How to spend your ability points in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Ability Points are used to boost Geralt’s arsenal and skills in The Witcher 3. Knowing which perks to unlock in the early hours of the game can be the difference between feeling like a world-beater during the game’s quests and finding yourself constantly dying at the hands of low-level wolves and Drowners. Below is a list of quick tips on how to spend your hard earn points early on in the game.

Don’t bother with alchemy

Improving your alchemy doesn’t really serve much benefit early on in the game. Considering much of your early focus will be on combat and wanting to improve basic sword and sign skills, trying to upgrade toxicity and bomb-aiming perks doesn’t really help. Stick with improving other areas of Geralt’s skill set first, then worry about his brewing abilities later.

Try to colour code with Mutagens

Mutagens, when combined with abilities of the same colour, can provide an extra boost to your perks. The first boss in the game, the Griffin, gives you a green Mutagen, which grants +50 health. Alchemy is the matching perk which would be boosted by this Mutagen, but as stated above, alchemy isn’t a priority earlier on in the game, so spend your points elsewhere and just take the minor health bump.

Trying to match your perk layouts with matching Mutagens will help further your setup.

Improving the Axii Sign helps outside of combat, too

Upgrading the Delusion perk under the Axii branch will allow you to sway people’s minds during conversations. Some NPCs will require at least level one in this perk in order to have Axii cast on them, should you choose to go full Jedi mind trick on them, so this may make your travels easier, too.

Don’t spread yourself too thin

Each ability can have around five or so points sunk into it before it is fully mastered. Try not to spread yourself too thin by putting each new ability point earned into a different perk as you won’t really feel a big benefit until you add at least the third point into one skill.

Remember, you can only equip three abilities first

To back up the point above, it’s worth remembering that you can only equip three abilities at the start of the game. The next three ability slots are unlocked at levels six, eight and 10 respectively, so again: pick a few perks you want to focus on before branching out once you reach higher levels.

Abilities in the General tab are worth investing in early

Sun and Stars (recover health during the day, stamina at night), Survival Instinct (immediate +500 to health) are two great perks to try and get a hold of early, especially if you’re having trouble getting to grips with combat. However, if you prefer to have a quick meditation session after fights, then you can hold off on Sun and Stars until a little later on your journey.

The Cat, Bear and Griffin School Techniques perks aren’t beneficial while you’re constantly changing your armour set. Each perk boosts your light, medium and heavy armour respectively, but because you’ll be wearing a combination of all three, these perks don’t justify taking up a slot.

You can respec your abilities, eventually

There is a potion sold by few merchants and NPCs in the game that allows you to reset your allocated Skill Points. The Potion of Clearance is a green bottle in a merchant’s list of items. It’s worth buying this every time you see it available and keeping hold of it until you have a bunch of ability points and are settled on a play style before re-allocating them. The potion is sold by Keira Metz, and is also available from a merchant in Novigrad. There may be more available in the game, too, but we haven’t stumbled across these yet.