aidancode Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 I know it's a lot of work, but if Klei wants to do more character changes in the next arc, I think the best pick would be to expand skill trees. As of now, 15 skill points is too much considering how few skills are actually choosable. What makes a good skill tree layout - Tough sacrifices - Every skill has a purpose - Skills enable new strategies - Each playthrough can be very different What DST does right now - Best skills are always taken - Sacrifices are usually mostly useless perks - Lots of skills are stat buffs and kinda boring - Max skill points lets you choose well over half the total skills I think this problem is worth mentioning since it doesn't require a ton of new coding, it's mostly just an issue with layouts and balancing. Balancing is a big deal! In a game like this, balancing is the difference between content affecting the game and never getting used. I know balancing is hard, practically impossible to do well, but every bit of effort brings things closer to viability. 9 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/170030-skill-trees-barely-make-you-make-the-tough-choices/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cheggf Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 Next skill tree gonna look like this 2 6 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/170030-skill-trees-barely-make-you-make-the-tough-choices/#findComment-1853737 Share on other sites More sharing options...
DegenerateFurry Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 3 hours ago, aidancode said: I know it's a lot of work, but if Klei wants to do more character changes in the next arc, I think the best pick would be to expand skill trees. As of now, 15 skill points is too much considering how few skills are actually choosable. This is an inaccurate generalization, it varies a lot between skill trees. Wormwood's skill tree has some really bad perks and some good ones, for example, and if you actually want to craft plants, 15 skill points doesn't feel like enough because you're wasting so many just to be able to make lure plants and things you can easily get elsewhere with no perk investment (lunar saplings, berry bushes, monkey tails, etc). Then there's Walter's skill tree, which is perfectly balanced; if you want him to be as good as possible for combat, you'll be sacrificing either Woby mobility or QoL exploration-focused perks, or the other way around. The problem's not that we have too many points to invest, it's that some perks are set up in such a way that they're not even worth choosing. 3 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/170030-skill-trees-barely-make-you-make-the-tough-choices/#findComment-1853738 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evelo Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 Not to mention you can change your skills whenever you want with the Celestial Portal. Locking it out to a per-world basis would make it so you had to commit to your choices which really lays on the decision making process. 4 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/170030-skill-trees-barely-make-you-make-the-tough-choices/#findComment-1853740 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cheggf Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 3 minutes ago, Evelo said: Not to mention you can change your skills whenever you want with the Celestial Portal. Locking it out to a per-world basis would make it so you had to commit to your choices which really lays on the decision making process. Or at least something that's more difficult than a single purple gem with no cooldown. Walking to the portal is genuinely the most expensive part of respeccing, the time it takes you to get there is 1,000x more valuable than the single purple gem or the single piece of moonrock. You likely have at least dozens of each of those resources in the first year without even trying to amass them, and not much to use them on. 4 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/170030-skill-trees-barely-make-you-make-the-tough-choices/#findComment-1853742 Share on other sites More sharing options...
aidancode Posted March 12 Author Share Posted March 12 2 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said: This is an inaccurate generalization, it varies a lot between skill trees. Wormwood's skill tree has some really bad perks and some good ones, for example, and if you actually want to craft plants, 15 skill points doesn't feel like enough because you're wasting so many just to be able to make lure plants and things you can easily get elsewhere with no perk investment (lunar saplings, berry bushes, monkey tails, etc). Then there's Walter's skill tree, which is perfectly balanced; if you want him to be as good as possible for combat, you'll be sacrificing either Woby mobility or QoL exploration-focused perks, or the other way around. The problem's not that we have too many points to invest, it's that some perks are set up in such a way that they're not even worth choosing. You're right, there's several trees where that is the problem. There's a quite a few unique flavors of issues with skill trees, I suppose. 1 hour ago, Cheggf said: Or at least something that's more difficult than a single purple gem with no cooldown. Walking to the portal is genuinely the most expensive part of respeccing, the time it takes you to get there is 1,000x more valuable than the single purple gem or the single piece of moonrock. You likely have at least dozens of each of those resources in the first year without even trying to amass them, and not much to use them on. I'm not entirely against the way it's currently designed. On one hand, I think the fact that it pseudo-locks you into your tree until realistically you beat dragonfly or ruins rush is a fair amount of game progression (I wouldn't want to force people who don't enjoy progressing the campaign into their tree so hard); I don't think it needs to be restricted crazily farther than that. But on the other hand, it's a little weird how freely you can switch once you have even a couple spare purples. 1 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/170030-skill-trees-barely-make-you-make-the-tough-choices/#findComment-1853744 Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaurun Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 (edited) 2 hours ago, Evelo said: Not to mention you can change your skills whenever you want with the Celestial Portal. Locking it out to a per-world basis would make it so you had to commit to your choices which really lays on the decision making process. Restriction is quite boring as to me. There're people who don't want to make character swaps/respecs per world - this is clear, so having a world gen setting restriction for celestial portal craft could be nice. But making it impossible to respec for everyone is not cool. If I want to play long-term Wormwood for example, I might want to fight bosses atm, but then decide to play chill and do base-building or discover other strategies. Maybe I'm rushing late game content or something. Why people think that starting the world from scratch is funnier for everyone just to play with a different skillset? Edited March 12 by shaurun Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/170030-skill-trees-barely-make-you-make-the-tough-choices/#findComment-1853745 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evelo Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 4 minutes ago, shaurun said: so having a a world gen setting restriction for celestial portal craft could be nice. This is all I've wanted for years. Well and for balance to be based around not having access to the portal. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/170030-skill-trees-barely-make-you-make-the-tough-choices/#findComment-1853746 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seero Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 this is a load of crap btw. 2 1 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/170030-skill-trees-barely-make-you-make-the-tough-choices/#findComment-1853834 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakepeng99 Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 On 3/12/2026 at 3:22 AM, Cheggf said: Next skill tree gonna look like this Literally Wolfgang Skilltree. On 3/12/2026 at 12:16 AM, aidancode said: I know it's a lot of work, but if Klei wants to do more character changes in the next arc, I think the best pick would be to expand skill trees. As of now, 15 skill points is too much considering how few skills are actually choosable. What makes a good skill tree layout - Tough sacrifices - Every skill has a purpose - Skills enable new strategies - Each playthrough can be very different What DST does right now - Best skills are always taken - Sacrifices are usually mostly useless perks - Lots of skills are stat buffs and kinda boring - Max skill points lets you choose well over half the total skills I think this problem is worth mentioning since it doesn't require a ton of new coding, it's mostly just an issue with layouts and balancing. Balancing is a big deal! In a game like this, balancing is the difference between content affecting the game and never getting used. I know balancing is hard, practically impossible to do well, but every bit of effort brings things closer to viability. Yeah I agree. Only characters who don’t seem to not fall into this are: 1. Winona. 2. Wortox. 3. Wurt (yeah this doesnt mean It’s good, her tree is just good at giving hard decisions) 4. Walter. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/170030-skill-trees-barely-make-you-make-the-tough-choices/#findComment-1853852 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cheggf Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 (edited) A lot of the skill trees are designed in such a way that it's like we're only getting a fraction of the tree. A big line of 5 skills in a row where you have to take the previous 4 bad perks to get the 5th good perk, really boring stat buffs (especially iterative upon themselves, like +10% mighty meter, +20% mighty meter, +30% mighty meter), stuff like this is what you would find in a game that has an enormous tree with an enormous amount of skill points. It's like they looked at Path of Exile which has you pick 123 out of 1,325 skills, and they didn't understand that the reason the choices are so boring and repetitive is because the tree is so big. Edited March 13 by Cheggf 2 1 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/170030-skill-trees-barely-make-you-make-the-tough-choices/#findComment-1853863 Share on other sites More sharing options...
wormwood123 Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 On 3/12/2026 at 3:48 AM, Evelo said: Not to mention you can change your skills whenever you want with the Celestial Portal. Locking it out to a per-world basis would make it so you had to commit to your choices which really lays on the decision making process. Honestly I wouldn’t mind removing it from the celestial portal but then adding a harder item to get that 1.doesn’t drop all your items on the floor And 2. Has a high cost to use each time like maybe even the celestial jewels Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/170030-skill-trees-barely-make-you-make-the-tough-choices/#findComment-1853866 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty_Mentos Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 DST skilltrees aren't exactly skilltrees, closer to skill shrubs or a bundle of tools. There's no real direction of what a classic skilltree would be like unless unlock these to get to these perks which is a thing. Would be more impactful if it mattered during gameplay, until it's all finished I don't think we'll see any changes or results unless something feels very unsatisfying. 2 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/170030-skill-trees-barely-make-you-make-the-tough-choices/#findComment-1853868 Share on other sites More sharing options...
aidancode Posted March 13 Author Share Posted March 13 1 hour ago, Frosty_Mentos said: DST skilltrees aren't exactly skilltrees, closer to skill shrubs or a bundle of tools. There's no real direction of what a classic skilltree would be like unless unlock these to get to these perks which is a thing. Would be more impactful if it mattered during gameplay, until it's all finished I don't think we'll see any changes or results unless something feels very unsatisfying. Personally I don't mind the skill shrubs. Walter's tree for instance is one of the best done trees in my opinion but it definitely fits the shrub vibe. What matters a lot more than the tree structure is just making sure every option is viable. The tree structure just makes that more likely to happen by locking cool skills behind less cool skills Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/170030-skill-trees-barely-make-you-make-the-tough-choices/#findComment-1853871 Share on other sites More sharing options...
PonyOfApocalips Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 Tbh, only good skill tree is Walter's- even if i dont like way you play him now i must addmit you need to do choices. 3 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/170030-skill-trees-barely-make-you-make-the-tough-choices/#findComment-1853879 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frosty_Mentos Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 Personally I think the skilltrees are fine. I would like slight tuning to add some Wilson additions instead of having a weird Willow like skills but less. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/170030-skill-trees-barely-make-you-make-the-tough-choices/#findComment-1853884 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mysterious box Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 10 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said: 3. Wurt (yeah this doesnt mean It’s good, her tree is just good at giving hard decisions) No not really Wurt has plenty skills that just have minimal impact like the mosquito branch or no real impact like her amphibian branch which is a big branch by the way. 1 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/170030-skill-trees-barely-make-you-make-the-tough-choices/#findComment-1853889 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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