Feats
Feats in Underrail are similar to perks or traits in other RPGs. They are permament elaborations of your character and serve the purpose to further customize your character build with unique active abilities, skill boosts or passive abilities. Feats do not boost Base Abilities, but characters gain a base ability point every fourth level.
Human NPCs also use the same feat system and same abilities gained from feats they have. Critters may also use some of the same feats, but they often also have their own unique special abilities.
Gaining feats
For every even level in Underrail, you must pick a feat. New characters start with two feats. Base ability and skill requirements of feats check your unmodified base/skill scores, not effective scores that include bonuses.
In order to finalize your level up phase or complete character creation, you must spend all feat points. You cannot save feat points and use them later and you cannot remove or respec feat points once level up phase has been finalized.
Special feats
Some feats cannot be picked when leveling up, instead they require training or other means of acquiring. One such feat is Psi Empathy. These were marked with (requires training) on the feat list before training them, or (Trained) once trained.
Veteran feats
Characters that have leveled past level 25 become a veteran. Veteran characters get to pick a feat every level and, in addition to regular feats, they can also pick from the veteran feat pool. These feats are marked with (Veteran).
Veteran feats, at least in this expansion, tend to be more general in nature, but they can also give your character some important bonuses that you cannot otherwise obtain. First examples of veteran feats were showcased in Dev Log #48.