it might not be obvious either, but when you’re at the town, you can select which skills a character brings with them. All characters have…7 skills but can only equip 4 of them at a time. You can buy new skills in the guild(combat) or the survivalist tent(camping). To equip them, you need to click one to deactivate before you can select another. If you look at the screenshot below, you can see the skills i have (greyed out), but havent selected, versus the ones (camping) that i dont have that have the lock symbol on it.
