The rulebook refers to improving a skill, effectively levelling up like in an RPG, but then certain allies have the effect of "gain" +1 to certain skills via allies. You can only "improve" a skill up to +2, but I'm wondering if "gain" is on top of that? A couple of things make it feel like they might be separate things (and therefore stackable); allies aren't directly improving your skills per se, they're adding their own to your efforts (if I help you lift a table, I'm not making you stronger, I'm just adding my strength to the task), and secondly these sorts of games can be quite particular about verbage and semantics and these are two different words being used here. However, for the simple reason that I can imagine the game creators not wanting characters to get too powerful, they may be considered the same and may not stack.

You can improve your own skills up to +2. This represents how good you can naturally become on your own; but you can also receive help from the outside (items, allies and so on), that gives you an additional bonus. The bonus given by an ally, or another small card, is cumulative with any bonus you may derive from having improved your own stats.

Just remember that in case more than one card boosts a particular skill, then you gain only the highest between the bonuses granted from "small cards". Hence, an item giving you +2 Strenght and an Ally giving you +1 Strength result in you having only a +2, not a +3, to your total Strength (where total = starting value + improvements)

Hope this helps

Yep, that's very helpful. Thank you. I'm just soloing through it for the first time at the moment. I don't have much experience with board games (outside of the mainstream ones like Monopoly and so on) so I'm just trying to get it all to stick in my memory at the moment. I do have a lot of experience with computer games, though, and that's helping quite a bit in terms of understanding various mechanics and concepts. Really impressed with it so far, it's very rich and immersive in terms of the stories and moments it tends to generate.

Board game is really sharp your brain. In video game computer do everything for you. But here you must to run game yourself and track a lot of things. Very good brain exercise

Tropxe, enjoy the game then! If you have any other questions, keep 'em arriving, there's always someone here watching over the fora and ready to help.

Board game is really sharp your brain. In video game computer do everything for you. But here you must to run game yourself and track a lot of things. Very good brain exercise

That's very true. You're forced to think. And remember. And do math. And calculate risks. Also because you can't return to a previous save-point in a boardgame, so... it's really tense!