Attribute point spending

Introduction
Increasing Attributes &mdash; In addition to learning more skills to expand your strategic options, you can also spend attribute points to gain ranks in the attributes linked to those skills so they are more powerful.

To spend your attribute points, go to the Skills and Attributes panel. This panel can be reached using the keyboard shortcut (default: [K]), selecting Skills from the menu-tab, or (in towns and outposts) by double-clicking the Skill Bar.

Your character's unspent attribute points are listed at the top of the panel. Below that is a list of all the attributes for which your character can spend remaining points. To increase an attribute, press the up-arrow; to decrease, press the downward one. Your character's rank in the attribute is increased by one and the corresponding attribute points are deducted from your unspent allocation. Repeat until you have spent all your remaining points.

Attribute point costs
Attribute spending starts at one point per rank, doubling incremental costs after rank 7 and spiking for the final two ranks. For example, it costs 7 points to move from rank 6 to 7, 9 points from 7 to 8, and 20 points from 11 to 12. The cumulative costs are listed at the bottom: it takes 28 total points to reach rank 7 and 97 points to reach rank 12.

Many players feel that it is more effective to specialize in 3-4 attributes. Spreading points across 5+ attributes means that none of your character's skills will benefit significantly from the increase in ranks; narrowing focus to just 2 attributes can be inefficient because it costs only one point less to raise one attribute from rank 10 to 12 as it does to raise another from 0 to 8. The most common attribute point allocations by veterans are: 12/12, 12/12/3, 12/11/6, 12/10/8, 12/9/9, 11/11/8, and 11/10/10.