Undawn Skill Chip Guide: Everything You Need to Know

Skill Chips are one of the most expensive yet effective ways to enhance your character in Undawn. In this brief guide, I will share everything I know about Skill Chips and attempt to answer the most common questions.

How to Create Special Skill Chips

Special Skill Chips in Undawn come in two types:

• Normal (Purple) skill chips are created from 30 corresponding chip modules directly in your inventory and only increase your character’s stats (e.g., +42 Damage).
• Ultimate (Gold) skill chips are created from 50 corresponding chip modules and are much more expensive. Each chip not only provides stat boosts but also features a unique skill that activates under specific conditions (e.g., +60 Damage, “Hitting a weak point increases your base damage by 16.5% for 3.5 seconds”).

To create a skill chip, gather the required number of corresponding chip modules (30 or 50) in your inventory, select one of them, and press “Craft.”

Once created, a skill chip can still be sold to other players in the Trade section, but after equipping it, it becomes bound to your character.

As far as I know, it’s impossible to unlink a purple skill chip for further sale. There is currently no information available regarding the ability to unlink a gold skill chip.

How to obtain Skill Chip Modules

There are several main ways to acquire Skill Chip Modules.

1. Participation and victory in evening events: You have a chance to receive a Chip Module Crate in almost any event. However, the primary source of Ultimate Chip Module Crates is the Camp Competition event, which takes place on Wednesdays and Fridays. If your Camp is in a high league, you have a good chance of getting 4 or even 6 Ultimate Chip Modules per week (or at least 2).
2. Looting crates in Blockade: This is a PVP mode where you can obtain up to 5 crates per day. Crates contain useful rewards and sometimes (quite rarely) purple and gold skill chips.
3. Purchasing from other players: The main way to acquire Skill Chips is to buy them for gold in the Trade section. They are quite expensive, so you need to be able to earn gold in Undawn.

How to Enhance Skill Chips

Each special skill chip has a level, which is displayed in its description, and can be improved several times using the corresponding chip modules (the enhancement limit is currently unknown).

For example, upgrading the purple skill chip “Utter Destruction” to the 2nd level requires 15 chip modules, and the bonus “Critical Hit +2.8%” increases to “Critical Hit +4.2%” (+1.4%).

How Skill Chips Work

At present, each player can equip up to 4 skill chips simultaneously (2 for weapons and 2 for armor) in the following items:

• Main weapon,
• Heavy weapon,
• Clothing,
• Armor.

How to Determine Which Skill Chips Can Be Installed in Each Slot

1. Highlight an equipment item of the types listed above in your inventory and click “Special Skill.” In this section, you can see all items that can have a skill chip equipped.
   
2. Select the item you’re interested in (e.g., Clothing) and click on the “Install Chip” slot. You will see a list of chips that can be installed in that item.
   
3. If you already have a suitable skill chip, select it from the list and click “Assemble.”
   

How to Unequip Skill Chips

Highlight the item with an installed chip in the list and press the “Unequip” button. The chip will be placed in your inventory.

Can Skill Chips Be Sold After Equipping?

As far as I know, no. After unequipping, a chip will display a green lock icon, indicating “non-tradable, personal use only.” When selecting a skill chip, the “Unlink” option is absent, meaning you cannot unlink it even for RC.

Is the skill chip effect tied to the weapon?

No. For example, if you equip Utter Destruction in the slot of your Heavy Weapon, you will receive a bonus Critical Hit even if you are holding a Main Weapon, and vice versa.

The special effects of Ultimate Skill Chips are also not tied to the weapon. Today, on November 21, 2023, I finally crafted the Skill Chip: Increased Concentration and tested it personally.

Even if the chip is installed in your heavy weapon, when hitting an enemy’s weak point with the main weapon, you will still receive +16.5% to Base Damage (if you don’t know what Base Damage is and don’t understand how damage is calculated, read the Undawn Character Stats Guide).

This means that you can use, for example, Skill Chip: Increased Concentration and Skill Chip: Increased Tenacity simultaneously, and these chips will work fine together, both for heavy and main weapons. In my current Camp in Undawn, there is a person who uses these two chips.

Does the Ultimate Skill Chip effect for weapons trigger on the first shot?

No. I mean, if you equip Skill Chip: Increased Concentration or Skill Chip: Increased Tenacity and shoot an enemy, for example, with an SVD, the first shot will deal regular damage and apply the corresponding effect to you, and subsequent shots will be enhanced by this effect. This is important to understand if you like playing with sniper rifles.

Can You Use Two Identical Skill Chips?

There is no precise information on this matter yet, so I suggest assuming that it’s not possible (no effect). I asked about this in the global chat on my server, and no one has tested it so far.

In all honesty, there isn’t much point in doing this. Take “Utter Destruction” as an example; you receive the same 1.4% Critical Hit bonus for both crafting and enhancing the chip with 15 chip modules. This means you can simply strengthen your skill chip. Of course, there is some limit to this enhancement (as I mentioned, it’s currently unknown), but until you reach it, there’s nothing to worry about.

What’s Better: Using Purple Skill Chips or Saving Gold for Ultimate Skill Chips?

Not all skill chips in Undawn are created equal, so it depends on your priorities in the game. If you don’t care too much about your immediate competitiveness but play for the long term, it makes sense to save gold for ultimate skill chips right away. There’s already a good article on how to earn gold in Undawn.

However, in most cases, it would be wiser to first acquire 2-3 purple skill chips and possibly enhance them since this is much cheaper by a factor of ten or more. If you can buy a purple skill chip for 300-500k, the prices for top-tier gold skill chips start at 3 million.

Best Skill Chips in Undawn

In my subjective opinion (based on objective data but still subjective), the best skill chips are as follows. This information is primarily based on my in-game experience and observations of players who already possess these chips.

For a better understanding of everything discussed here, I recommend reading the Undawn character stats guide. Pay special attention to the damage formula and the difference between “armor” and “max armor.” Also, note that if a chip’s description mentions “restores armor,” it means the restoration of max armor (the blue bar).

For Main and Heavy Weapons:

• Increased Concentration (Ultimate): Damage +60, hitting a weak point increases your base weapon damage by 16.5% for 3.5 seconds (cooldown: 0.5s). In simple terms, you gain +16.5% damage when hitting an enemy’s head in PVP or a weak point in PVE. Best suited for PC players.
  
• Increased Tenacity (Ultimate): Damage +60, increases your base damage by 4.5% for 3.5 seconds each time you land a hit. The effect stacks up to 3 times and has a cooldown of 1 second. Due to the longer cooldown, you can achieve the maximum bonus (13.5% damage increase) only after 2 seconds. Better suited for players with touch devices.
  
• Absolute Suppression (Ultimate): Critical Hit +4.1%, when a critical hit lands on the enemy, they receive bleeding damage equal to 160% skill strength + 106% level growth bonus per second for 3 seconds (cooldown: 12s). I haven’t personally tested this chip, and I rarely see people using it. But in theory, it looks very powerful because it inflicts significant bleeding damage. This chip is particularly interesting in combination with bleeding from the AK-47.
  
• Fearless Vanguard (Purple): Damage +42. Roughly +4% damage.
  
• Utter Destruction (Purple): Critical Hit +2.8%.
  

For Clothing and Armor:

• An Eye For An Eye (Ultimate): Max Armor +76, while you still have armor remaining, your attackers receive bleeding damage equal to 44% skill strength + 29% level growth bonus every second and are slowed by 16% for 3 seconds (cooldown: 5s). The key feature of this chip is enemy slowing. In combination with the AK-47 effect, it allows you to reduce the attacking enemy’s speed by nearly half, making them an easy target. Remember that in PVP in Undawn, teamwork and controlling opponents are crucial.
  
• Armor Regeneration (Ultimate): Critical Resistance +3.2%, resists fatal damage and immediately restores 37.8% armor (cooldown 60s). In simple terms, it allows you to avoid fatal damage once every 60 seconds. In my opinion, this is a must-have for PVP events on Radiation Island. As for other PVP modes, I’m not sure because battles are more dynamic and at shorter distances. In such conditions, the HP Technology chip seems much more effective (emphasis on this being my subjective opinion and nothing more).
  
• HP Technology (Ultimate): Armor +48, converts 10.9% of HP into max armor at a 1:2 ratio. For example, 1500 HP * 0.1 (10%) * 2 = +300 Max Armor. In practice, this provides a significant increase in character survivability. Remember that it’s more beneficial to develop max armor than HP because max armor replenishes on its own if the character doesn’t take damage for a certain period. Additionally, some special effects (such as the “An Eye For An Eye” chip effect) are tied to max armor. This versatile chip is suitable for any PVP battles.
  
• Enabled Mecha (Purple): Max Armor +53.
  
• Callous Precinct (Purple): Armor +33.
  

Note

I want to emphasize once again that what I’ve mentioned is based on my subjective perception of PVP in Undawn.

I believe that teamwork, controlling opponents in all ways, instant damage boosts, and character survivability (in the moment) are key to victory. The floor is open for discussions in the comments below this post, so you can always share your expert opinion on this matter.