M2E Traveller: Specialty Skills

First off, I am going to call Mongoose's second Traveller edition M2E Traveller just to keep it short and let people know what I am talking about. There are a lot of great editions, but from what I see M2E Traveller is the most D&D 5th Edition version of Traveller out there and I like the streamlined and simplified focus of this version of the game very much.

I still have a good collection of M1E Traveller books, and those can for the most part be used with little modification as I hear. I am happy with this purchase and look forward to diving in deeper.

Specialty Skills

I was so confused about these and how you gained skill levels, and then I watched a couple Youtube videos and all was explained.

When you get a level zero skill in a skill with specialties, set all specialty levels of that skill to zero. If you get a skill level in that skill, increase one of the specialties. If you get the semi-rare "Skill 1" choice where you set the skill level to 1, or if you have it at 1 nothing happens in a specialty skill - set one of the specialty skill levels to 1 (or if they are all 1 or higher, nothing happens).

In short, specialty skills branch out one skill into several areas and are all raised separately. Setting them all to zero when you first get a level zero skill is the special case; otherwise, raise them separately and independently as your character gains skills in character creation.