How to Upgrade Magic Abilities in Forspoken

Forspoken offers an interesting twist on character progression with the Spellcraft system. Enchantments are important to making Frey more powerful during parkour and combat, and you may be wondering how to upgrade magic abilities to make quick work of the foes that stand in your way across Athia. 

While Forspoken offers you the typical upgrade paths you would expect in an open-world game, such as upgrading items, crafting gear, and completing content to improve basic stats, Spellcrafting allows for more nuanced upgrade paths for magic and spell sets, whether they be of the purple, red, green, or blue varieties.

There are also two different ways to upgrade Frey’s more supernatural, arcane abilities. Here’s what you need to know. 

Upgrading Spellcraft in Forspoken

Screenshot by GameSkinny

Forspoken offers two upgrade paths for its magic abilities: Traditional skill tree nodes and tracked challenges. Let’s delve further into how each upgrade method works. 

Upgrade via Skill Tree Nodes

Skeel tree nodes are the traditional upgrade path in Forspoken, and it is the much more restrictive of the two options available. Only offensive spells have higher-level variants within the skill tree, leaving all defensive abilities out of the equation for this specific mechanic. 

Every upgrade to an offensive spell requires a specific amount of mana. Each successive level of an existing ability requires more mana than the last. Mana can be acquired through leveling up, exploring the open world, and completing flashback events. 

While exploring the open world, mana manifests as miniature pockets of lights all over the ground and various rock formations. 

Upgrade via Challenges

Screenshot by GameSkinny

Unlike the first option for upgrading Spellcraft, tracked challenges allow any arcane ability to be upgraded. These challenges can only be set at bookshelfs found at either Refuges or Guild Towers. After interacting with a bookshelf, you can select up to three spells to track at one time. 

Tracking Spellcraft abilities begins a challenge with an appropriate reward tied to that skill. For example, the Naedre spell challenge asks you to poison a certain number of enemies to upgrade it. After completing this challenge, the spell’s effect duration is extended. Beyond this, because it falls under blue magic, Frey gets a permanent boost to her blue magic by one stat point. 

After meeting a challenge requirement, you must open up the magic menu and head over to the appropriate ability node. Hold the interact button (X on PlayStation) while hovering over the completed ability. These tracked challenges are the quickest way of building an overpowered character, provided you don’t completely ignore them. 

Though there’s a bit more granularity to the system based on your preferred build, that’s how you upgrade magic in Forspoken. Taking advantage of the spellcraft system is essential to surviving, and a lot of fun. For more, including how to fast travel and how to counterattack, as well as nifty explainers on how to negate fall damage and craft items like pouches, click on the links or head over to our Forspoken guides page here.

Featured image via Square Enix.