This means that new skills and buffs don’t just magically appear, they need to be learned. To aid in your struggle for survival, you can find training manuals around the environment. Each one upgrades your character’s skill tree, which you enhance with supplements. There are five trees in total - so four training manuals to find - and supplements are littered around just about every area in the game.
To keep spoilers to a minimum, we’ve listed the Training Manual locations in chronological order. Here’s everywhere we’ve found any so far:
Seattle Day 1
Prepper Training Manual - Crafting Tree In the Seattle Day 1 hub area where you’re looking for gas with Dina, look next to the fire truck on the collapsed bridge.
Rappel down and swing across to the overturned truck on the raised platform below. Inside you’ll find 10 supplements and a prepper book which reveals the crafting upgrade tree, along with some scrap and a chocolate bar to replenish your health.
Best crafting skills: The melee upgrade perk is an absolute must and comes in useful throughout the entire game. It turns axes, machetes and the like into one-hit-kill machines which deal with clickers and other tough enemies with ease. From there though, the rest of the skills are on the weaker side. Improved health kits is one to try and build towards in the late game, however. It’s easy to ignore Smoke Bombs and Stun Bombs in your playthrough - but they are very, very good. So if your playstyle lends itself to using items, it’s another skill to consider. Survival Training Manual - Stealth Tree Later in the day, after you escape with Dina, you’ll make your way through shopping streets while fighting groups of WLF soldiers. Eventually, you’ll reach an area with an auto shop and gas station, and Nancy’s Seasonal Goods Halloween store.
Across the street from this gas station is a book store with an adjoining coffee house area inside.
The upgrade manual is on a side desk in the coffee house area - it unlocks the incredibly useful stealth tree.
Best stealth skills: All of these skills are brilliantly useful, so this is definitely a tree you want to max out. Silencers are powerful tools that let you pick off tough to isolate enemies without alerting their buddies. While the listen mode clarity and faster stealth kills skills make skulking through Seattle more manageable - especially the latter, which lets you take more risks and quickly reduce enemy numbers.
Seattle Day 2
Outdoor Sportsman Training Manual - Precision Tree Once you regain control for Day 2, you’ll travel through yet more shopping streets on your journey around Seattle. After dogs are introduced as enemies, you’ll eventually find yourself in an area with an auto garage with its door covered by a dumpster, a tattoo parlour, a barbers, and a bike shop.
Head out into the street on the other side of these shops and you’ll spot Goldstar Liquor across from the bike shop.
Inside, drop down through the hole into the basement and make your way through, eventually either shimmying under a pipe, or vaulting through a window, to advance. On the other side, you come out in a toy store where you will find an upgrade manual on the floor next to an old spore body. It unlocks the Precision skill tree, which is a suite of powerful buffs to your weapon usage.
Best precision skills: This is another tree you should look to max out, since all of the skills are great. Whether you like to do things quietly or with all guns blazing, the weapon handling buffs are useful in all situations. If you’re more into the stealth side of things though, the Listen Mode range and breath holding steady aim are really powerful. The former helps massively as the combat areas get larger throughout the game, whole the hold breath is the best tool for lining up silenced or sniper shots. The arrow crafting is nothing to sniff at either, since the bow is one of The Last of Us 2’s best weapons. Chemistry Training Manual - Explosives Tree After Ellie starts her mission to the hospital, you start by cutting through a supermarket before coming to a street with a bar - Kingsgate Brewing - on your left and a conference centre on the right.
Further up the road, there’s an entrance to an apartment building on your left. Approach the door and look down to your right to see the entrance.
Inside, head upstairs and look right. In the first bedroom on the right, in the room where the workbench is, there are 29 supplements scattered through the room and in the bedside drawer, a note, and the skill tree training manual for the explosives branch on the bed.
Best explosive skills: The explosive tree is similar to the crafting one, in that first skill is a must-buy but the rest are heavily dependent on your playstyle. For most, the improved molotovs will be a nice to have, but you will know whether you like to methodically place trap mines enough to justify purchasing the rest of the branch.
Seattle Day 3
You’re all tiered up, so there are none to find in Day 3. But the original survival skills list is as follows:
Best survival skills: All of these are well worth picking up, and the Survival tree is one that you should probably consider upgrading all the way through your playthrough. The listen mode movement speed skills are good quality-of-life additions for repositioning yourself under pressure, while the health and first aid kit buffs quickly come into play when things don’t go as planned. However, if you’re a very stealthy player who’s content to lurk in the shadows and methodically take out enemies, then you won’t find a lot of value in these perks and could maybe save your supplements for elsewhere. Be warned that after this point contains unavoidable story spoilers. If you haven’t completed Seattle Day 3, then you need to before you scroll down. Seriously, what is learned cannot be unlearned - you’ll know when to come back.
Seattle Day 1 Abby
Field Tactics Tree
Best Field Tactics skills: Abby’s starting skill tree reads like a greatest hits of the best of Ellie’s and you’ll easily want to grab all of these - Listen Mode Clarity and Range, as well as Hold Breath are the obvious highlights. Guerrilla Warfare Training Manual - Covert Ops Tree Abby’s first Training Manual is quite early in her section. After you leave The Stadium, you’ll eventually be trapped inside a warehouse will Mel. When you boost Mel up to the second floor, you’ll use a ladder to walk across to a speedboat to escape. Look inside the speedboat cabin before you advance to find the Training Manual for the Covert Ops skill tree.
Best Covert Ops skills: You’ll want to grab the Shiv crafting skill as soon as possible, but outside of that this tree is a bit lacklustre. CQC Training Manual - Close Quarters Tree After you leave the FOB and hop the fence with the help of Manny, you’ll see a Spring Dumpling shop in front of you.
Go through it, then around the corner. On your left is a broken window where Abby will remark about the smell.
Jump in, and there’s the Close Quarters Training Manual on the side to your right near the dead Scar.
Best Close Quarters skills: This is a bit of a weird branch, because if you’re a pure stealth or cautious player then you could literally never use it - but it’s still got some powerful effects. The Aim Stability Increase is obviously great, but Momentum gives Abby the ability to crash through groups of enemies that are stunned or surprised. This either lets you clobber your way out of a tight spot if you get surrounded, or lets you violently dispatch patrolling groups of enemies you sneak up on. Bullets Training Manual - Firearms Tree After you meet up with Lev and Yara, follow the kids until you reach an auto shop with a workbench.
To advance you need to follow them and go left in the next corridor - go right instead and it will lead to a kitchen.
There, turn into a side room and you will find the Firearms Training Manual on a table along with 7 supplements in the drawer underneath.
Best Firearms skills: The first three skills in this branch are all really useful, giving your character a powerful buffs or a steady supply of strong tools. Both the Hunting Pistol and Double Barrel Incendiary rounds make short work of even the game’s toughest enemies, so they’re definitely things you want to keep a constant stock of ammo for. FEDRA Training Manual - Ordinance Tree Towards the end of Abby’s Day 1, you eventually reach a beached ferry filled with infected. Her final Training Manual is on the top deck of the ferry, signposted as the “Sun Deck”, in a safe on your left as you come up the stairs to the area.
The code is on a note at the other end of the 1st floor cabin, past the 2 infected - we have a full page with every safe code in The Last of Us 2, but it’s 90-77-01 if you’re in a hurry. Inside you’ll find there’s an Abby’s Skill tree upgrade manuals - It’s the last one: Ordnance - there’s also 18 supplements.
And that’s your lot - there are no more training manuals to find throughout the rest of the game, so this should be where you claim your Journeyman trophy. For more on The Last of Us 2, here’s our page on where to find all 48 superhero trading cards!
