Best skills to upgrade in Atomic Heart

Andrew Highton
p-3 using SHOK on enemies in Atomic Heart

P-3’s skills in Atomic Heart need to be handled with care as they can make the game a lot easier and destroying robots even more fun. In order to do this, we’ve picked out the skills that we feel will best achieve this in Atomic Heart.

Atomic Heart’s protagonist goes on an epic journey in Atomic Heart and along with a variety of devastating weapons, P-3 can also acquire and upgrade a large selection of skills to use in combat.

Skills are an integral part of how you grow and evolve your playstyle in Atomic Heart and picking the wrong ones can make your life harder and the game undeniably tougher – especially toward the latter stages.

To try and prevent this from happening, let’s go through Atomic Heart’s skills and select the main areas to focus on.

p-3 using levitation skill in atomic heart

Best Atomic Heart skills to upgrade

There are several main abilities that can be funneled through your Polymer Glove and we find that some are better than others in Atomic Heart.

There are also solid ways to make the game easier for yourself in terms of your character skills, and this is what worked for us, and some of the skills you should prioritize ahead of everything else.

SHOK

  • Electrization: SHOK electrified enemies.
  • Power Amplifier: SHOK deals more damage and pushes back enemies.
  • Resistor Malfunction: Electrified targets receive increased damage.
  • Neuro-Polymer Accelerator: Reduces SHOK cooldown.
  • Amplified Modulator: An upgrade to the electromagnetic unit that increases its effective range.
  • Chain Lighting: Part of the discharge bounces and deals damage to an additional target.
  • Extended Topology: Chain Lightning can hit one additional target.
  • Full Contact: Secondary targets hit by Chain Lightning receive full damage.

Character

  • Wild Boar: Increases your maximum health.
  • Musclehead: Increases your maximum health.
  • Athlete: Increases your maximum health.
  • Neuro-Compression Tactical Backpack: Increases your backpack’s capacity through compression rates.
  • Juggler: You can use a Neuromed capsule with one hand.
  • Full House: Allows you to swap weapons 100% more quickly.
  • Parkour: You are trained to tuck and roll when falling to avoid damage.
  • Second Wind: Your excellent physical ability grants you an additional dodge charge.

Frostbite

  • High Pressure: Upgrade the Cryo Jet’s pressure chamber, increasing its maximum range.
  • Forced Defrost: Frozen targets receive additional damage when the freeze effect ends.
  • Careful Disassembly: Receive increased loot when you defeat a frozen enemy.
  • Neuro-Polymer Accelerator: Reduces the cooldown of the polymer jet.
  • Fire Extinguisher: The Cryo Jet’s spray neutralizes incoming fire damage.
  • Intensive Spraying: Speeds up the cryopolymer discharge to freeze enemies more quickly.
  • Diffuse Spray Head: Allows you to spray cryopolymer in a cone-shaped area.

Mass Telekinesis

  • Forced Acceleration Fall: The neurokinetic unit can now accelerate dropped enemies, causing them to take damage when they fall.

Polymeric Jet

  • High Pressure: Upgrades the Polymeric Jet’s pressure chamber, increasing its maximum range.

Energy Management

  • Energy Density: Adds another Power Cell to the recirculation chamber.
  • ATP Recycling: Lost health is turned into energy.

If you’re interested in even more Atomic Heart guides and content, we have a bunch of other articles for you below:

How to access Polygon Testing Ground chambers in Atomic Heart | Best guns & melee weapons to use in Atomic Heart | Does Atomic Heart have microtransactions? | How long is Atomic Heart? Main story length & completionist run | Is Atomic Heart open-world? | Is Atomic Heart on Xbox Game Pass? | Does Atomic Heart have multiplayer or co-op? | Atomic Heart PC Requirements: Minimum & recommended specs | Atomic Heart controversy explained

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About The Author

Andrew Highton is a former Games Writer for Dexerto. He has a Creative Writing degree from Liverpool John Moores University and has previously written for games websites such as Twinfinite and Keengamer. With 13,000+ PlayStation Trophies to his name, Andrew is a fan of a huge variety of video games, his favourites being God of War and Metal Gear Solid. Contact him at andrew.highton@dexerto.com, on Twitter @AndyHighton8 or at www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-highton.