Survival

Survival represents a character's ability to survive difficult situations. Success in performing actions such as foraging for edible or medicinal herbs, finding certain hidden passageways, building a fire, or skinning an animal is affected by this skill. When skinning an animal, one rank of the Survival skill is equal to one rank of the First Aid skill when factoring success. Training in the Survival skill also assists in moving through rough, treacherous, or otherwise cumbersome terrain, as well as avoiding some natural hazards.

Training in Survival reduces the duration of disabling spell effects. The first 100 ranks provide a 1% reduction per 5 ranks trained (for a total of 20%). Additional ranks provide a 1% reduction per 20 ranks trained (for an additional total of 10%, for a final reduction of 30%).

Training in Survival also reduces stun duration. Survival training reduces the duration by -1% per 5 ranks up to 100 ranks, then -1% per 20 ranks after that. Additionally, similar to critical weighting, training in survival that results in less than a full round reduction is still valuable in that it increases a chance to round up or down stun duration.

Survival also helps in situations like:

• Resisting damage from extreme weather, such as near Icemule Trace and Pinefar
• Defending against bandit traps
• Preventing being poisoned while skinning venomous creatures like snakes
• Remaining on the ledge in Thanatoph
• Accessing the Red Forest
• Reducing roundtime from moving through difficult terrain in areas like Marsh Keep and Elemental Confluence
• Avoiding wounds when searching certain creatures like Fire elementals and the plant creatures of the Frozen Bramble

Survival reduces the likelihood of slipping when moving quickly through icy areas such as Olbin Pass and the Landing-Icemule trail. Without ranks in survival, a character would have to wait approximately 5 seconds before moving in order to avoid a chance to slip. In addition, survival ranks will allow characters to sneak over ice. Without ranks in survival, a character is guaranteed to fall prone, be revealed from hiding, and incur 10 seconds of roundtime when attempting to sneak out of an icy room.

At 25 ranks of Survival the ability to FORAGE SENSE is unlocked, allowing the character to determine every herb that can be foraged in that room.

Maximum Ranks and Training Costs

Survival is generally a low-cost skill. Every profession can train in it up to twice per level, except for rangers, who can train thrice per level.

Type	Square			Semi			Pure
Profession	Rogue	Warrior	Monk	Bard	Paladin	Ranger	Cleric	Empath	Savant	Sorcerer	Wizard
Max Ranks Per Level	2	2	2	2	2	3	2	2	-	2	2
Training Point Cost	2/2	1/3	2/2	2/2	2/2	1/1	3/2	3/2	-	3/2	3/2

References

• http://www.play.net/gs4/info/skills.asp#survival
• Poison and skinning (saved post)
• River's Rest hunting expansion (saved post)