Prioritize When Upgrading Skills And Abilities

I’m just going to reveal it now; The Last Of Us Part 2 features two playable characters. The first is, of course, Ellie, while the second is a girl named Abby. You’ll play through the first half of the game as Ellie, before playing most of the second half as Abby and only resuming the game as Ellie near the end of the game.

I won’t reveal who Abby is, or what significance she has to the story (though you’ll learn some of that in the first two hours of the game). However, it’s important to note that Abby not only plays differently from Ellie, she also has access to different weapons and skill trees.

Ellie uses a knife when she melees, but Abby punches with her bare hands, which might sound like it’s a handicap, but Abby is a lot stronger physically than Ellie. Abby even stealth kills by snapping the necks of enemies, and she’s ever better to go melee with than Ellie is.

Both Ellie and Abby have access to five skill trees each, though you’ll have to find the optional Training Manuals in the game by exploring to unlock the rest. You can probably go through the whole game without upgrading Ellie or Abby (especially on lower difficulties), but they can be crucial to improving and changing your experience.

First up is Ellie, and her five skill/upgrade trees are:

• Survival: This is important to increase Ellie’s effective in melee combat. The best upgrades in this tree include Increased Health and Endure, which allows Ellie to survive lethal attacks that would’ve otherwise killed her.
• Crafting: This is less important as it is more technical in nature. The upgrades include increasing crafting speed, and mostly the ability to craft certain items with less required materials (in other words, more efficient crafting).
• Stealth: This is likely the most important skill tree for Ellie, as she is more suited to a stealth playstyle. Upgrades include crucial ones like the ability to craft Silencers for your handgun, improved Listen Mode ability, faster movement when going prone, and 100 percent faster stealth kills, which turns Ellie into more of a silent assassin.
• Precision: The upgrades for this one include increasing aim stability (which can already be done at Workbenches) and faster aim, but it also includes one of the best abilities in the game; the ability to hold Ellie’s breath by holding L3 and steady her aim (which is a powerful ability when paired with rifles upgraded with a scope).
• Explosives: As the name suggests, the upgrades for this one only improves the explosive craftable items, but the first one does give Ellie the ability to craft explosive arrows, which are incredibly powerful crowd control weapons.

Meanwhile, Abby has her own five skill/upgrade trees, most of which are similar with Ellie’s; only with different names, but she does have certain unique abilities that complement her more physical prowess:

• Field Tactics: This upgrade tree is practically similar to Ellie’s Survival tree, but now the important Hold Breath skill is located here for Abby, along with Increased Health and several others.
• Covert Ops: This is an especially important tree for Abby, considering that the first skill she learns is to Craft Shivs. Yes, since Abby doesn’t have access to a knife, she needs Shivs to kill Clickers, just like the young Ellie did in 2013’s The Last Of Us. However, there are no longer optional doors in The Last Of Us Part 2 that requires Shivs, so you’ll only need them for Clickers and to stealth kill other enemies faster. Another crucial upgrade in this is the 100 percent faster stealth kills ability.
• Close Quarters: This is like Abby’s most important skill tree, as physical melee is her forte. Her unique upgrade is called Momentum, where she can basically build momentum by physically attacking enemies. When the Momentum bar completely fills up, she can melee kill enemies in one hit, becoming Super Abby for a moment.
• Firearms: The first ability that she can learn in this one is to Craft Incendiary Shells, which fulfill the same role as Explosive Arrows for Ellie. It’s a bullet that goes boom when you shoot it. Anyways, other upgrades in this one include the ability to craft Hunting Pistol ammo (a weapon that’s unique to Abby) and faster aim.
• Ordnance: Similar to Ellie’s Explosive skill tree, you probably won’t have much use for the upgrades in this one, unless your playstyle involves a lot of explosives. Upgrades include faster crafting speed and improved craftable items.

I hope this guide will be of some help to anyone who’s playing The Last Of Us Part 2. In the meantime, you can head on over here to check out my full review of the game.