Persona Ignota - Choose Starting Skills

Summary

This mod removes the vanilla skills from the FILE_NOT_FOUND background and allows you to pick your own, up to the vanilla limit of 3.  This is done directly at character creation.  Simply select the background, select the skills you want, complete character creation, have fun.

While you are agonizing over your choice of background, your chosen skills will persist.  You can throw your chosen skills in there, back out, look at the other backgrounds, then come back to the obvious right choice, your own!  You can pick up right where you left off.

There is an optional mod included which removes all skills from all vanilla backgrounds, allowing you to select your skills for any background.  I threw this one in there in case you wanted to pick your own starting skills but still have access to a particular background's dialogue choices.

Installation instructions

I recommend using a mod manager.  I tested with MO2, should work fine with Vortex.  Built on .swf files from after the Terran Armada/Free Lanes update.

If you are installing manually then good luck.  I hear you can extract the contents of the files into your data folder.  I will only provide limited support for this installation method.

Compatibility & Load Order

This mod will conflict with other mods that alter the FILE_NOT_FOUND background, adjust the traits limit gameplay setting, or which touch the CharGenMenu .swf files.  The traits count was increased to accommodate using traits to select the skills; you can technically select more than vanilla skills.

If you use Background Dialogue Unlocked or Take More Traits, they set the trait limit much higher than this mod to accomplish their goals.  Just make sure to load either of these mods or any other mods that increase the traits limit after mine so that you keep their larger trait limit.

If you use CharGen, be sure to grab the compatibility patch.  I left the files loose for ease of use, just make sure the patch loads last to get the UI changes of both mods.  There is a known issue while using this compatibility patch that some fonts will have a very small text size.  I believe this has something to do with the CharGen .swf files I built the compatibility patch from.  I am waiting for their mod to get an update for the June 11, 2026 game update to see if that resolves the issue.

The optional file that removes skills from all vanilla backgrounds will (shocker) conflict with mods that touch any vanilla backgrounds.  If you want these changes, make sure to load this plugin after any other plugins which alter backgrounds.

As of the most recent upload, this will conflict with my other mod Expanded Backgrounds.  However, I am working on an integrated compatibility so the two should work seamlessly together.  Stay tuned.

Shout outs

Shout out to theundreamin