Wortox is the perfect skilltree

[loopuleasa]

Random main here playing on and off I know most skilltrees by heart by now, and I wanted to comment on what I think makes a good skilltree:

1. Many viable choices (I have literally 5 wortox skilltrees I use from the skilltree preset mod)

2. Interesting mechanics that change the character in novel ways

3. Interesting mechanics that enhance what the character already does

4. Flavoured to hell and back

5. Hyuhyu

That's it. Just some praise.

[Dingle]

What are your favorite Wortox skill trees?

I focus on two I consider the most viable, and have been having difficulty finding a third.

[GimplyGoose]

1 hour ago, Dingle said:

What are your favorite Wortox skill trees?

I focus on two I consider the most viable, and have been having difficulty finding a third.

Broadly there are reasons to align your skill tree picks with the naughty/nice/neutral affinities.

Within the nice affinity, putting 3 points into the twin tailed heart skills is good for multiplayer since it allows Wortox to become a taxi. If you are playing solo, there is some value in the nice affinity bonus perk since it let's you befriend pigs and offers better sanity management options compared to naughty/neutral. A solo nice affinity skill tree would probably drop the twin tailed heart skills for others.

The naughty affinity has a lot of standalone useful skills and the bonus perk of having a few moments to deal with a soul overload is pretty handy when gathering souls.

Wortox's affinity might end up neutral if you have a relatively even distribution of naughty/nice skills which can give you good group support skills without sacrificing soul collection skills.

[Echsrick]

11 hours ago, loopuleasa said:

Random main here playing on and off I know most skilltrees by heart by now, and I wanted to comment on what I think makes a good skilltree:

1. Many viable choices (I have literally 5 wortox skilltrees I use from the skilltree preset mod)

2. Interesting mechanics that change the character in novel ways

3. Interesting mechanics that enhance what the character already does

4. Flavoured to hell and back

5. Hyuhyu

That's it. Just some praise.

1. no? like...not at all. there so many skills that are just not good at all

2. the mechanic of aggro gaining because the soul slightly touched something and now everythings out for you?

3. you seriously goin to try and tell me the knap sack is an enhancement?

4. the flavour of gettin DOWNSIDES the only character that does so?

5. true

no, i still fight for a better wortox skill tree, alsol obligatory

no wortox?

[IAmAFurrz]

2 hours ago, Echsrick said:

you seriously goin to try and tell me the knap sack is an enhancement?

preskilltree he didnt have it tho?

[Echsrick]

24 minutes ago, IAmAFurrz said:

preskilltree he didnt have it tho?

sure, but wortox realy was not missing it in the first place

[linabagel]

Before I played it, I didn't understand why people all praised him, but after I played it, I have to admit this.

When I first tried and played with new players, I chose to be naughty. Knabsack is quite cheap. Before opening the rift, I almost only used it. I could use all my LivingLog to make magical items or give it to new players. Even without using DarkSword, I didn't feel it had too much of an impact. SoulJar is my favorite item (the second favorite is TwintailedHeart), which almost solves the ability limit of Wortox. I once suspected that this was a mod character. Especially when I turn it on, it can reset Echo. Combined with SoulDecoy and SoulPierce, this allows me to deal damage through my soul rather than using weapons when fighting some bosses.(Unfortunately, I was too slow to adjust my view, so I had to use Zoom+ to help me out.)

After that, in the team game for five people, I chose to be nice. Because my friend chose Wigfrid、 Walter and Woodie, I don't need to participate in the battle at all. I have more free time to explore、 complete Pearl's tasks and help with the supply transfer between Woodie and Wickerbottom. Oh yes, I also mastered the use of the PanFlute LOL. When I played against Dragonfly, I just danced and used PanFlute.

Can you imagine? When I broke through the distance limit to help the new player retrieve the items he had forgotten from the distant Ruins, help him heal time and again, and kill the BOSS in front of him by repeatedly jumping, he was so astonished and praised. When I was able to use TwintailedHeart to help my friends travel between the base and other places, they were all looking for me. 

I must admit that Wortox has brought me and my friends an unprecedented gaming experience.

[Dingle]

4 hours ago, GimplyGoose said:

Broadly there are reasons to align your skill tree picks with the naughty/nice/neutral affinities.

Within the nice affinity, putting 3 points into the twin tailed heart skills is good for multiplayer since it allows Wortox to become a taxi. If you are playing solo, there is some value in the nice affinity bonus perk since it let's you befriend pigs and offers better sanity management options compared to naughty/neutral. A solo nice affinity skill tree would probably drop the twin tailed heart skills for others.

The naughty affinity has a lot of standalone useful skills and the bonus perk of having a few moments to deal with a soul overload is pretty handy when gathering souls.

Wortox's affinity might end up neutral if you have a relatively even distribution of naughty/nice skills which can give you good group support skills without sacrificing soul collection skills.

Solo, you just go for bastion if you want to be Nice. I ended up liking it ok, in the end.

I actually dislike Naughty now.

I keep trying to find the perfect Wortox builds, in terms of value for perk points spent. I've only settled on 2, after playing him a lot. I'll post them when I can.

OP said he had 5 builds he used a the time, so I was curious as to what they were.

[ShadowDuelist]

5 minutes ago, Dingle said:

Solo, you just go for bastion if you want to be Nice. I ended up liking it ok, in the end.

I actually dislike Naughty now.

I keep trying to find the perfect Wortox builds, in terms of value for perk points spent. I've only settled on 2, after playing him a lot. I'll post them when I can.

OP said he had 5 builds he used a the time, so I was curious as to what they were.

I also have like 2, full naughty and somewhere In-between, but enough so you end up with nice inclination.
I'm not a very good Wortox player overall so I'd be interested to see what their skill trees look like and the reasoning behind them too.

[Frashaw27]

The Wortox skilltree has become one of my favorite skill trees because of how it innovates on Wortox as a character without trying to rework him like how some of the other skill trees do. Besides the pan flute ones, all of the skills offered to Wortox felt like natural extensions to his soul powers. It also liked how a lot of the skills synergized like the alignment skills with the double echo. After playing him for around 500 days, I can easily say that his skill tree has grown on me significantly. That being said, I do have some ideas for changes. Move the teleport focused branch on the nice side to neutral and allow for a new nice branch around soul foods. While this wouldn't change the skill tree too much, I do feel like it was a missed oppertunity to not have Wortox have some sort of food based perks even if it was focused on Pomegranates and that teleporting felt like something that all builds would focus on.

[GimplyGoose]

13 hours ago, Dingle said:

Solo, you just go for bastion if you want to be Nice. I ended up liking it ok, in the end.

I actually dislike Naughty now.

I keep trying to find the perfect Wortox builds, in terms of value for perk points spent. I've only settled on 2, after playing him a lot. I'll post them when I can.

OP said he had 5 builds he used at the time, so I was curious as to what they were.

I just wanted to give a few examples of the variety that Wortox's skill tree offers in my comment. I would be curious to see OPs builds as well.

Personally, the nice affinity is my favorite way to play Wortox's since it offers a lot for group play.

There are some skill trees that I think offer quite a bit less variety compared to Wortox, so I do agree with the OP that there are a lot of viable choices in Wortox's tree.

[Radicaljoe]

I don't like the Wortox tree, it has jars, the decoy, and the map skills. And those are good, like really good, so much that it's basically the life raft for the tree. But the layout and repeat/filler skills is just so bad, especially in a tree that's about balance. I'm not balancing good skills, I'm trying to get a skill I want then having to counter balance the filler to get to that skill.

Also, I don't like the naughty animation changes, Wortox you are a grown ass imp, don't scowl at a soul. You're not "aura farming" Wortox, you look ridiculous and making a fool (unfunny one at that) of yourself.

[Jakepeng99]

On 9/18/2025 at 12:06 PM, loopuleasa said:

Random main here playing on and off I know most skilltrees by heart by now, and I wanted to comment on what I think makes a good skilltree:

1. Many viable choices (I have literally 5 wortox skilltrees I use from the skilltree preset mod)

2. Interesting mechanics that change the character in novel ways

3. Interesting mechanics that enhance what the character already does

4. Flavoured to hell and back

5. Hyuhyu

That's it. Just some praise.

Only bad thing is the affinities.

Boring “ability tied to riff gear. Useless pre riff”

Edited September 19, 2025 by Jakepeng99

[GimplyGoose]

1 hour ago, Radicaljoe said:

I don't like the Wortox tree, it has jars, the decoy, and the map skills. And those are good, like really good, so much that it's basically the life raft for the tree. But the layout and repeat/filler skills is just so bad, especially in a tree that's about balance. I'm not balancing good skills, I'm trying to get a skill I want then having to counter balance the filler to get to that skill.

Also, I don't like the naughty animation changes, Wortox you are a grown ass imp, don't scowl at a soul. You're not "aura farming" Wortox, you look ridiculous and making a fool (unfunny one at that) of yourself.

I agree that some of Wortox's skills do not do much on their own, but I don't think that's a bad thing. If every skill had as much gameplay impact as the soul jar skill, I think it would actually make his skill tree worse.

Because of the naughty/nice/neutral inclinations, you are constrained on which skills to take and might have to take a weaker skill to lock in your desired inclination. To me, this is a good thing since it makes selecting your skills more interesting.

I won't say that Wortox's skill tree is perfect. I haven't found a reason to pick the Cloudy Carmen skill. I think it would probably be better if it were adjusted to be a more impactful skill and then placed behind Pleasant Pastorale. At the same time, it could be that there is a niche for that skill that I'm overlooking...

[Radicaljoe]

21 minutes ago, GimplyGoose said:

I agree that some of Wortox's skills do not do much on their own, but I don't think that's a bad thing. If every skill had as much gameplay impact as the soul jar skill, I think it would actually make his skill tree worse.

Because of the naughty/nice/neutral inclinations, you are constrained on which skills to take and might have to take a weaker skill to lock in your desired inclination. To me, this is a good thing since it makes selecting your skills more interesting.

I won't say that Wortox's skill tree is perfect. I haven't found a reason to pick the Cloudy Carmen skill. I think it would probably be better if it were adjusted to be a more impactful skill and then placed behind Pleasant Pastorale. At the same time, it could be that there is a niche for that skill that I'm overlooking...

Well there in lies my issue. The jars have SO much gameplay impact. Like it should not be this massive spike between skills doing nothing and doing something. Every choice should hold relatively similar power (except affinitiies as they have a secondary requitement and are justified to be more strong.)

Which also leads to my issue with the inclinations, Naughty side has waay better skills than the Nice side. Now I am lucky as I value naughty tox significantly more than nice, but I saw so many people upset they have to take Badstion and twin fail hearts just so they can use the Nice inclination. Also, heavily disappointed staying true neutral comes with no buff. A perfect balance is way harder than full nice/naughty, and your reward is... nothing. 

[GimplyGoose]

1 hour ago, Radicaljoe said:

Well there in lies my issue. The jars have SO much gameplay impact. Like it should not be this massive spike between skills doing nothing and doing something. Every choice should hold relatively similar power (except affinitiies as they have a secondary requitement and are justified to be more strong.)

Which also leads to my issue with the inclinations, Naughty side has waay better skills than the Nice side. Now I am lucky as I value naughty tox significantly more than nice, but I saw so many people upset they have to take Badstion and twin fail hearts just so they can use the Nice inclination. Also, heavily disappointed staying true neutral comes with no buff. A perfect balance is way harder than full nice/naughty, and your reward is... nothing. 

What don't you like about the twin tailed heart? If you invest three points into it, I think it is one of Wortox's more impactful skills. It is pretty much useless in solo play, but for groups, the utility of that skill is very high 

[Dingle]

4 hours ago, GimplyGoose said:

I just wanted to give a few examples of the variety that Wortox's skill tree offers in my comment. I would be curious to see OPs builds as well.

Personally, the nice affinity is my favorite way to play Wortox's since it offers a lot for group play.

There are some skill trees that I think offer quite a bit less variety compared to Wortox, so I do agree with the OP that there are a lot of viable choices in Wortox's tree.

Oh I see.

Some skill trees have less variety than wortox, but if we're thinking of the same ones, they're really terrible for variety. Every wolfgang build looks the same except where you spend the last couple of points, as an off top of head example. Willow builds are really samey because everyone understands burning bernie can't compete.

I have 2 or 3 (kind of 2.5) strong builds I like for wortox, depending on circumstance. I try to find more by experimentation, but I always run into the feeling that I'm picking something weak just so I can claim there's a bit more variety in the builds.

There's some standout important skills (like the jar). A lot of filler. Bastion 1 and 2 being very similar, but often you have to grab bastion 2 just to get Nice. Piercing being generally weaker than decoy, but more expensive. Covetous having all sorts of problems, such as its obsolescence after you get rift gear and how much it clogs your inventory if you want full knabsack damage before that.

I also question the panflute talents a lot.

1 hour ago, GimplyGoose said:

Because of the naughty/nice/neutral inclinations, you are constrained on which skills to take and might have to 

Maybe this ends up being a psychological thing. By that I mean it feels like you're not making good choices, you're simply picking filler because you're forced to.

1 hour ago, GimplyGoose said:

I won't say that Wortox's skill tree is perfect. I haven't found a reason to pick the Cloudy Carmen skill. I think it would probably be better if it were adjusted to be a more impactful skill and then placed behind Pleasant Pastorale. At the same time, it could be that there is a niche for that skill that I'm overlooking...

No one ever found a niche for it that I know of. I believe it still is pretty worthless in multi, too, it only protects wortox. For 5 seconds.

I really would have like a rework to Neutral perks before the tree came out. I think what we have is what we will have forever, though, so I just ignore the pan flute perks.

[Radicaljoe]

3 hours ago, GimplyGoose said:

What don't you like about the twin tailed heart? If you invest three points into it, I think it is one of Wortox's more impactful skills. It is pretty much useless in solo play, but for groups, the utility of that skill is very high 

I find it quite bad regardless of how many people are present. After entering summer I can have the deserter which is a significantly cheaper and better version that won't spoil. for 3 rocks and a hammer I can have a deserter in my pocket all the time.
Without a bee biome I do not see any way for Wortox to get the amount of souls needed for the heart to be useful more than once or twice. 3 points for such a minimal benefit seems bad. The soul cost also gets significant the more people you have so it seems only particularly useful with 1-2 people. 

And while you could argue that reviving players is a good use, making a booster shot and tell tale is better. 2 souls to heal yourself after making the tell tale heart(or 3 if naughty) and the rest can go to the revived player. Then you can just go make them a booster shot.

I don't see any opportunities where the twin fail heart is consistently useful without there being an equally or better alternative available that doesn't rely on a bee biome or soul farm of some variety. 

[Bumber64]

14 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Only bad thing is the affinities.

Boring “ability tied to riff gear. Useless pre riff”

Worse, specific rift gear. Want to use shadow maul? Some equipment Klei decides to add later? Too bad, enjoy your reaper.

[Hungry French]

17 hours ago, Radicaljoe said:

I don't like the Wortox tree, it has jars, the decoy, and the map skills. And those are good, like really good, so much that it's basically the life raft for the tree. But the layout and repeat/filler skills is just so bad, especially in a tree that's about balance. I'm not balancing good skills, I'm trying to get a skill I want then having to counter balance the filler to get to that skill.

Also, I don't like the naughty animation changes, Wortox you are a grown ass imp, don't scowl at a soul. You're not "aura farming" Wortox, you look ridiculous and making a fool (unfunny one at that) of yourself.

He put Deerclops on the floor in the trailer with 1 punch. He can behave like that. No one has been able to do this in 14 years.

[Tigris Nano]

17 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Boring “ability tied to riff gear. Useless pre riff”

Yes I also dislike this. You have to reach endgame while willow can fry things alive with flamethrower since day 1

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, Tigris Nano said:

Yes I also dislike this. You have to reach endgame while willow can fry things alive with flamethrower since day 1

Yeah. I dislike all instances of skills like this. One of my biggest hates of skilltrees. 

[Hollow soul 3]

Eh, not really even close. It has enough good perks to pick out a fun build, with some filler. It's not hard to pick what skills to leave behind. A perfect tree should probability make it feel like it's a hard decision. The nice side is where most of the problems are.

Twintail is useless if you're playing alone, or with wanda. Easy pass for solo play, great for groups. Even if you like the perk, it's situationally so bad it's worthless. Even if you hate the perk, it has enough value to pick up in groups. The player controlling wortox's play style doesn't matter for this, only team composition. it's pretty bizarre that his nice skills remove the monster tag, but don't let his skills be useful by the followers. Let me let a pig hold one to heal me, or let me revive a pig or beefalo with it. Anything to give it some kind of use for when your friends arent online. The rot is weird for it too. Trash half the time isn't really perfect. 

Next up, his healing tree. Even in a large lobby, just pick up the jar and farm more souls. 2 skill points to completely overshadow this 4 point tree. Souls moving to a character is a silly concept when you can just teleport to them, and they're cheap enough to drop all the time if you got lucky with jars. Requirement if you want nice side wortox, but it's useless on followers... Let solo play wortox be viable for healing. Pigs aren't as handy as people, you're not making him more overpowered by letting him heal followers when he already has the ability to make his human friends unkillable. 

His movement skills are good. The extra soul hop is great except for crippling the decoy. the map teleport is handy early game, then useless because of jars.

The neutral stuff is 1/3 goodish. I like the use of the pan flute, but it's a very limited item. Kind of bad because even with the skill, on multiplayer servers you risk it being completely useless. The souls on use is pretty bad unless you really hate killing bugs. Not getting targeted for 5 seconds might be okay, but there aren't a ton of situations where it's practical after you learn the bosses. Its potentially useful against unreleased content, maybe some of the new stuff I haven't seen. Could have potential, but last time I played it was very low mid.

The sack is still pretty lame to me. It's handy enough. You make a huge mess, so it makes the cleanup a little less boring I guess? The net feature is handy for saving bugs for soul damage. While wortox doesn't need a backpack (teleport, your base is your backpack), just look at it.. it was the number 1 recommendation for a reason. A backpack with weapon potential would have been great. A tool with inventory space would be great. As is, it's required for the jars, and it makes a boring task quicker. 5/10 but definitely not perfect.

The jar is sandwiched between mid unlocks, bottles suck to find too. Leaked souls should heal too. Would have been so cool to set up portable heal spots for friends. 

Top skill on that branch is actual trash. Skip it. You will be more powerful if you use the 100 souls. This perk is so stupid to me. Useless if you go for shadow side, it doesn't effect the scythe. When we said we wanted to hold more souls, it was because we wanted to use more souls. This just ends up making two soul jars useless.

The other skill is A tier. Skip the naughty debuff and get this. With a full inventory and 4 jars, you can not overflow on souls. Kind of funny how useless the naughty perk is when this is on the table.

Souls doing damage is great, but the teleport range on console is still crap @V2C said it was being adjusted, but failed to mention that it was a PC only fix. Great to see that you guys understand the issue, you would think the control rework would be the time to fix this. With the way it's been for console, it's safe to bet that this will go unaddressed. I know you aren't in charge of the way the console port is handled, but you guys pay them to take care of this kind of stuff. Your company is responsible for having this kind of stuff fixed. It doesn't make the console devs look bad, it makes the game look bad. Honestly, it just makes the game bad. This is the only experience a lot of your players will have with the game. None of us will be rushing to get more Klei games. 

Decoy is stronger when you skip a skill that makes your affinity perk weak. Low synergy with late game. Damage is on pop, so the soul pierce outclasses it with minimum setup.

Affinity skills are uncreative. Nothing to do with the character. Feels like they ran out of clever ideas so they just buffed some end game gear. Helmet is useless, just teleport. The weapon is fine for grabbing souls, but something unique to him would have obviously been way better. 

They didn't really take much of the wortox mains feedback during the beta. Their hands were full from Wendy and Walter so he was pretty much ignored. Passable, but a long shot from perfect.

It's a bit of a book, if there's anything specific anyone wants to respond to, feel free to cut out the majority of the post to focus on what you want to address.

Edited September 20, 2025 by Hollow soul 3

[VaskalRascal]

Oh boy, you've angered the Wortox simps.

[Dingle]

17 hours ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

Eh, not really even close. It has enough good perks to pick out a fun build, with some filler. It's not hard to pick what skills to leave behind. A perfect tree should probability make it feel like it's a hard decision. The nice side is where most of the problems are

.His movement skills are good. The extra soul hop is great except for crippling the decoy. the map teleport is handy early game, then useless because of jars.

The map teleport remains great imo, as it gets to a 50% discount. That means less refuels on souls.

17 hours ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

The neutral stuff is 1/3 goodish. I like the use of the pan flute, but it's a very limited item. Kind of bad because even with the skill, on multiplayer servers you risk it being completely useless. The souls on use is pretty bad unless you really hate killing bugs. Not getting targeted for 5 seconds might be okay, but there aren't a ton of situations where it's practical after you learn the bosses. Its potentially useful against unreleased content, maybe some of the new stuff I haven't seen. Could have potential, but last time I played it was very low mid.

I still think the pan flute soul toot isn't worth the points. If it was one point for the pan flute once a day toot and the 6 souls per toot, combined, I'd consider it. Now I just skip it. The faster you can get jars, the more of a waste of points it is.

As of now its like 2 points for 120 free souls a 20 day season. Sounds like a lot at first, but once you get a few jars thats basically saving you one trip to the bee biome every 2 hours and 40 minutes.

Do you ever spend 1 point just for the one free pan flute a day perk?

17 hours ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

The sack is still pretty lame to me. It's handy enough. You make a huge mess, so it makes the cleanup a little less boring I guess? The net feature is handy for saving bugs for soul damage. While wortox doesn't need a backpack (teleport, your base is your backpack), just look at it.. it was the number 1 recommendation for a reason. A backpack with weapon potential would have been great. A tool with inventory space would be great. As is, it's required for the jars, and it makes a boring task quicker. 5/10 but definitely not perfect.

I like the sack now as a tool. I also like it for catching extra bees sometimes before a ruins rush, mostly if I'm having bad luck with jars.

17 hours ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

The jar is sandwiched between mid unlocks, bottles suck to find too. Leaked souls should heal too. Would have been so cool to set up portable heal spots for friends.

I'm still surprised this never happened.

17 hours ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

Top skill on that branch is actual trash. Skip it. You will be more powerful if you use the 100 souls. This perk is so stupid to me. Useless if you go for shadow side, it doesn't effect the scythe. When we said we wanted to hold more souls, it was because we wanted to use more souls. This just ends up making two soul jars useless.

I tried to make this work, now I consider it a permanent skip. On games where I grab it, I often simply never use the knabsack as a weapon because it eats 2.5 jars I could have used to teleport. Ham bats, the twins shield, glass cutters, all better before you get the rift weapon you eventually have to use, anyway.

17 hours ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

Decoy is stronger when you skip a skill that makes your affinity perk weak. Low synergy with late game. Damage is on pop, so the soul pierce outclasses it with minimum setup.

I like decoy more than soul pierce, currently. One less point spent, and can still run the spider dock soul farm.

17 hours ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

Affinity skills are uncreative. Nothing to do with the character. Feels like they ran out of clever ideas so they just buffed some end game gear. Helmet is useless, just teleport. The weapon is fine for grabbing souls, but something unique to him would have obviously been way better. 

They didn't really take much of the wortox mains feedback during the beta. Their hands were full from Wendy and Walter so he was pretty much ignored. Passable, but a long shot from perfect.

It's a bit of a book, if there's anything specific anyone wants to respond to, feel free to cut out the majority of the post to focus on what you want to address.