Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope: best skills and how to level them up

Mario is no stranger to RPGs. He’s progressed and adventured in turn-based worlds since the SNES, and yet never quite in the way we get in the two Mario + Rabbids games. While the tactical style of gameplay is still novel and by far the most accessible game in the genre for newcomers, there’s still a robust RPG leveling system under the hood. While the skill trees themselves don’t seem overly intimidating on the surface, the number of different skill types and the fact that they are present on each character can easily become overwhelming.

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope divides skills into four different categories: Health Skills, Movement Skills, Weapon Skills, and Engineering Skills. There are a lot of skills among them, some of which only one character can get, while others can be learned by many. A good spread of skills across your team and focusing your characters on skills that enhance their natural abilities will make the tougher boss fights that much easier. Here are the best skills to aim for and how to improve them Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope.

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How to improve skills

Before we talk about which skills are best, it’s important to know how to get and improve them. Anything related to your skills will cost you a resource called Skill Prisms. These items are rewarded for leveling up your heroes by gaining XP in battle. The more battles you fight, the more XP you earn and the more Skill Prisms you get. So it’s worth tackling secondary objectives.

While you must spend skill prisms to unlock new skills, you are not bound by your choice. If you want to respec your character, you can simply open your menu to go heroes tab, select the character you want to reset and choose Refund. This will return any spent skill prisms you used on that character.

There are also special Gold Prisms that are rewards for certain side quests Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope. These are exclusively used to unlock a special Sparks skill tree for a character. These are non-refundable, so choose carefully who you want to use them for.

Best health skills

We’ll start with the health skills, since there are only three of them and they can be used by all characters. Since there are so few and they’re all great, we recommend buying them all. Here’s what they do:

Additional Health: Increases this character’s maximum HP.

Heal Sponge: Increase how much health a character recovers when healed.

HP chill out: This character recovers 15% of their total HP after each battle.

Best movement skills

For movement skills, we like to focus on those skills that let you do more or get more out of moves that don’t cost any action points. Here are our tips on what to do and who can learn them:

Extra Dash: Increases the number of dashes a character can perform in one turn (Edge, Peach, Rabbid Luigi, Rabbid Mario, Rabbid Peach).

Team Jump Extra Dash: Gives an extra sprint after performing a team jump this round (Luigi).

Extra stomp: Increases the number of Stomps Mario can perform in a single turn (Mario).

exhaust dash: Causes Rabbid Luigi’s Dash to weaken each enemy hit (Rabbid Luigi).

Best weapon skills

Weapon skills are much more dependent on what team composition you’re using. That said, there are some that play to the cast’s strengths more than others, and some that are just great for getting hold of for everyone you can.

Weapon Damage: A basic damage bonus for this character’s weapon (Peach, Rabbid Luigi, Rabbid Mario).

Weapon range: Like weapon damage, it’s a simple increase in a character’s weapon range (Edge, Luigi, Mario, Rabbid Peach).

Second aid: If Mario’s first shot eliminates his target, the second shot deals double damage (Mario).

Disruptor chained targets: Increases the number of enemies Rabbid Luigi can target with chain attacks (Rabbid Luigi).

Best engineering skills

Last but not least, the engineering skills have no overlap between characters as they are all specific to each character’s signature ability. Here we give a recommendation for each individual starting character:

Hero Gaze Cooldown: Mario’s Hero Sight skill takes fewer turns to charge (Mario).

ghost ball: Luigi’s Steel Stare penetrates objects to hit your target (Luigi).

Team Barrier Discharge: When your team barrier is breached, it spawns a 5m AoE (Peach) attack.

mountain pose: Edge takes 50% less damage while Stormblade is active (Edge).

counterstrike area: Increases the range of Rabbid Mario’s Counterstrike (Rabbid Mario).

weaken effect: Makes Rabbid Luigi’s Exhaustion debuff debuff last longer (Rabbid Luigi).

Heal range: Increases Rabbid Peach’s healing range (Rabbid Peach).

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