Avowed: Best early Abilities for Ranger, Fighter & Wizard

Avowed is by no means an easy adventure and players will need to utilize combat, exploration, and Abilities to survive. Luckily, many of the latter will help to ease your experience.

No matter your style of gameplay, Avowed is designed to be unforgiving. If you’re under-leveled or underprepared, you’re guaranteed to flirt with death, particularly if you’re choosing the wrong setup.

After all, these Abilities will increase your movement, damage, and survivability, and allow you to control the battlefield, so it’s vital you know exactly what to unlock from the very beginning.

Best all-around Abilities to unlock

Regardless of your chosen fighting style or class, you’ll want to unlock these Abilities. They’ll keep you strong, deadly, and increase your movement, all of which are vital in any battle.

Constant Recovery

• Duration: 12 Seconds
• After taking damage, slowly regenerate 50% of the last amount of Health lost.

Health is sparse in Avowed, particularly at the beginning of the game, where you don’t have hundreds of meals in your inventory. As such, one of the first Abilities you’ll want to unlock is Constant Recovery, which lets you regenerate health during a battle.

Of course, this isn’t something you’ll be able to rely on, but when you’re getting hit by an undead barbarian or shot at by a Dreamscourge, it always helps to have a bit more health.

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Toughness

• Increases your Maximum Health by 20%

Similar to Constant Recovery, Toughness is a must-have early on. It also scales with your level, so getting it early won’t diminish its power in the long run. As previously mentioned, health is tricky in Avowed, and you’ll quickly find it depleting. Having an extra 20% as you explore is always welcome.

This works regardless of your playstyle or chosen class focus, as you’ll always need more health in the Living Lands.

Survivalist

• Food restores 20% more Health and Essence and bonus effect durations are increased by 20%.

While food will be tricky at the beginning, once you head to the campfire and cook up some recipes, or loot enough bodies, you’ll quickly find the meals flowing. As such, it makes sense to reap 20% more power from them.

Leveling up means more health, and if you have Toughness that becomes even larger, so you’ll want to increase the effectiveness of your food to balance out the recovery. Once you do that, you’ll be stronger, more protected, and full.

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Evasive

• Reduce the Stamina cost of Dodge by 25%.

Regardless of whether you’re a Fighter, Ranger, Wizard, or a combination of the three, you’ll always need to dodge. It doesn’t matter if you have a shield or stay away, there’s always one enemy that creeps behind your companions or breaks through shields.

Reducing the Stamina cost of Dodge by 25% is huge in Avowed and will keep you hitting, spellcasting, or shooting without having to lose half of your Stamina to a well-timed dodge.

Best Fighter Abilities

Devastating Criticals

• Critical Hits with melee weapons deal 30% more damage.

If you’re playing as a Fighter in Avowed, chances are you’re using a melee weapon, if not… maybe play a Ranger. Regardless, there’s nothing wrong with increasing the damage of your Critical Hits, especially if you’re going toe to toe with some deadly bounties or the latest boss.

Grabbing passives like this one is perfect for any Fighter, given it scales as you level and change weapon, so it’s always helpful.

Armored Grace

• Decreases the Stamina penalty for Medium and Heavy armor by 15.

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Combining Armored Grace with Evasive is an ideal combination, and will keep you hitting, dodging, and blocking for so much longer. Especially if you’re a fighter who happens to wear Medium or Heavy armor and likes to stay in the fray.

Once you have this ability, your Stamina should become a worry of the past, as long as you have the right armor and battle tactics.

Charge

• Cost: 20 Essence
• Cooldown: 10 Seconds
• Dash forwards and smash into anything in your way, interrupting enemies and dealing Explosive Damage to break enemy Blocks, destroy walls, and shatter frozen enemies for bonus damage.

Sure, hitting and blocking are ideal, but Abilities that allow you to control the battlefield are vital in a game like Avowed. Combine this with the additional movement you get from Charge, the interruption, and Explosive Damage, and you have a powerhouse of an Ability, all available at level one.

It takes some practice, but once you’ve mastered how to use Charge, and combined it with an ice weapon, you’ll be using it constantly.

Best Ranger Abilities

Shadowing Beyond

• Cost: 40 Essence
• Cooldown: 15 Seconds
• Channel the Beyond, becoming Invisible and draining Essence until your next combat action.

Rangers are powerful and useful until they’re suddenly face to face with an enemy with no way to escape. You’ll likely have Evasive, but even that’s not always enough to save you from three Barbarians and a Monk when all you have is a bow and arrow.

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So, all you need to do is enable Shadowing Beyond and turn invisible. This will help you get out of that tight spot and even get behind the strongest enemy in a group for a powerful sneak attack, ending the invisibility but likely ending the foe, too.

Tanglefoot

• Cost: 20 Essence
• Duration: 8 Seconds
• Cooldown: 10 Seconds
• Summon lingering entangling vines that Root nearby enemies in place for 8 seconds.

Enemies can be tricky to fight, especially when they’re running around all over the place. That’s where Tanglefoot comes in, rooting (pun intended) them in place and allowing you and your companions to destroy them before the duration ends.

This ability is fantastic, and it’s well worth unlocking its poison damage when it gets to Rank 2 for a little extra damage and crowd control.

Steady Aim

• Holding your Power Attack with a bow or gun slows time by 25%.

While Tanglefoot will keep the enemy in place, sometimes all you need is a little bit of time to aim and get that perfect shot. This is where Steady Aim comes in, aiding you anytime you shoot with a Power Attack (which should be all the time) and keeping your fight a little more in control.

Given this is passive, it’s a must-buy if you’re a ranger. Once you do, you’ll wonder how you lived without it.

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Marksmanship

• Increases damage with bows and guns by 25%.

There’s no reason you shouldn’t choose Marksmanship unless you use melee as a Ranger. If you’re using a bow or gun, then you need to increase damage as much as you can, and a bonus of 25% certainly covers that.

As soon as you settle on this style of combat, buy the Marksmanship Ability and watch as you become deadlier than ever.

Best Wizard Abilities

Armored Essence

• Decreases the Essence penalty for Light and Medium armor by 15.

Working in the same way as Armored Grace, Armored Essence is a must-buy for any Wizard. After all, the less Essence you use, the more you have for your spells, meaning you’ll deal more damage and control the fight better.

There’s really no negative to getting this Ability, and it should be one of the first on your list.

Arcane Veil

• Cost: 10 Essence
• Duration: 20 Seconds
• Cooldown: 10 Seconds
• Invokes a powerful arcane shield for 20 seconds that makes your spell casting Uninterruptable and increases your Damage Reduction by 50%.

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Wizards are squishy. Sure, they’re powerful, but they’re not exactly made to last, especially with their light armor. So, having the ability to cast a shield around you to increase your Damage Reduction and make your spell-casting uninterruptible is quite literally lifesaving.

This will save many a Wizard on their journey and is one of the best spells to have in your arsenal, especially given its small Essence cost, long duration, and great cooldown.

Minor Missiles

• Cost: 25 Essence
• Cooldown: 10 Seconds
• Summons 3 magical projectiles that seek out enemies, dealing large amounts of damage to nearby enemies on impact.

As previously mentioned, Wizards are powerful, and Minor Missiles is the reason why. Dealing three different missiles to enemies in an AoE spell is game-changing, and will quickly become one of your most used spells, whether you’re five hours in or thirty.

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Leveling Minor Missiles further also increases the number of missiles it fires, which comes in extremely handy as you start fighting more enemies.

So, those are the best Abilities to unlock early on in Avowed. As you level up, you’ll discover your playstyle and work around the options to benefit you. However, these will set you off on the right path through the Living Lands.

For more on Avowed, be sure to check out the solution to the Practical Pockets treasure chest (an ideal reward for the Ranger or Wizard) or the best companions to take with you on your journey to defeat the Dreamscourge.