. You don’t need too much though as improvised lockpicks are fairly easy to make to help improve success chances.

  In multiplayer, you can designate one player to do all the Lockpicking chores – but like Mechanical, this is a pretty easy skill to level up and get a decent success chance in so having multiple people running around with Lockpicking isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

• Pistol – Pistols are okay early game, and in the mid game they can be useful to help conserve the durability of your other weapons. They aren’t all that useful at targets down range as their accuracy drops off quite a bit.

  It can be worth dropping a few points into Pistols to help get through the beginning of the game. I will note that there are some nice pistols to find in the Pit that might incentive using them deeper into the game – but Pistols have really terrible durability so I wouldn’t advice it.

  In multiplayer, it might not be a terrible idea for someone to invest in Pistols. They can make for a nice backup weapon; or just to help make use of all the weapons your group finds.

• Rifle – This is your bread and butter combat skill. Both the regular rifles and shotguns fall under this category and they will likely be what you use to kill most enemies in this game. You can start investing in Rifles fairly early too with just a single point if you make use of your Boomstick initially while leveling.

  Leveling up Rifles from the getgo can be a good idea to get more killing potential out of them later down the road. You will be making use of Rifles a lot – at least if you want to get anywhere in the game. The only reason I would see not to level up rifles is if you find an Assault Weapon right away in a run and your on a very strict budget concerning skill points.

  In multiplayer, you can focus your attention away from Rifles if you want to have specific group members focus on designated weapons. However, much like with Assault Weapons, a case can be made for multiple people to pick the skill up – they may not have the Mag Rifle in their category, but Rifles can certainly shine in their own right.

• Traps – Traps can be extremely annoying in this game – but they aren’t necessarily all that dangerous (unless you are being stupid or get severely unlucky). Primarily you will use this skill to disarm door traps, with a secondary feature being to pick up (or rearm) mines. But, there are ways to get around traps such as destroying the door that door traps are attached too and shooting any mines on the ground when you find them.

  Unless the character in question is quite skilled in Traps to begin with, this is really a luxury skill in my opinion. You will quite likely never be able to get a really high success rate with characters not focused on the skill to begin with.

  In multiplayer, there is probably good merit to picking up the skill – at least on one person; you get experience for disabling traps successfully. Only if your running characters with extremely limited skill points might I suggest not doing it.

For those looking to get a little bit of benefit from both a stat and the skills associated with it, Brains is a nice go between compared to Finesse and Might.

Compared to Finesse, one will notice that a lot of the skills associated with Brains will help you out with looting and crafting. Whether that makes it worth investing in over Finesse is debatable – though you may begin investing in Finesse for a while only to stop when mines start appearing for frequently, then switch over to Brains to help find them.

Covering the last of the skills there are in the game:

• Biotech – Food can be an issue in this game, even more so on classes that don’t have a good ability to forage. Biotech can help with this problem by increasing your chances at succeeding at some of the harder recipes in game – assuming you have found said recipes. Some of the recipes you can make do more then satiate your hunger too.

  Depending on how lucky you are, you can probably get by without having to worry about food much if you find a good deal of food in your run to begin with. You might have to opt for lower risk recipes if you do have issues with food but you should be fine nonetheless.

  In multiplayer, having a designated chef can be worthwhile for managing any and all food issues. You can get by without it though, probably.

• Computer – A not too often skill, yet one you shouldn’t ignore, Computers are checked against when attempting to access armor lockers – which are checks you don’t want to be failing. It is also important for using med bays and access consoles for the data in them.

  While there is a tool to help with Computer tasks, I find it isn’t a common pickup. You’ll want to be comfortable with successfully doing Computer tasks with the skill alone so be sure to try and get a decent value here.

  In multiplayer, you can somewhat leave this skill in the hands of other players, but a little bit of Computer won’t hurt you for the med bays if you need a place to put some points.

• Decipher – I’m not entirely sure how this stat works. More often then not, when attempting to decode the lore or gain new recipes, you don’t fail at the accompany Decipher checks. I don’t know if perhaps you get ‘more’ Deciphered or not with this skill, but ultimately you’ll likely get your experience from a successful check even with a lower chance of doing it more often then not.

  In many ways this stat is similar to Traps, being that it is a luxury skill. Unlike Traps though, it is a luxury skill that you might investing in at higher levels – after becoming comfortable the level of success from your other skills and just looking to unlock some more recipes for next time.

  In multiplayer, I’m not sure there is much reason to have a designated person leveling up this skill. I guess if you really want recipes it might help but I’d maybe leave it until much later in a run before investing in it.

• Engineering – This is probably the least used skill in the game, and equally of as little importance. Primarily, the purpose for Engineering is to disable those electrical nodes you’ll come across from time to time. Its secondary purpose is for fixing engineering bays for crafting. Does that sound odd? Well, if you like, you could craft some EMP grenades. I guess…

  Skip it, maybe down the road when the game has more we’ll see more use out of Engineering, but right now this is a skill that doesn’t do enough.

  I wouldn’t even bother with it in multiplayer either; unless you are playing a character that has a decent Engineering stat with skill points to burn.

• Foraging – If you want loots, then you want to have a lot of this skill. Foraging will increase the gains from whatever objects you loot – both in terms of quantity AND quality, This means that those lockers you might loot with Mechanical, Lockpicking, Computers, or what not, will give you better results. Some objects also require you to check against Foraging too.

  If you have good skills in accessing objects, then Foraging should be primarily where your skill points should begin to go. Else, if you find that for some reason you didn’t use certain skills you would want to level up first, then spending them here instead of banking them is a worthy strategy to pursue.

  In multiplayer, unless you absolutely and positively aren’t doing any form of looting, every player should get this skill.

• Medical – Want to be able to heal yourself? You’ll have to make a check to see if you succeed to use that med kit or not! You will also heal more from such sources too. Also important for crafting a few recipes – anti-venom and antibiotics to be specific. Certainly useful.

  Useful as Medical might be, you can treat this as an optional skill. You can heal through other means – Computer skill and med bays, resting in beds, healing items that don’t check Medical (including those crafted with Biotech). Still, Medical is useful for another alternative to healing.

  In multiplayer, I consider this to probably be a skill everyone should pick up a little bit of. You want to be able to keep on the move with your friends and this skill will help out a lot with that.

I couldn’t figure where else to put this information in this guide, so it is getting its own section. Here are some important tips to note regarding skills:

• Besides leveling up a stat by 5 to increase its corresponding skills by 1, or just leveling up the skills directly, there is another method for increasing skills. Any skill that is below the base value of 45 ‘can’ be trained up to a value of 45 simply by performing the activity.

  This can play a big role in determining what you’ll invest your skill points into – why raise Lockpicking for instance if it is below 45 when you have 3 attempts per door (each attempt potentially raising the skill up) and can either go around to another door to the room if one is available or break it down if you fail to actually open it?

• While skills are important, your health can be quite a limited resource in this game. You do get a full health restore when you level up though so sometimes it can worth it to ‘bank’ your level up. What this refers to is waiting to enter your character screen until you are low health so that you can get all your health restored immediately.

  Just don’t go too crazy! Skill checks you might be making will get higher percentages with each point invested. I also wouldn’t recommend doing this too much as you can’t see your progress to your next level up when you are banking a level – you can only spend skill points on a single skill per level up session and you may a lot of your skill points are being banked or your having to spend skill points on skills you don’t like if you aren’t careful.

• I’ve mentioning banking a lot in regards to skill points already in this guide – and above I just mentioned it for character leveling. Banking skill points refers to not spending them immediately on a level up; usually because there are skills you want to spend them on but they cost two points as opposed to just one.

  Banking skill points can be a good idea if you want to make the best use of your skill points on a character. This can be especially true early on when you level up quite quickly but not do much outside of killing stuff or maybe Lockpicking Doors, Disarming Traps, and opening Crates. Instead of spending those points early, it can make sense to wait until you perform the skills you want to level up in, and then leveling those skills at that time.

  Much like with leveling though, don’t go too crazy. if you keep banking points everytime you level up then those associated skills might not get leveled up for a long time. These can lead to having a huge surplus of skill points to spend – and when you do ultimately start using those skills you may find yourself quite a ways into the run and not doing as well as you might like when those skills

By DFuxa