Crusader Kings 3 introduced different levels of piety, prestige and fame for your character to progress. These different levels are important, depending on what a character wants to achieve. Here's what exactly these levels do and what they mean in the scheme of things.
Levels of piety, prestige and fame affect different areas of the game. Each has different levels of ranks to climb. Prestige and Piety affect individual characters and have five ranks, known in retrospect as Fame Level and Devotion Level. Each will need prestige or piety to categorize them specifically for your character. On the other hand, Fame has 11 levels that measure how powerful your dynasty is during an entire save.
Fame Tiers provide players with an increasing number of Knights, starting at Rank Two, Distinguished. Players can earn additional knights per level. Some areas of the map offer more, with Ghana being able to gain eight additional Knights, compared to four as a Norse character. Player Prestige levels also benefit from secular characters' opinion of you, which is a good idea. Rank four, Exalted Among Men, is where it gets interesting. Level four tribal characters can use the casus belli invasion on any opponent to try and claim their titles and any titles under them.
Your godliness level also works the same. Clergy figures will also have a more meaningful opinion of you based on your level of devotion. Likewise, the levels of devotion offer casus bellis against other religions. At rank two, Faithful, the characters can declare holy wars for the duchies. At rank four, Paragon of Virtue, characters can declare holy war for a kingdom.
To increase your ranks of fame or devotion, characters will need to gain prestige or piety. Prestige is relatively easy to gain, but piety can be a bit more difficult. Once you've reached your desired level, navigation is smooth with these bonuses.
Meanwhile, the ranks of the dynasties operate very differently. Different levels of splendor allow an offspring to be born with different amounts of prestige. For each level after the first rank, Base Origins, a child is born with 100 additional prestige points. Legendary is the maximum rank, and children of this dynasty are born with 1000 prestige points. Characters who marry in dynasties also gain prestige at rank three, Insignificant. this amount also increases by 100 for each rank above Insignificant.
This means that by the time your dynasty is performing well in the late game, your children will reap incredible benefits. Your dynasty tree will have grown and your characters will roll with a prestige that they can work on immediately. Just think about how many early invasions a tribal character can make in their youth. Therefore, it is worth working on these levels of fame, devotion and splendor.