While not necessarily as exciting as the other four main stats that characters have in Crusader Kings 3, Learning is an important one as it dictates a realm’s technological development, piety growth, prestige costs, and more.
The Learning Lifestyle perk trees are full of useful traits that can really effect change within a realm and within a character. The three perk trees here largely focus on one distinct aspect each, namely health, technology, and religion. All three can be crucial to a character’s goals and ambitions, and thus the Learning Lifestyle is one all players should consider.
Updated April 14, 2022 by Ryan Bamsey: With the recent release of Royal Court, the ways that you can play Crusader Kings have expanded even further. We’ve taken another pass at our favorite perks and added a few more with the recent changes in mind.
12 Religious Icon
This perk is mostly useful for anyone who finds themselves facing lots of religious fervor and can’t stand the idea of their realm having heretics. Religious Icon makes it so that the Convert Faith task is no longer impeded by a county’s fervor.
This is most useful for large realms and those who want to control their vassals’ lands with minute precision. You can’t really predict when Fervor will pop up, but the larger your realm, the more you’ll have to deal with it, and the more time Religious Icon will save.
11 Open-Minded
Added with the Royal Court update, cultural hybridization is a feature that allows the merging of two different cultures and is a great way to take part in some metagaming and some roleplaying at the same time. Open-Minded is a great perk for enabling this, as it increases cultural acceptance gain by 20 percent - something required for hybridization.
Add to this the ability to learn two extra foreign languages and you have a great perk for any Learning-focused character who wants to have it all.
10 Faithful
Faithful is a very simple opinion bonus that characters can take that can have very nice effects. For faiths that have Theocratic Clergy, this perk provides a +10 opinion bonus for all clergy, which makes receiving their taxes and levies much easier.
Comparatively, for faiths that use Lay Clergy, the perk grants a simple five-point Same Faith opinion bonus that will likely affect most of the people in a character’s court, possibly even beyond. Both effects of Faithful can be very useful, and it may be worth dipping into the Theologian perk tree just to pick this up as it’s the first perk available.
9 Know Thyself
While this perk may seem like something of a gimmick initially, Know Thyself has some practical applications that can be hugely beneficial to a long-lived character. This perk’s function is to alert you roughly one year before your current character is due to die of natural causes.
This allows you to quickly try to get your character’s affairs in order and prepare for the upcoming inheritance. Unfortunately, the perk does nothing at all if the character dies of any of the other many ways that they can meet their end.
8 Pedagogy
The effects of Pedagogy are a little on the rare side, but they are great when they do. Pedagogy firstly grants a character’s wards a 20 percent chance to gain additional skill points over the course of their education. This can be quite useful when educating close family members and potential heirs alike.
The second effect of Pedagogy is a 20 percent chance for a character’s wards to become Friends with them at some point. Having more friends is only a good thing and synergizes well with some perks from the Diplomacy Lifestyle. Friends are less likely to plot against you and make for useful councilors and vassals, as well as being useful ways to reduce your stress.
7 Learn On The Job
If a character finds themselves blessed with a truly powerful council full of people great at what they do, they may wish to consider taking the Learn on the Job perk. This gives the character a boost to their skills based on their councilors’ abilities – getting some of the Spymaster’s Intrigue, the Chancellor’s Diplomacy, and so on.
This perk incentivizes hiring only the best candidates for positions on the council. As a result, it synergizes really well with perks that make Powerful Vassals who may be passed over for the positions dislike their liege less.
6 Radiant
Radiant is a perk that affects the benefits that Level of Devotion has on a ruler. Rather like Fame, Devotion accrues as a character gains piety and is used as a metric of how devoted to their faith they are.
Higher Levels of Devotion grant higher bonuses for a character, most notably Clergy opinion bonuses and increasing the taxes and levies accrued from Theocracies. With the Radiant perk, these bonuses double, making it an extremely good perk for the incredibly devout.
5 Wash Your Hands And Iron Constitution
These two perks are paired with each other as they both deal heavily with the disease mechanics of the game and one must be taken before the other. While simply learning to Wash Your Hands provides a nice bonus to disease resistance for the perk-taker and their courtiers, Iron Constitution takes it a step further.
Iron Constitution is a fantastic perk to have when the plagues and epidemics start battering down on a character’s realm. It offsets both the Fertility and Health maluses that a character suffers when contracting a disease, so it’s perfect for a realm that is low on Hospitals.
4 Restraint
Inheritance is a huge mechanic in a game like Crusader Kings 3, and being able to actively manage inheritance is one of the major bugbears that players can find frustrating to grapple with. This is made even worse under succession laws that break up a ruler’s realm amongst their children, which can be frustrating for all involved.
Enter Restraint, a perk that allows the player to enact the Embrace Celibacy decision. This effectively halts procreation and can be used to gain more control over who inherits what. It even helps a player find out if their wife has been unfaithful, with a little applied logic. And thankfully, the decision to Embrace Celibacy can be entirely reversed if it needs to be, with the Abandon Celibacy decision.
3 Healthy
Health is an extremely important stat in Crusader Kings 3, and Healthy is a direct bonus to it. For this reason, the Whole of Body perk tree is extremely useful to max out. Even the smallest bonuses to Health can elongate the life of a character by multiple years, so Healthy is a great perk to take.
While Healthy can be taken to hopefully extend a character’s natural life, it can also be a useful tactical choice to offset some accrued Health maluses from the likes of stress or disease.
2 Prophet
One of the most hotly-awaited features of Crusader Kings 3 was the ability of a character to found their own religion with its own doctrines and beliefs. To stop the abuse of such a mechanic, heavy costs were imposed on these options which required the buildup of a ton of piety. Prophet is a perk that offsets this a little, halving the cost of forming (or reforming) a faith.
In addition, Prophet grants rulers a Monthly Piety boost for every Knight that they have, which will further help in any interaction that costs piety – for example, faith formation.
1 Sanctioned Loopholes
As the game trundles on characters will often accrue multiple unpressed claims whether through marriage or fabrication. A character who takes the Sanctioned Loopholes perk is able to use the Buy Claim interaction to trade a little money for that juicy, valuable land that they want so badly.
This perk is useful both for characters rich in money and characters poor in levies, as it enables a painless and peaceful method for expanding their realm.
NEXT: Religions And Cultures From Crusader Kings 3 That Are Gone In 2021
