Immortals Fenyx Rising hides many of its movement mechanics and attack combos behind skills. That pushes players to unlock more skills, sure, but also makes getting around the early game feel more difficult than it should. To make starting the game a little easier, here are the best skills to unlock first in Immortals Fenyx Rising.
Further reading
- Immortals Fenyx Rising beginner’s guide
- The best Ubisoft games
- Why Gods and Monsters became Immortals Fenyx Rising
How to unlock skills in Immortals Fenyx Rising
Immortals Fenyx Rising takes a different approach to skills. Instead of skills giving you some extra attack power or a new ability, most of them open up different combos and ways to move around the world (think Devil May Cry 5). On top of normal skills, there are also Godly Powers. These powers all give you different special attacks, and each one has its own skill tree (three or four skills, depending on the ability).
Here’s where things get weird: Instead of earning experience points and leveling up to unlock skills, you have to use Coins of Charon (one of the many resources in Immortals Fenyx Rising). You can pick these up by completing Myth Challenges (the short dungeon sections with puzzles or combat). You can knock out a good chunk of the Myth Challenges without any upgrades, so make sure to take care of as many as you can.
The best exploration skills to unlock first
There are only four skills solely focused on exploration in Immortals Fenyx Rising, and we recommend unlocking three of them as soon as possible. We’re putting this section first, in fact, because the exploration skills are the most important in the game. Unlocking these will make unlocking later skills much easier.
- Climb Leap
- Swim Dash
- Telekinesis Gathering
Climb Leap and Swim Dash are skills that should be unlocked from the beginning, but they aren’t. Unlocking these two makes getting around the world of Immortals Fenyx Rising much more similar to Breath of the Wild. Climb Leap allows you to jump a short way while climbing and Swim Dash allows you to dash forward while swimming, both at the cost of some stamina.
Telekinesis Gathering just makes gathering the many materials in Immortals Fenyx Rising easier. With it, you’ll automatically pick up all items in a limited range when your pick up one. Even better, this skill lets you pick up items while riding on your horse, so you can get across the map quickly without missing out on any resources.
If you have some extra Coins of Charon kicking around, pick up Double Jump in the Jump skill tree, too.
The best combat skills to unlock first
Most of the skills in Immortals Fenyx Rising are focused on combat, and it’s kind of hard to go wrong. All of the skills are useful in some capacity, so it’s less about which skills to unlock and more about the order in which you unlock them. We have four recommendations to make you more powerful and agile in combat:
- Enhanced Dodge
- Air Dodge
- Sword Launcher
- Power Strike Finisher
The first two, Enhanced Dodge and Air Dodge, are essential. After playing with these skills for a little while, you’ll wonder what you did without them. Air Dodge explains itself, allowing you to use your dodge ability in mid-air. Enhanced Dodge has a little more going on. It allows you to dodge five times in a row while you’re on the ground.
Many of the large enemies in Immortals Fenyx Rising have area-of-effect and large sweeping attacks. With Enhanced Dodge, you can get up close to attack when needed while still having a way to get out of the way of those attacks.
Sword Launcher and Power Strike Finisher both pull double duty. Sword Launcher allows you to launch small enemies into the air by holding down the attack button, dealing 96 damage while refilling 40% of a stamina chunk. Because you’ll often be mobbed with enemies, Sword Launcher is a great way to isolate opponents in the air. It’s also a good way to transition into attacking an aerial opponent.
Power Strike Finisher extends the standard three-hit sword combo into a five-hit sword combo. It increases the damage from 53 per hit to 63 per hit, and also refills 40% of a stamina chunk per hit. Power Strike Finisher will quickly become your bread and butter of combat in Immortals Fenyx Rising. The skill can even topple large enemies if you unleash the full combo on them.
The Sword Counter Attack and Axe Counter Attack skills are good, too, though we’d recommend waiting to pick them up until you’ve unlocked the four skills above. Both let you respond to a parry with a massive attack, and although very useful, simply parrying is enough to get you through most battles.
The best Godly Powers to unlock first
Godly Power upgrades are expensive, and you won’t have access to most of the skill trees right away. To make matters worse, most of the best Godly Power skills are on the second tier, meaning you need to unlock an unexciting prerequisite skill first. Still, there are a few skills you can pick up without too much work, and they’re fairly powerful.
- Phosphor’s Cloak
- Phosphor’s Shockwave
- Quick Throw
Phosphor’s Cloak and Phosphor’s Shockwave are both for your bird, Phosphor. You’ll unlock Phosphor automatically, so you can start investing in this ability pretty quickly. Cloak makes you invisible until you stand, attack, jump, or dash, making stealth takedowns much, much easier. Shockwave increases the damage of Phosphor’s attack while adding a shockwave to it, inflicting damage and stun in a large area around the hit.
Quick Throw isn’t exciting, but it makes some of the enemies in Immortals easier to deal with, particularly large enemies. Instead of pulling an object near you and aiming it, Quick Throw allows you to immediately throw the object at the enemy you’re targeting. Plus, Quick Throw is a prerequisite for the Heavy Lifting skill, which makes solving puzzles a lot easier.
