Skills & Meta Builds in Re:Zero Incremental

“How do I get magic?” and “how do I get an Authority?” are the two questions this site gets asked most, and the honest split is worth spelling out before you spend Cash on the wrong pillar.

• What the official listing says: the 200 skills sit across Magic, Weapons, Authorities and Divine Protections. It names the families and nothing else, so there is no published unlock step, drop rate or pity count for any of them.
• What the game itself says: on a fresh character the Training tab’s Magic, Protections and Authorities pages are all empty and print the same line — “Nothing here to train yet. Acquire an affinity first.” That is the game’s own instruction, read off the screen in a session recorded on 21 September 2026, so the first thing to chase is an affinity rather than a spell list.
• Where a roll does exist: the blessing each Return hands you is a roll rather than a choice, and Race and Potential spins come from treasure chests and chapter rewards rather than from the skill panel. Neither roll is a published way to pick a Magic family, so re-check the skill panel after a Return instead of expecting one of them to hand you an element.
• What a recorded session shows for Authorities: a crystal of authority is a craftable item, and Shadow Dust is one of the materials it needs. That reading comes from the game screen at 25:49 of a session recorded on 17 September 2026 on this build.
• What that means in practice: keep the Shadow Dust you pick up and open the Inventory crafting panel once you have some, then look for the crystal of authority instead of hunting through the skill tree. If you loop first, re-check the panel afterwards.
• Where an Authority is reported to drop: two players in the comments of one recorded Portuguese session pointed at the multiplayer Invasions entry — one said it holds the sin archbishops and that beating one drops a Witch Factor at roughly 6%, and the other warned that an Authority taken from an invasion wiped every blessing when it was placed in the multiplayer tab. One video, two speakers, no rate anyone else has checked, and a third player on a different video said the Authority they chose to keep through a rebirth did not come back. Open the entry in your own build before you count on any of it.
• Still unresolved: the rest of the recipe, how much Shadow Dust a crystal takes, where Shadow Dust drops, and whether the same crystal is what opens Magic affinities. No source we can read states any of it, so we are not putting a number to it here.
• Two player reports, not rules: one commenter said finishing an ending and rebirthing gave them a chance at an affinity; a different one said equipping a Divine Protection of fire avoidance handed them water magic. Two speakers, two different routes, neither one checked by anyone else, so test them on your own loop rather than spending Cash on a guess.

In the Single Player → Training tab, you spend earned Cash to increase your mastery in Core Strength, Weapons, and Magic.

• Always use “Train All”: Specializing too early in one stat leads to bottlenecks when story bosses require both physical defense and elemental resistance.
• The Diligence Crystal is one-shot, not passive: its own item text reads “Your next training finishes instantly and pays five times over”, and the Use tooltip adds that the crystal goes cold and crumbles. Passive training is the game’s own Passive button on each stat row, which ticks along in the background — so spend the crystal on the stat you want to jump rather than expecting it to keep working.
• Retention rule: Gold and story progress reset, training levels come back with you. Learned skills are the uncertain part: a recorded Return kept the player's training but he found he had not kept his spear skill, so re-check the panel after a loop instead of assuming.