Best Skills to start with in Sand Land

Sand Land might split its combat between using your fists or driving machines but both require you to master your party’s skills to dominate every situation. Between Beelzebub, Rao, Thief, and Ann, you have a lot of skills to learn—but where should you get started? 

When you start your journey through Sand Land you will have limited Skill Points to upgrade Beelzebub’s moves and passives abilities. The same goes for your other party members too, who act as assists you can call in during combat or use to boost different gameplay elements like getting better loot drops. It is important to know what upgrades are the most useful right away so you can save up your valuable Skill Points, so here is a guide for where to start across all four characters. 

Best starting skills for each character in Sand Land

Best Beelzebub Skills to unlock early in Sand Land

Beelzebub is the character you will directly control during your Sand Land adventure, and all of his Skills are very straightforward since they mostly deal with boosting his combat abilities. 

Unlike the other characters, Beelzebub’s Skills unlock new attacks, boost his abilities, or improve the effects of items used. You won’t need to worry about too many passive options here, but there are still a few key options you will want to consider using your Skill Points on first after your mandatory “New Finishing Move” purchase. 

With how Beelzebub’s Skill Tree is laid out, you can easily unlock Aerial Evasion and Charged Attack in sequence to give you more options in combat. Being able to dodge mid-air is paramount for avoiding lasers and other projectiles, and having a heavy move to deal more damage is nice when fighting waves of smaller enemies. 

The New Aerial Combo just lets you extend your attacks, but I highly recommend trying to get the item speed boost after the first two Skills because it will make healing or giving yourself item-induced power buffs easier and less likely to be interrupted. 

Best Rao Skills to unlock early in Sand Land

Each Ally in your party serves a specific role, with Rao being the combat assist you will call on to help you during battles. His Skills include diverting enemy attention to himself, providing cover fire, or stunning specific targets—all of which can be useful. 

Out of your Allies, Rao has the largest Skill Tree and the most options to actively help Beelzebub out in combat. Here are the Skills I used the most, with some extra notes on one option that is useful but not readily available in the early game.

Rao will automatically help you out in most battles thanks to his Tonfa Attack passive, but you will want to unlock Vehic. Warfare as soon as possible, too. This will have Rao bring his own tank to attack when facing hostile vehicles—and it can even be used in some boss fights. Upgrading it will also have Rao acting as a decoy to draw fire away from you, easily making it his best early Skill. 

I have listed Superhuman and Pow-pow here too, as they are better than his Poison Gas! Skill, though you won’t be able to unlock them right away since they are at the end of his Skill Tree. You can save a point by skipping Poison Gas! and focusing on the Vehic. Warfare options though, and Rao’s Orders giving your vehicles an attack boost is a nice placeholder. 

Best Thief Skills to unlock early in Sand Land

Where Rao is great for combat assists, Thief is all about gathering resources and passively boosting what you get from encounters. You can just go down the right side of his Skill Tree to get the best results, though you will want to pick up Pilfering Pro at some point too. 

Since you will need to get Zeni Ahoy to reach the right side of the Skill Tree quickly, I didn’t list it since it is included along the way—and increased money drops are always welcome. I rarely used the Item Picker over Rao or Ann’s available Active Skills and just sped through it to get Spoils of War+ and Treasure Ahoy since that boosts your odds of getting more, rare items from every encounter. 

The Thief Radar is useful once you start actively going on treasure hunts, though hidden items aren’t as useful as better drop chances if you are focused on the story.

Best Ann Skills to unlock early in Sand Land

You don’t get Ann as an Ally until much later in the game, but her Skill Tree has some of the most useful options for Passive and Active Skills—especially if you spent most of the game using vehicles over running around and punching things. 

All of Ann’s Skills are good, and her Passives will let you save fuel when boosting around in combat or get increased vehicle healing when using items. But none of that holds a candle to having a non-item way to heal your vehicles mid-battle or instantly reload both your primary and secondary weapons. 

Quick Reload is by far her best Skill, as you can speed up difficult encounters or take greater advantage of boss cycles by skipping your reload time entirely and unloading two additional clips into whatever enemy or are facing with no downtime. A third-place option for Ann is her E. Maintenance Active Skill, which lets you repair broken-down vehicles and remove status effects halting your operations instantly. 

At least one listed Skill for each character is unlockable very early in the Skill Tree, though I focused mostly on which Skills I got the most usage out of and would recommend you try to unlock them as quickly as possible by saving up your Skill Points while you are adventuring across the vast map.