Skill Priority Guide

This guide is to hopefully direct you on what skills to upgrade with your current Nikkes!
The rating system weighs mostly upon if said unit is good and if the skills scale well at early-late investments and worth investing to. It also slightly takes into account if the unit could be part of your main team despite maybe being an off-meta unit.

Skill book consumption is listed as well as cumulative books consumed at said level, denotated by numbers put in brackets; Ex. (xx) for your convenience.

Use CRTL+F and type in the name of the Nikke you wish to search up for easier usage of this guide

Other SR units not mentioned are only used for early chapters and you do not need to invest in their skills to get through the chapters, nor will it help. DO NOT upgrade other SR units skills, save the resource for good SSR units instead. If you really have/want to upgrade them, it should be only be until level 4. As of 10th March 2023, there is no SR units worth heavy investment.

Skill Manuals

Level	Skill Manual I	Skill Manual II	Skill Manual III	Code Manual
1	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)
2	8 (8)	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)
3	10 (18)	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)
4	26 (44)	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)
5	42 (86)	60 (60)	0 (0)	10 (10)
6	126 (212)	90 (150)	0 (0)	15 (25)
7	168 (380)	120 (270)	0 (0)	30 (55)
8	210 (590)	150 (420)	90 (90)	70 (125)
9	231 (821)	165 (585)	105 (195)	100 (225)
10	273 (1094)	190 (775)	120 (315)	135 (360)

Burst Manuals

Level	Burst Manual I	Burst Manual II	Burst Manual III	Code Manual
1	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)
2	8 (8)	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)
3	10 (18)	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)
4	26 (44)	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)
5	42 (86)	60 (60)	0 (0)	20 (20)
6	126 (212)	90 (150)	0 (0)	30 (50)
7	168 (380)	120 (270)	0 (0)	60 (110)
8	210 (590)	150 (420)	90 (90)	140 (250)
9	231 (821)	165 (585)	105 (195)	200 (450)
10	273 (1094)	190 (775)	120 (315)	270 (720)

Skill Income

Here are the expected skill books you can get daily after completing certain simulation rooms. the max total is

• I= 42 skill manuals, 21 skill manuals
• II= 30 skill manuals, 15 skill manuals
• III= 12 skill manuals, 6 burst manuals, 6 code manuals

Events shops are also expected to give:

• I= 160 skill manuals, 80 burst manuals
• II= 120 skill manuals, 60 burst manuals

Books are rather very limited so please invest in your skills wisely. Please do plan ahead as they are very important sources of your DPS output.

Intro

Before heading to the list. As you can see, leveling up to skill level 4 does not take much books at all. It is recommended for newbies to at least skill level 4 your core team units for the combat score rating boost even if the skills may not be too great.

Ratings explained

<4= skills you don’t need to consider upgrading as it bring minimal team utility/ personal dps gains.

4-7= Skills you can consider upgrading beyond level 4 but any higher than 7 won’t be recommended.

8+= skills that you can consider putting all your books in up to level 10 if you have the resources to.

IMPORTANT: Assume <4 for all SR units skills as of 10th March 2023.

Nikke	Skill1	Skill2	Burst	Notes
Admi	1.5	4	7.5	Skill 1 requires getting hit 20 times to proc passive which is horrible. Burst not too highly rated as reload speed slightly falls off late game if over-invested; also needs to be with Scarlet or Modernia to benefit greatly
Alice	7.5	4	9.5	Very investment hungry unit, but pays off in late game really well. Burst is main priority followed by skill 1. Skill 2 can be raised just for HP leech comfort. Does not perform too well at lower investment levels, only invest when you plan to commit. Huge single target damage
Anne: Miracle Fairy	5	3	8.5	Skill 1 doesn’t heal a great amount, but does help a tad bit for survivability. Burst is Amazing in SW / Maxwell teams. Still good outside SW comp but 60s CD is simply too long sometimes. Great burst in Arena.
Aria	2	2	2.5	Aria is mostly used for shield one shot protection. Her skills don’t provide much increased DPS to be worth investing into. Leveling burst won’t toughen her shield durability enough to make a difference; it is already great for its purpose as is at burst level 1
Brid	4.5	4	5	Skill 1 simply increases attack by a modest amount. Skill 2 and burst deal pretty solid damage however the inability to control which raptures the skill targets hurts, as well as the MAX HP condition.
Centi	5	1.5	5	Skill 1 decreases cooldown of shield, very useful on bosses that hit hard but don’t shoot too many projectiles and kamikaze’s; ineffective against enemies that shoot many projectiles. Skill 2 serves no purpose as her shield barely has HP, increasing it by a tiny amount will not protect you from more than one shot anyways. Burst provides a pretty useful defense shred.
Cocoa	6.5	2.5	2.5	Skill 1 has very decent cover repair. Skill 2 is slightly useless as Cocoa does not taunt. Burst grants a rather modest attack down debuff assuming full stacks of Skill 2.
Crow	3	2	3	Skill 1 has a modest attack debuff on enemy raptures during full burst. Burst skill has uncontrollable targeting and also deals mediocre damage.
Diesel	7	2.5	5	Skill 1 needs high investments to work; does good in Arena and tanking when skill is invested enough; assuming Diesel is getting hit by many small damaging bullets rather than single target nukes. Skill 2 takes too long and too many stacks to be helpful. Taunt duration is tied to her burst level.
Dolla	6	3	4	Skill 1 Modest attack buff basically half the entire fight. Skill 2’s strength is from cooldown reduction, which is fixed at level 1 to 10, other buffs Skill 2 give is negligible. Burst is a decent uncontrollable ST nuke.
Drake	7	4	7.5	Skill 1 has decent hit rate and ATK buffs on full burst. Skill 2 has good mob clearing / extra damage. Burst deals huge selected AoE damage, with a self ammo buff.
Emma	7	2.5	5.5	Skill 1 is great for Arena in specific teams. Skill 2 has a very troublesome condition to proc passive with not much benefits. Burst heals for quite a lot already for lower levels.
Epinel	6	3	6	Skill 1 upgrade is essential for her damage but falls off extremely against bosses. Skill 2 buffs are quite minimal for dps gains. Burst hits pretty hard at full stack burst 1 which should take out all weaker raptures.
Eunhwa	3.5	4.5	2	Skill 1 bumps her personal DPS a bit. Skill 2 has a solid; basically permanent defense shred on target if manual play is considered. Burst does virtually nothing.
Exia	3.5	5	3	Skill 1 has decent attack down and def debuff however needs full Skill 2 stacks. Skill 2 bumps her personal DPS a little bit . Burst does too little damage to consider upgrading
Folkwang	4	5	3	Skill 1 has shield and healing buff which is nice. Skill 2 has taunt and a rather large Max HP increase. Burst heals an insane amount for your attackers and is already very solid at lower levels such as 4 or 5, therefore no further upgrades needed beyond that.
Frima	3.5	5	5	Skill 1 has decent defense shred. Skill 2 and Burst have decent healing scaling.
Guillotine	2.5	5	5	Skill 1 crit buff is simply too low. Skill 2 is her main dps gain but the DPS gain is just modest with a rather bothersome condition. Burst is an uncontrollable hard hitting ST nuke with a not so hard condition to fulfill.
Guilty	9	2.5	6	Skill 1 is a huge buff to her DPS with good scaling. Skill 2 attack buff is very little and needs specific ally type teammates. Burst is decent ST nuke with defense shred
Harran	4	6	7	Skill 1 does decent AoE damage, but more importantly provides good burst generation. Skill 2 is where she gets massive DPS gains from but comes with a big downside of needing kills which falls off extremely late game. Burst can be slightly underleveled as it will take out most fodder mobs anyways.
Helm	4	5.5	4	Skill 1 has decent crit rate attack buff. Skill 2 also has a decent attack buff however the level scaling is not too great. Burst has great healing with decent ST nuke and can be left at lower levels and will still do a great job; no further upgrades needed beyond level 5 or 6.
Isabel	4.5	4	7.5	Skill 1 has decent self offensive buffs, but stacking does take 3 burst cycles and at best case scenario, would proc at the later half of the fight with the exception of boss stages. Skill 2 has decent AoE capabilities but not too important to upgrade. Burst has a very good debuff that scales rather well, with the downside of fixed full burst time reduction.
Jackal	3.5	1.5	4.5	Skill 1 has a decent debuff on proc, however, getting hit 10 times to proc is troublesome, invest if you focus on Arena. Burst is okay if under the assumption you have ST nukes units in the such as Helm, Brid and other similar bursts.
Julia	6	6.5	4	Skill 1 and 2 have good synergy, unfortunately crits aren’t as beneficial as pure ATK, but a big increase to her personal dps nonetheless. Burst is a decent AoE clearer that can possibly one shot tougher mobs.
Laplace	2	4	7.5	Skill 1 has radius increase, which is not very useful in most scenarios at all. Skill 2 increases personal dps slightly with a bonus of self buff part breaking damage which is only decent against bosses. Burst is where most of her damage comes from and scales rather well, does good damage against bosses.
Liter	8	7	9	Skill 1 and 2 are great, mid-high investments are recommended for both, as both greatly increases offensive capability and defensive capabilities for the team. Burst is also great as it does buff B2 and B3 burst AoE /Nuke outputs immensely and scales rather well.
Ludmilla	2.5	5	3	Skill 1 has rather weak debuffs against 1 target that also applies on last hit of mag, and Lud’s mag is rather large meaning it takes a considerable amount of time to empty a mag. Skill 2 at base level already makes her rather tanky and does scale well, however investing in skills that prevent you from being hit via more dealing more damage is more recommended still. Burst hits for peanuts.
Maiden	4	7	6.5	Skill 1 is strong on paper, but the condition to proc makes it practically useless; getting hit 20 times is a death wish in campaign, but can be proc’d in Arena. Skill 2 however is big buff to her damage despite the taunt implemented in the skill. Burst does okay AoE damage but condition to deal more damage is having Skill 1 proc which is horrible outside Arena.
Makima	3	1	4	Skill 1 may prove useful here and there, but still rather situational as it will not proc in most stages. Skill 2 does not make her Invincibility longer through upgrades, not worth considering to upgrade. Burst helps with sustain, however her personal DPS is still horrible being a defender SMG making Life leech rather ineffective.
Mary	5	4	5	All skills just heal or increase healing; scales okay.
Maxwell	8.5	2.5	9.5	Skill 1 is a big attack boost to two highest unit attacks on full burst. Burst needs investment as it starts out weak but very strong at high invested levels; very good scaling.
Milk	5.5	2	4	Skill 1 has a very modest team attack buff for 10s. Skill 2 has a rather hard condition to fulfill with a rather lackluster team buff anyways. Burst has decent life steal that can easily heal attackers to full at low- mid investment.
Miranda	1.5	6	8	Skill 2 and Burst have great synergy with other bursts that do very high burst damage such as Maxwell, Alice, SW and etc; assuming those units have the highest attack in team.
Modernia	7.5	8	4	Skill 1 and 2 have very good buffs for Modernia’s personal damage. Burst doesn’t need very high investments as her wave clearing abilities under burst is already phenomenal; also has low scaling and damage is also increased by skill 1 anyway.
N102	1	1	4	Skill 1’s main value is in the extra 3 ammo, upgrading this skill increases crit rate which doesn’t do much. Burst gives a decent ATK buff to the entire team, however she will be immediately replaced by Liter if you get Liter. Better to only upgrade this to level 4 and use the resource in other characters instead.
Neon	1	1.5	1	Only Skill 2 is even worth considering to upgrade, and that’s if you are using her to reduce RNG grinding crit on Snow White one-shot team. Even there, only upgrade until level 4.
Noah	2.5	4	4	Skill 1 is too RNG for a rather small defensive buff. Skill 2 has a rather good permanent attack down debuff on boss raptures but not worth investing compared to offensive skills. Burst provides huge defense buff on paper, but DEF scaling as of right now is rather disappointing and will not help your survivability as much as you think it would; burst starting level DEF buff is already pretty high anyway.
Noise	4.5	7	7	Skill 1 is great in Arena but not so much in PvE content, invest if PvP focused. Skill 2 is her tool to live forever; but skill scaling is rather low, still extremely helpful for her survivability nonetheless to invest modestly into. Burst gives good max HP buff and team healing that also scales rather well.
Novel	2	3	8	Skill 1 and 2 affects gameplay minimally. Burst, however, is very good for long duration boss battles and even better with very high burst damage units such as Alice, Maxwell, and SW; good skill scaling as well; great skill in niche scenarios such as Union raid. Score slightly lowered because of usage being rather limited to only boss stages.
Pepper	8	2.5	6.5	Skill 1 has insane sustain/healing under manual play and especially paired with Privaty; very useful in boss stages that demand survivability instead of raw damage; despite rather low skill scaling, still worth investing into moderately. Burst also does great healing with a rather strong ST nuke; stacks are easily gained by manually controlling Pepper.
Poli	3.5	2	7	Skill 1 has a basically permanent uptime; but very nerfed score because of how small the buff is. Burst has a good attack buff that lasts 10s and also comes with a shield; decent sidegrade to Anne: Miracle Fairy for SW and Maxwell teams.
Power	7	2	6	Skill 1 is good to upgrade, more attack equals more damage. Her burst is deals good damage, which can easily be used against Bosses, however it does not scale too well, so higher levels of investments are not quite worth it.
Privaty	8.5	6.5	4.5	Skill 1 has really good scaling regarding the reload buff, and also gives a good attack buff; also scales well late game as her reduced mag debuff does not account for max ammo increases from Overload equipment. For example, if Scarlet has 30 ammo, Privaty would only reduce her ammo by 10 instead of 15 as Scarlet’s base ammo count is only 20 unbuffed, basically reducing the mag debuff handicap even more. TLDR: Privaty’s Skill 1 has great scaling for units that have OL equipments with the ammo max increase stat. Skill 2 is also important as her stun hit proc does deal very big nuke damage which can also core hit. Burst is not very important but still worth some investment; not very important as her stun is the main sought after part of the skill, not the damage.
Rapunzel	7.5	6	4	Skill 1 and 2 are both good sustain skills to invest into. Burst won’t be used often and is used for emergency heals or resurrection; also has a bug where her burst sometimes revives units with 1 HP for now.
Rupee	2	7.5	7.5	Skill 2 has big influence on her personal DPS. Burst also gives a rather modest attack buff with a 20s CD.
Rupee: Winter Shopper	2	2.5	5.5	Burst has very good reload speed scaling and self life leech, but due to the nature of how her re-enter burst 1 Internal cooldown works and how useless life leech is on a defender, score is brought down.
Scarlet	9	5	8	Skill 1 has high level 1 base buffs but scaling is rather on the low side. However, it is still very worthwhile to invest into as she simply deals great ST damage and more attack makes her better. Skill 2 has a very minimal crit damage buff but her counter does well in Arena with the right team, invest if focused in Arena. Burst does a massively damaging AoE wipe, amplified by her Skill 1 stacks as well; also gives a nice critical rate buff when under 50% HP during cast.
Signal	2	2.5	3	Skill 2 has big life steal but due to the nature of how her kit works; life leech is kinda useless without soaking damage via taunt skills which she does not have. Burst has decent def shred.
Snow White	3	7.5	10	Skill 2 synergizes with Burst with proper timing. Burst has insane scaling and insane damage when paired with the right team. She just needs high skill investments to plow through everything, simply best skill to invest in despite being expensive to raise to very high levels.
Soda	6	6.5	2	Skill 1 and 2 Synergize with each other; both need to be raised to get optimal healing from her. Soda’s skills scale rather well but high investments are not recommended unless she is your only healer. Soda’s burst is not even worth considering upgrading.
Soldier EG	10	10	10	Absolutely a beast.
Soline	2	2	3	Her skills simply doesn’t do much for her at all. Skill 2 and burst also requires max HP to hit hard.
Sugar	3.5	7	7.5	Skill 1 required getting hit to get ok buffs. Skill 2 and Burst synergize well with each other. Higher skill investments would greatly benefit Shotgun teams.
Vesti	3	4.5	3.5	Skill 1 simply increases explosion radius. Skill 2 does increase crit damage and crit rate modestly, but the ATK buff is miniscule. Burst simply takes too long to stack to be useful in stages but still does okay.
Viper	3	1	6	Skill 1 is slightly useful in campaign, but uses are simply too limited in a fight to be investing at high levels. Burst deals decent ST nuke with good defense shred.
Volume	1.5	3	4.5	Skill 1 simply never procs and the attack buff affects her minimally anyway. Skill 2 buffs are not good and CDR is fixed on skill level 1. Burst is decent for crit focused teams such as Julia and Maiden.
Yan	3	2	1.5	Skill 1 works okay only in RL teams, which are used against Obelisk in Union Raid. Burst is used for relocating raptures which is fixed; not for her damage.
Yulha	1.5	8.5	3	Skill 1 has a horrible condition to proc, getting hit 30 times. Skill 2 is great for SW and MX teams with proper timing.
Yuni	3	2	1	Skill 1 maybe be useful in RL based teams. Skill 2 simply provides too little to even matter.

IMPORTANT SO REPEATED HERE AGAIN: Other SR units not mentioned are only used for early chapters and you do not need to invest in their skills to get through the chapters, nor will it help. DO NOT upgrade other SR units skills, save the resource for good SSR units instead. If you really have/want to upgrade them, it should be only be until level 4. As of 10th March 2023, there is no SR units worth heavy investment.

Specific Skill levels and scaling

To see characters at specific skill levels, Click here!

To see general level 1 against level 10 scaling, Click here!