Skills - Dying Light 2 Guide - IGN (2024)

Throughout Dying Light 2: Stay Human’s campaign, you’ll collect two kinds of experience points. The first centre around combat and, as you expect, are amassed through battling zombies, taking down bandits and holding your own against the various special infected types wandering the streets.

The second are Parkour-focused and can be gathered by leaping between rooftops, narrowly escaping tense chases and performing daring free-running manoeuvres. You get bonus EXP for fighting or free-running at night, although you'll lose the additional points if you're killed before reaching a safe zone.

Once you’ve pooled enough combat or free-running experience, you’ll gain either a Combat Point or a Parkour Point, with the game allowing you to unlock a skill from either the Combat or Parkour Skill Tree (both pictured below) depending on which point you have stored.

You won’t have access to the entire upgrade tree immediately: some skills will require you to unlock other skills on the tree before they’re accessible, while certain abilities will only be available after you’ve upgraded your maximum health or stamina using the GRE scattered throughout Villedor.

Looking for a full breakdown of every skill available in the game? Below you’ll find a list of every ability available on the combat and parkour branches of the skill tree.

As you gain stamina and health from Inhibitors, you'll have many different skills to choose from, and some are more important than others for surviving Villedor both in terms of combat and parkour. See below for our top picks:

Video - The Best Dying Light 2 Skills to Get Early

Essential Combat Skills

Although the Combat Skill Tree has a wide range of useful moves, there are a few abilities that are worth seeking out early to flesh out your arsenal. Below you'll find five of the best skills to get ASAP.

Grapple

As you begin to move through Dying Light 2’s campaign, the smaller packs of enemies you’re used to contending with will become significantly larger. To counter these rising numbers, it's important to have tools in your arsenal to quickly deal with multiple foes at once. Grapple is one such tool.

Not only does it allow you to avoid damage and stun enemies, letting you hit them with multiple follow up shots, but it also gives you the opportunity to launch enemies off rooftops to get easy kills. Grapple quickly becomes a critical way to manage enemies and is essential to helping you dictate the pace of fights.

Power Attack

Early into Dying Light 2, it can feel as though your shots don’t have much weight behind them. Enemies take multiple hits to go down and continue coming at you no matter how furiously you’re swinging.

Power Attack solves this problem. You can use it to deliver significant blows to opponents and knock them back, giving you breathing room when a viral is getting a little too close for comfort.

Drop Kick

Another way to deal lots of damage and use environmental hazards to your advantage, Drop Kick is a skill you’ll come to heavily rely on throughout your hours in Dying Light 2.

Once you unlock it, you’ll be able to launch enemies off tall buildings, knock them into spike traps and generally send them flying when they’re posing a challenge. It also hits like a freight train, meaning you can dispatch some of the game’s nastier enemies with little fanfare.

Stab

It doesn’t take many tense Dark Zone excursions to realise that Dying Light 2’s base stealth attack is a risky manoeuvre. It’s long, loud and awkward, which isn’t exactly ideal when you’re navigating a lab filled with sleeping Biters. However, getting the Stab skill allows you to play less cautiously.

Enemies can be finished off with just a few button presses, allowing you to dispatch roaming infected without their snoozing pals being any the wiser. If you want the element of surprise on your side, Stab is a must.

Power Shot

During your emergence in the Central Loop, you’ll quickly get your hands on Ranged Weapons. What you don’t realise is you can now access some of the best weapons in the game, especially after you’ve amassed enough combat points to nab Power Shot.

The skill makes all ranged projectiles significantly more powerful, which can really give you the edge when fighting hulking enemies like Demolishers and Goons. Invest in it early and you’ll be able to navigate Villedor with less resistance.

Essential Parkour Skills

When investing in the Parkour Skill Tree, you'll find a range of crucial skills to help maintain your momentum and boost your speed while escaping the hordes of infected roaming the streets. Here are some to look into early if you want to become a free-running master.

Sleek Runner

When you’re coming to purchase new Parkour Skills, Sleek Runner is a no-brainer. It makes all your free-running moves faster and slicker, maintaining your forward momentum while running from zombies or reaching objectives.

It essentially awakens Aiden’s true parkour potential, with the suite of new animations transforming how you navigate the rooftops.

Fast Climb

Another way to keep momentum during chases, Fast Climb gives Aiden the ability to scale walls with ease, meaning you can get yourself out of perilous situations in seconds.

Seeing as you’ll become embroiled in chases frequently at night, it’s worth getting Fast Climb to ensure you don’t lose the stat bonuses you bank during your after-dark escapades.

Slide

Early into Dying Light 2, it can be frustrating having to crouch every time you need to move beneath low-hanging obstacles. It’s why Slide is such an important ability to get during the first few hours of the campaign.

Much like the previous two skills, it maintains your momentum while being pursued by the undead, but it’s also just a satisfying ability to play around with while moving from A to B.

Wall Run

Throughout Dying Light 2, you’ll come across several ledges that Aiden’s standard jump simply isn’t high enough to reach. Once you get the Wall Run ability, this annoying issue becomes a thing of the past.

Wall Run allows you to run up vertical walls, facilitating new shortcuts and giving you the ability to reach higher vantage points. It’s an invaluable skill and one you should focus on acquiring early.

Active Landing

With Dying Light 2 focusing so heavily on high-speed chases, you’re bound to find yourself falling off rooftops frequently. To prevent runs ending with Aiden being scraped off the pavement, Active Landing becomes an essential skill that can save you a sizeable chunk of health when falling.

It’s also a great way to maintain momentum, allowing you to roll and continue running even after landing from a seemingly-fatal height.

Far Jump

A core skill that can shave chunks of time off your travels, Far Jump allows Aiden to launch himself off objects at high speeds.

Whether you’re using this to escape a particularly ravenous group of Virals or just because it’s damn fun to pull off, Far Jump quickly becomes an essential way to add some much-needed speed to your free-running arsenal.

Want to max your skills fast? Check out our Inhibitor Collectibles Guide for help upgrading your Health and Stamina or head to our Weapons Guide to see which armaments you can use to wrack up Combat Points.