Poison Control may lean more on the action shooter side of the spectrum but that doesn’t mean it’s completely devoid of any RPG mechanics. Outside of upgradeable equipment, such as Toxicants and Deliriants, you can also upgrade your character’s capabilities by leveling up five different attributes through the game’s dialogue system.

In this Poison Control level up guide, we’re going to walk you through how character progression works in the game and what are the best attributes to invest in.

How Progression Works in Poison Control

As Poison Control has a strong visual novel element to it, its progression system is tied to the game’s dialogue system. During certain important moments, you’ll be asked to respond to Poisonette with three possible choices each time. Each response will level up 1 of five key attributes: Synergy, Empathy, Insight, Toxicity, and Trust.

You can choose to select the response you want to give Poisonette based on how you want to role-play your character. However, this can lead to a lackluster build that will likely make your life difficult because of how limited your resources are. For this reason, you might want to choose which attributes you invest in based on the passive skills you unlock.

Each attribute unlocks a set of skills that will help make your character stronger in several areas. You can see the next three passive skills that you can work towards at the top right of the dialogue/level up screen. For instance, investing in Synergy will unlock passive skills that enhance your movement speed.

So, which passive skills should you invest in?

Which Attributes to Invest In

Start with Insight

Insight essentially unlocks more slots for weapons you can take with you on your missions. Early on in the game, you’ll want to select the dialogue choices that are attached to Insight (book icon) so that you can get it to level 3 as quickly as possible for the extra Toxicant slot. One of the biggest challenges in Poison Control is managing your Toxicant ammo. This will give you an extra weapon when you finally unlock one that will refill when you purge mires. Be sure to also spend your money on upgrading your Toxicants as those are the weapons you’ll be relying on the most due to the limitations Deliriants have.

Increase Your Speed with Synergy

Despite the Synergy attribute having a flexing muscles icon, it’s actually also tied to your character’s movement speed. The speed at which you can move is quite important as it’s one of your main ways of avoiding getting hit as well as creating space between you and your enemies. You should select Synergy responses (flex icon) whenever they’re available and there’s no Insight option. This way you can get Synergy to level 3 as quickly as possible to get the first minor speed boost. This will allow you to move more quickly and reposition yourself around mires, especially when there are multiple Kleshas coming after you.

Work on Your Empathy

Empathy may seem like it’s not got a lot to offer but in actuality, it gives you one of the most important passive skills in Poison Control: Increased Clip Size. At level 5, Empathy will give your Toxicants a boost in the amount of ammo they carry per clip. This should make managing resources and dealing with Kleshas a lot more manageable in the later stages of the game. As we said, this takes quite a bit of time to unlock as it requires Empathy to reach level 5. Empathy also doesn’t appear very often as a dialogue choice so we’re keeping it on a lower priority. Definitely pick it as your tertiary option should both Synergy and Insight not be available.

And that’s going to do it for our Poison Control Heart-to-Heart Guide. Be sure to also check out our top tips for playing the game as well as our review.