It’s no secret that many of us in the Massively OP office have a little bit of a game crush on Project Gorgon. Personally, I fell in love with the game when I discovered that it was all about collecting and leveling up a wild array skills — lots and lots of skills. As of right now there are around 100 skills in the game with more coming in all of the time.
And while some of these skills are fairly tame and ordinary (archery, mining), there are some really far-out professions that you don’t typically see in an MMO. I thought that for kicks I would round up 10 of the craziest skills that you can actually learn and use in this game.
1. Dying
To nearly everyone who tries this game’s eternal amusement, dying is a skill that you can indeed learn. And depending on how klutzy you are, it might be a skill that you learn very early in Project Gorgon.
I actually am fond of this skill and not just because I am death-prone. For starters, as you level it up, you get some nice bonuses that help you become more resilient to death in the future (which, I suppose, hurts your progress in dying). But if you go to the skill page and click on this one, you’ll also be treated to a full list of the ways and number of times that you’ve died in-game. That’s not something you see every day!
2. Psychology
Believe it or not, psychology is a combat skill. It functions a little like a close-range buff/debuff magic class, except here you get to psychoanalyze targets and then question them about their mothers. If you kill a mob with psychology, the cause of death for that creature is listed as “died of shame.”
3. Beast Speech
No huge spoilers here, but it’s very possible to be transformed into one of several types of animals in the game, including pig, spider, cow, and werewolf. While each of these come with its own skillset (I’m currently leveling up my cow attacks), you also get a new skill called “beast speech” upon your first transformation.
To level it up, you have to talk in chat. And because you’re an animal, some of the words you say will be replaced by grunts and moos. Presumably, the higher your beast speech, the more others can understand you.
4. Iocane Resistance
“What you do not smell is iocane powder. It is odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid and is among the most deadly poisons known to man.” –The Princess Bride
Here you have to continually poison yourself with iocane, which hurts you in the short term but possibly helps you out in the long. Nothing like making players willingly poison themselves for a developer to feel good about him or herself!
5. Poetry Appreciation
Seriously, doesn’t the fact that there’s an MMO that has this in it make you feel just a smidge better about the state of the industry? Yeah, so, not everyone likes poetry, but you have to respect a game that is going to make your character suffer and/or enjoy it for the sake of some psychic mitigation.
6. Art History
Continuing with the humanities bent, art history gradually trains your character to identify truly valuable paintings and whatnot while dungeon diving. A character with a high skill level in this can command better prices at the vendor, making this a fiscally sensible talent to train.
7. Calligraphy
Reading through the last few entries, you might be forgiven for thinking that Project Gorgon is some sort of pacifistic hippie commune. While such a commune might exist somewhere in the game — I haven’t explored everywhere just yet — calligraphy is as much about fighting as it is about writing (after all, the pen is mightier than the… you know.).
Calligraphy allows players to write books to leave for other players to read, but a nice side benefit is that it makes sword users more dexterous and adds more damage and other effects when handling a blade.
8. Compassion
Insert your joke about MMO gamer sensibilities here. Maybe that is the joke.
Compassion allows players to bury corpses and mourn them as well as cry over players’ tombstones. The burying part helps respawns to happen faster (neat!), and higher levels in the skill will give additional skill levels to other skills — such as dying and meditation. What goes around, comes around.
9. Pathology
In Project Gorgon you can do so very many things with a corpse after you kill a creature (no, not that, you sick weirdo). You can butcher it and bury it, but before you do that, you should consider breaking out an autopsy kit and leveling up your pathology a bit.
Yes, it’s strange that you have to dissect a corpse right there on a spot to tell you what you know already (you just shot it up with 16 arrows, after all), but I guess that’s good practice. Plus, why poo-poo additional stats from leveling it up?
10. Vocabulary
If you take the time to click around the menu, you’ll stumble upon an odd little word hunt game. Sure enough, if you win you’ll start leveling up a vocabulary skill. Legend has it that this will be a prerequisite for oratory and bard skills in the future, but for now it’s just there for fun and to awkwardly explain to loved ones why you’re playing a word game in an online RPG.
Everyone likes a good list, and we are no different! Perfect Ten takes an MMO topic and divvies it up into 10 delicious, entertaining, and often informative segments for your snacking pleasure. Got a good idea for a list? Email us at justin@massivelyop.com or eliot@massivelyop.com with the subject line “Perfect Ten.”
