Where to Find Skill Manuals

This is the part of progression most likely to catch out a player treating the skill screen like a conventional RPG's. A greyed-out node is not always waiting for points. Often it is waiting for a book you have not found, in a place you have not been — and no amount of levelling opens it.

The three supply lines

Reading a manual is not learning the skill

1. Find or buy the manual. It is a physical book that goes into your inventory.
2. Read it, from the recipes tab. The perk then appears in the character tab.
3. Earn the points. One shared experience bar and one type of skill point feed all three trees.
4. Walk to a shrine. Nothing is purchasable in the field; an available perk waits behind a marker.
5. Pay. Skill points, plus up to two time chunks from the thirty days.

Five steps, and only the last two are transactions. The first three are why a build is a route: the manual you need decides where you go, and where you go decides what the clock costs you.

The one chain that is known end to end

Everything above describes supply lines. A first-hand launch guide gave the first complete example, with both ends named: completing the prologue quest Like Father, Like Son awards the Charge Manual, and the Charge Manual is what the Swordmastery ability Charge has been waiting on.

It is worth being precise about why one example earns a section. Not because Charge is unusually strong. Because until now this site could say a node needed a book and could not say which book, or where — so the gate was real and unplannable. This is the first node where a player can be told the answer, and it happens to be the friendliest possible answer: the prologue is fixed setup, so every run gets this manual whatever else it does.

What the source does not say is whether the Charge Manual can be obtained any other way. Bulletin #11's soldier, bandit and fencer routes are described for Swordmastery as a whole, and nothing states this particular book is exempt from them — so treat the quest as a guaranteed source, not as the only one.

What this means for a route

• Loot bodies, not just chests. Swordmastery manuals are specifically described as left behind by soldiers and bandits — the enemies you were already fighting.
• Visit a fencer before committing to a sword build. It is the only place in the game where a skill gate is solved with money.
• Route hex unlocks through ruins. A Witchcraft build has an exploration bill attached that a Swordmastery build does not.
• Decide your feeding policy early. Corruption is the vampire tree's only key, and it is not reported to fall. Feeding sparingly is a build decision as much as a moral one.
• Do not bank on a node you have not unlocked. Points are fungible; manuals are not.
• Charge is the one you can count on. Its manual comes out of the prologue, so it is in hand before the thirty days start mattering — the only Swordmastery unlock a plan can assume rather than route for.