Skill Points are what turn your Sarentu from “barely scraping by” into a confident hunter, infiltrator, and explorer in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. You spend them across your skill trees to unlock new abilities, passive buffs, and upgrades that make everything smoother, from stealthing an RDA facility to surviving a bad fall in the Upper Plains.
If you only rely on the main story, you will still earn points, but you will usually feel behind the curve. The fastest, most natural progression comes from stacking three main sources: quests, Tarsyu Saplings, and Ancestor Skills from Tarsyu plants. Once you start treating those as your core loop, you will unlock skills at a steady pace without any tedious grinding.
The Three Main Ways Skill Points Are Earned
Skill Points come from a few consistent categories of progression:
- Completing quests (main story and side quests)
- Finding and interacting with Tarsyu Saplings in the open world for a guaranteed point each
- Unlocking Ancestor Skills by connecting to mature Tarsyu plants (often referred to as Tarsyu Flowers), which also award regular Skill Points as a bonus
Exploration and combat also matter, but mostly because they lead you into these rewards faster, not because they directly drop Skill Points on their own.
Main Story Quests Give Reliable Skill Point Momentum
The main questline is the most dependable baseline for Skill Points, especially early. Story missions steadily award points and also unlock critical tools for gaining points faster later, like better traversal options and access to new regions packed with Saplings and Tarsyu plants.
A practical tip that keeps your build feeling strong: if a story mission suddenly spikes in difficulty, do not brute force it. Detour into Saplings and side quests in the surrounding region until you can unlock two to four skills, then return. That small investment tends to remove the frustration immediately.
Side Quests Are the Best “Value per Minute” Points
Side quests are where Skill Points start to feel abundant because you usually get points while also improving your overall kit. Many side quests reward Skill Points directly, and even when they do not, they commonly lead to locations that contain Saplings, Tarsyu plants, or other progression opportunities.
If you want to be efficient without turning your playthrough into a checklist, focus on side quests that cluster in the same direction on the map. The ideal side quest is one that sends you toward an unexplored area, because you often stack multiple gains in one trip:
- You complete the quest for points
- You unfog the map and reveal points of interest, including Saplings
- You pass near RDA locations that can be cleared for gear and safer travel
Tarsyu Saplings Are the Most Direct Skill Point Farm in the Game
If you only remember one thing, remember this: every Tarsyu Sapling you connect to gives you one Skill Point. No combat required, no crafting requirements, no randomness. You walk up, connect, and get paid.
Tarsyu Saplings are scattered across the Western Frontier. They behave like a collectible with real gameplay value, and they are one of the main reasons you can comfortably unlock most, or even all, of your skill trees over a full playthrough.
How to Find Tarsyu Saplings Efficiently
There are two practical ways to locate Saplings, and you will usually use both.
First, reveal more of the map. Saplings show up as points of interest once the area is uncovered, and their icons change state based on whether you have discovered or collected them. This is why traveling on foot or by mount between objectives often pays off more than constant fast travel.
Second, once you begin collecting them, you can leverage an Ancestor Skill called Tarsyu Network. With that skill, every time you interact with a Sapling, the location of another Sapling is revealed. In practice, this turns Sapling hunting into a breadcrumb trail. Touch one, mark the newly revealed one, repeat.
When I am specifically hunting Skill Points, I like to do a “Sapling chain” session: pick up one Sapling near a fast travel point, then follow the reveals until I have cleared a chunk of the region.
Why Some Tarsyu Saplings “Do Not Spawn” When You Arrive
This is a common frustration: you go to a Sapling marker and it is not there.
A big reason is pollution and RDA control. Some Saplings in polluted zones only appear after you destroy the nearby RDA base or outpost tied to that area. If you are in a brown, polluted section of the map and a Sapling seems missing, treat it as a hint that you need to clear the local RDA presence first.
So if a Sapling is not showing up:
- Check if the area is polluted
- Look for an RDA outpost, installation, or base nearby
- Clear it, then return to the Sapling location
This also means Sapling hunting gets dramatically easier as you progress and liberate more land.
Unlock Flight Before You Go Deep on Sapling Hunting
You can collect Saplings without flight, but it is slower and some spots are a pain to reach. Once you unlock your flying mount, Sapling routes become quick and clean, especially in vertical terrain where climbing costs time and stamina.
If your goal is to rack up Skill Points fast, consider pushing the story until flight is available, then doing a dedicated sweep of Saplings in the regions you have unlocked.
Ancestor Skills from Tarsyu Plants Give Skill Points Too
Ancestor Skills are separate from your normal skill tree purchases, and they come from connecting to mature Tarsyu plants around the map. There are a set number of these plants spread across the main regions, and each one unlocks a unique Ancestor Skill that can be extremely impactful for traversal, stealth, or quality of life.
Here is the important part for Skill Point progression: each time you unlock an Ancestor Skill at a Tarsyu plant, you also receive two regular Skill Points. So even if you do not care about the Ancestor Skill itself, the bonus points make these stops worth prioritizing.
In other words, a Tarsyu plant visit is effectively a double reward:
- You gain a unique Ancestor Skill
- You gain two Skill Points to spend in your standard trees
The Best Ancestor Skills to Chase for Faster Skill Point Progression
Not all Ancestor Skills are equal in terms of accelerating your overall progress. A few stand out because they help you find more Saplings, complete objectives faster, or succeed more reliably.
Here are the ones that tend to speed up your progression loop:
- Tarsyu Network: reveals another Sapling each time you interact with one, turning Sapling hunting into a chain.
- Skills that improve traversal or reduce punishment for movement mistakes, which helps you cover more ground per hour.
- Skills that improve stealth information, making RDA clears faster and cleaner, which indirectly helps with polluted zone Saplings.
Ancestor Skills also synergize nicely with side questing because they reduce downtime. Less time climbing, healing, or resetting stealth means more completed objectives, and more objectives means more points.
Clear RDA Locations to Open the Map and Unblock Rewards
Even when RDA locations do not directly award Skill Points, they are still part of the point economy because they unlock access. Clearing outposts and bases helps in three ways:
- It reduces pollution in the area, which can unblock Saplings and some Tarsyu plants
- It makes travel safer, which keeps you moving between quests and points of interest
- It often pays out gear and materials that let you take on harder missions sooner
If you are doing a Skill Point focused run, treat RDA clears as “infrastructure.” You do them so the rest of your progression stops fighting you.
A Simple Skill Point Route That Works in Any Region
If you want a repeatable routine that keeps Skill Points flowing without boredom, use this loop whenever you enter a new region or return after a story milestone:
- Pick up a couple of nearby side quests from the region hub
- Travel to the objectives without fast traveling too much, unfogging the map on the way
- Grab any Tarsyu Saplings you pass near, especially newly revealed ones
- If you hit a polluted zone, clear the nearby RDA site before you commit to Sapling hunting there
- Detour to a mature Tarsyu plant if it is reasonably close, since it is worth an Ancestor Skill plus two points
This approach steadily feeds you Skill Points, Ancestor Skills, and gear upgrades in a way that feels like normal play rather than grinding.
Spend Points on Skills That Help You Earn More Points
This is indirect, but it matters. The best early Skill Point spends are often the ones that increase your efficiency: movement, survivability, stealth reliability, and anything that reduces downtime. The faster you move and the more consistently you win encounters, the faster you complete quests, clear RDA sites, and chain Saplings.
If you build around smooth traversal and control first, the Skill Points start to snowball, and you will find yourself unlocking skills simply because you are always one objective away from the next reward.