Advent of Ascension adds several valuable skills and tons of gear that will help you survive in this hostile world.  Once you have some AoA gear that you like, they can be repaired with Rosite ingots, or with Magic Mending Solution at a Mending Table.  The Mending Table is also great for getting rust off of things.  Here are a few useful pointers about each of the skills to get you started leveling them up.  Most of this information is compiled from the AoA wiki, but it's much more conventient to access in this guide book.  This mod is far too vast to encapsulate properly in this book, it is HIGHLY recommended that you spend some time browsing the wiki when you encounter strange things in your travels.

Anima ~ Anima levels are gained by collecting Anima Stone.png Anima Stones or using Fragmented Anima Stone.png Fragmented Anima Stones. Anima stones have a 10% chance to drop when breaking a plant. It allows the player to use higher level Tablets as the level increases.  Fragmented Anima Stones function exactly like bone meal, being usable to grow plants faster. Unlike bone meal, it also grants Anima experience when used. It grants more experience than the regular Anima Stone and they can be purchased from a Soul Agent NPC.

Augury ~ Augury is a skill in Nevermine revolving around using essences (dropped from breaking stone).  Augury levels can be increased by using Essences on an Ascension Shrine. Increasing your Augury level increases your maximum Creation and Soul Power and unlocks the Intervention enchantment partially. Most importantly, it partially unlocks the ability to fight the Ancient Cavern bosses.  The Divine Station is used for enchanting items with the Intervention Enchantment. The Power Stone used in the process is the Ambient Power Stone, found in the Haven and Lands of Runandor*. The player has to be above level 20 in Augury and Infusion skills to enchant.

Butchery ~ Butchery is a skill themed around harvesting blood.  When the player is attacking mobs, there is a 1 in 30 chance for a Blood Lust to spawn. The player must use a Blood Accumulator to capture the blood lust.  As the player levels up in Butchery, critical hits will do more damage, and the Battle Rage meter will begin to regenerate faster.  Start working on this as soon as possible as this will be essential for surviving in harder biomes and the many boss fights.

Creation ~ Creation is a skill centering around the summoning of minions.  Creation is gained by using Minion Slabs on a Creation Forge. All Minion Slabs require Empty Slabs to craft.  They are made from 4 pieces of stone in any quadrant of the crafting grid except for the lower right, the lower right is for making stone bricks.  It allows you to use stronger and better minions as you get higher levels. The levels required for summoning a specific minion is written in the tooltip of its respective slab. All minions can be healed by about 10 hearts when fed a Cookie.

Expedition ~ Expedition grants short but useful speed boosts randomly and reduces fall damage.  Expedition levels are gained when the player is sprinting. When the player's Expedition level is greater than 10, any fall damage they take will be reduced by a decimal multiplier. The reduction grows the higher the player's level gets. This fall damage reduction is very useful for exploring dimensions with several cliffs and overhangs such as Crystevia or Greckon. There are other modifiers as well, waiting to be unlocked at higher levels.

Extraction ~ Extraction is a skill themed around extraction resources from lava.  To train Extraction, the player will need an Extraction Device.  First, the player must fill the extraction device with lava by placing lava on top of it. Then right click the device with a Stone Bowl.  Once the device is used once, a block of obsidian will appear under the device. The obsidian will have to be removed to use the device again. The player may find nothing in the lava, or find loot based on your Extraction level.

Foraging ~ Foraging is a mining skill (diggy diggy hole).  Foraging levels can be increased by mining. When mining stone, or its AoA variants, there is a certain chance for a random item to drop. The item pool changes as the player levels up. Essences are one of the main drops obtainable from Foraging. 

Hunter ~ Hunter is a skill themed around hunting and killing mobs.  Hunter levels can be increased by killing hunter mobs. Only certain mobs are classed as hunter mobs, and only a few can be damaged only when you have high enough levels. Headless Hunter, Goalby, Flamewalker, Magicke, Headless Destroyer and the Full Moon and Bloodhunt Event mobs can be hunted initially to increase hunter levels.  Getting to at least lv12 Hunter ASAP is a top priority so common overworld Hunter mobs can be damaged, allowing you to defend yourself in most overworld biomes.

Infusion ~ Infusion is a skill themed around enchanting.  To start out training the skill, the player will need to capture pixons in order to obtain Infusion Stones. To capture a Pixon, the player has to use a Stone Bowl or a Diamond Bowl on it to harvest the stones from it. Then the player can take the Infusion Stones and use them on an Infusion table.  Overworld Pixons only spawn in magical biomes.  Once the player's Infusion level is high enough, the player can use the Infusion table to enchant.

Innervation ~ Innervation is a skill themed around dodging damage.  Innervation levels are gained by collecting Heartstones. It increases the heal amount of Heartstones as well as giving the player a passive chance to dodge attacks or heal after taking a hit. Both effects cannot trigger at the same time. The dodge chance stacks multiplicatively with any Armor set bonuses that provide dodge chance.

Logging ~ Logging is a skill themed around chopping down trees.  Similar to Foraging, random items may pop out when chopping down trees. Logging is leveled up by obtaining drops from trees such as Weak Essence. Logging drops can be obtainable from chopping all Vanilla woods, and all woods added by the mod. The drops obtainable include extra wood (same type as the original wood chopped, except for Vanilla wood, which always drops extra Oak Wood), or other loot like Essences.

Runation ~ Runation is a skill centering around creating Runes.  The Runation skill is all about creating and mass-producing runes. In the game, runes serve as the amunition for staves, making them extremely important. However, staves often require a lot of runes in order to be used in combat on a regular basis. Obtaining enough runes to use a staff constantly can be quite difficult. The Runation skill provides a way for the player to mass-produce runes for their staves easily.  To start training Runation, the player will need to craft a basic Rune Shrine block. Then the player must take Unpowered Runes and use them on the Rune Shrine. Doing this will convert the runes into Wind Runes, the most basic rune. The more wind runes the player makes, the more knowledge the player will acquire.  As the player levels up in Runation, the player will learn to make better runes. The different runes the player can make are each inscribed with a different element. To make the different runes, the player has to go to the corresponding Rune Shrine in the dimensions (see chart below). In addition, some of the more advanced elements can only become inscribed onto Charged Runes, unpowered runes won't work.  Leveling up Runation grants access to higher level Runes. At higher levels, some lower powered runes can be produced in pairs, only costing one Unpowered Rune or Charged Rune.

Vulcanism ~ Vulcanism is a skill themed around getting revenge.  In order to train Vulcanism, the player needs a Vulcane. Vulcanes can be gotten from Immortallis.  When the player is being attacked by mobs, the Vulcanism icon may appear (next to the Rage bar). When this happens, right-click the Vulcane to deal damage to your last attacker and get Vulcanism experience.  Leveling up Vulcanism increases the vulcane's damage and unlocks augments that can be given to the Vulcane. Each augment gives the Vulcane a different effect. 

Hauling ~ Hauling is a skill themed around fishing (cuz video games definately need more fishing).  It can be leveled up by opening various boxes obtained from fishing such as Fish Cases, Rune Boxes, Treasure Boxes, Weapons Boxes and Crystal Boxes. Leveling up Hauling allows the player to obtain better items from these boxes.

One final note about skills.  Each skill has an associate armor set that can only be worn by a master of that skill (lv100).  These sets provide nice set bonuses if you can gather enough skill to use them.  These sets must be purchased from the corresponding skills master, somewhere out there in the vast cosmos.