Why do skill trees exist in the game?

[Hungry French]

What is their meaning?

Give the characters powerups, but why?

Why are 90% of skills just number buffs or literally enhanced versions of existing items in the game?...

Why do they force you to gain experience once?..

Why is the quality of the trees so low...

No... Why, instead of high-quality and necessary updates, including technical ones, a chest for WX appears in the game...
Teleporter focus Winona version 3.0.
Etc... Like the same Meat Effigy Wendy Edition 2.0...

Literally... Why 4 characters in the game never use Teleportato Focus...
why characters are not given unique items and cool synergies, but are given "Substitutes"....

A little bit of indignation. Because the filler is updated again in game...

Okay, buffs... I understand that this is necessary for casual players.
But why do they ruin the game and the expectation of updates for hardcore players?
But why add the same item' but replacing it...

 

Edited March 20 by Hungry French

[DegenerateFurry]

The better-designed skill trees offer multiple interesting optional power-ups or even alternate playstyles. Take Wormwood's as an example, though it does have some flaws: you can take the mushroom branch and the combat branch to change him from Designated Farming Character to someone who generates food passively via mushrooms and has pretty solid combat capabilities. 

Walter's skill tree lets you focus on combat, scouting/a nomadic playstyle, or a mix of the two depending on your preference. Before, Walter was a severely lacking character barely anyone liked, but now he's popular because his skill tree makes his unusual ranged playstyle more viable. 

Woodie's skill tree gives you the option to either be an excellent support character that provides budget walking canes to your team and discount wooden helmets, or you can specialize in treeguards, farming then much more readily or even using them against bosses if you're smart about it. 

WX-78's skill tree is bringing much-needed changes to the circuit system. The slow recharge and massive charge drain punishes switching circuits so heavily that you're basically forced into only using a single set of them (usually speed and light or night vision), but now there's a variety of ways you can do more with the character, plus some neat new drones that give other options.

Skill trees are all about adding options to characters, giving them more interesting gameplay, and creating variety where it was lacking. They're also often used to make a character more powerful if they needed to be (like pre-skill tree Willow), and they also help characters out with planar stuff post-rifts.

As for "ruining the game", nah, that's the thing: these are all options?  You don't have to use them, just like you don't have to use the world settings that make the game way easier, and just like you don't have to play Wolfgang if you don't want to be playing on easy mode.

Also, the Teleportato is from DS, I think you meant Telelocator. Nobody used that anyway because it's a hassle to set up and too expensive.

 

Edited March 20 by DegenerateFurry

[aidancode]

Skill tree updates serve to make characters more distinct from one another and to fix issues with the character fantasy from the old versions. You can argue that it strays from the original vision, that's the point. The fact is, modern DST has a different playerbase, different developers, and a different design philosophy from its past. DST is much more about player freedom and game progression, DS is much more about uncompromising survival and mystery. Whether you think the new vision is good or not, whether you think the skill trees as a concept fit in with a game like this, it can't be argued that the skill trees do achieve their goal of increasing player freedom.

And this is coming from somebody who doesn't even like skill trees that much, tbh. But like, Klei is doing something specific, and the core game still exists. DST updates are almost always new content now rather than reworking and removing old content. The stuff that they have reworked probably won't be missed anyways.

[Evelo]

Made a post about this, somewhat on the beta forum. I think buffs to existing stuff is great for a skill tree. Move all the stuff that adds new thing to baseline and enhance it through the skills to suit a preferred style.

[Ratituee]

they're basically second reworks. i have some issues with the balance but i overall think that characters with skill trees are far more fun than characters without them

[Evelo]

3 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

As for "ruining the game", nah, that's the thing: these are all options?  You don't have to use them, just like you don't have to use the world settings that make the game way easier, and just like you don't have to play Wolfgang if you don't want to be playing on easy mode.

I do agree skill trees don't ruin the game, but their implementation could definitely be better. If everyone picks the same skill, why make it a skill instead of baseline? Balance is another issue, but over all it is good to voice criticism and see counter points instead of "just ignore it then". I believe, please correct me if I am wrong @Hungry French, but the issue is more with the homogenization of characters. See: Winona, Wendy, WX, all getting a new resurrection skill. I personally don't see anything wrong with it as a concept since resurrection is available to everyone already, but stuff akin to that is my guess. Which is a valid complaint. Can't just ignore every character getting tools that diminishes identity. (Please correct me if I am wrong in your position Hungry French, don't want to put words in your mouth)

[Mysterious box]

3 hours ago, aidancode said:

Skill tree updates serve to make characters more distinct from one another and to fix issues with the character fantasy from the old versions.

I know I'm being a jerk when I say this but when you get past the different animations and designs skill trees actually ended up making characters more similar rather than different.

[HowlVoid]

Its to offer an incentive to keep playing after death. Theres very little as tangible proof that you are progressing after each death, as far as new players are aware off. There is/was a democraphic where knowledge based progression was more than enough. The pool for that kind of player has been tapped out probably.

[Mike23Ua]

My main head scratcher is why are they going through all this effort to update the characters with new playstyles for a decade old game that development on has slowed to a trickle on…

like WHO is making these executive decisions? Lmao 😂 

I don’t have a problem with the new character abilities themselves, so to say.. but in brutal honesty it feels like the type of major character changes that would also go hand in hand with major gameplay changes (aka an actual sequel with stuff like this)

Spoiler

as it stands right now: with all these major changes to character playstyles, the only logical explanation I can reasonably conceive is that they are using DST as a “Beta, or Testing Ground” for a future DS 2

[Cuernito.]

Answering the question of the title it is cause klei  made them, some day long time ago they made the first skill tree, the wilson one and people were so fascinated by it that klei made the choice of making a skill tree for every character, and here we are waiting for all of this to come to an end, but sadly after all the trees are up a new cycle is gonna start, its name would be revisit of skill trees. I dont think i will live that far but maybe one of the descendants would be able to see the end of this doom. 

Now, seriously i think skill tree are funny, sure they are not perfect but meh there is no thing in this life that we can agree is perfect so let klei be creative, this game is the only survival game that always makes me come back after a break from it.

[aidancode]

1 hour ago, Mysterious box said:

I know I'm being a jerk when I say this but when you get past the different animations and designs skill trees actually ended up making characters more similar rather than different.

If you boil characters down to their most basic thing, sure. But characters are very multifaceted. Not every teleporter, not every healer, not every ranged attacker has the same use case and resource management. Skill trees allow characters to explore their character fantasy to its fullest. Back before all of this, every character was "Wilson but". Now they're actually unique archetypes.

So yeah, so what if like 3 or 4 characters have teleports? There's 18 total characters, and a teleport makes the new one stand out better, especially if it's completely unique.

[Cuernito.]

10 minutes ago, aidancode said:

If you boil characters down to their most basic thing, sure. But characters are very multifaceted. Not every teleporter, not every healer, not every ranged attacker has the same use case and resource management. Skill trees allow characters to explore their character fantasy to its fullest. Back before all of this, every character was "Wilson but". Now they're actually unique archetypes.

So yeah, so what if like 3 or 4 characters have teleports? There's 18 total characters, and a teleport makes the new one stand out better, especially if it's completely unique.

True they now feel more unique to play. Now nobody can tell me this is not a solid RPG game.

Now im just waiting for my last main character my man Warly to be his better self.

[Maxil20]

3 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

My main head scratcher is why are they going through all this effort to update the characters with new playstyles for a decade old game that development on has slowed to a trickle on…

I don't know, maybe the over 50,000 people that play this game daily, on PC alone?

[Evelo]

2 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

I don't know, maybe the over 50,000 people that play this game daily, on PC alone?

unfortunately because there are rewards that can be sold for money that randomly drop, there are dedicated bots designated to afk for the rewards. Mind you it would be surprising if it is greater than 10,000 bots. But they are present sadly, all games that give rewards that can be sold on the steam marketplace have them. Still though 30k+ people is still quite popular for a game. Unless you are EA or Meta and decide to shut down a game because with 100k regular players... (going off topic but yknow, giving props to Klei for keeping it active)

Edited March 21 by Evelo

[Edible Coal]

23 minutes ago, Evelo said:

unfortunately because there are rewards that can be sold for money that randomly drop, there are dedicated bots designated to afk for the rewards. Mind you it would be surprising if it is greater than 10,000 bots. But they are present sadly, all games that give rewards that can be sold on the steam marketplace have them. Still though 30k+ people is still quite popular for a game. Unless you are EA or Meta and decide to shut down a game because with 100k regular players... (going off topic but yknow, giving props to Klei for keeping it active)

theres no way that the amount of bots and the price of dst + machine expensive can be cover by selling some 2 dollar item

[Evelo]

29 minutes ago, Edible Coal said:

theres no way that the amount of bots and the price of dst + machine expensive can be cover by selling some 2 dollar item

I would assume it is usually done in tandem with other games. Additionally DST has that "give a free copy of the game to a friend" so there is a way to obtain it for free, and if the machine is doing multiple games simultaneously, or renting out the service to a third party like Amazon, it can be as cheap as a few cents a day (granted I am guessing on the price based on what my friend does, cause he hosts numerous servers for like 50 cents a year.). So that 2 dollar item when amassed in the hundreds for just DST alone can be a net profit. Mind you, I am not advocating for it. I think it is a scummy thing to do. But I figure it isn't that hard to achieve if someone actually put forth the effort to do so.

[BB Marioni]

I think they were originally made to be customizeable perks. That's why they can be carried over from one world to another as they qre not meant to be a progression system, but more like base perks that you can pick depending on your playstyle.

The main issue is that there are skills that are too useful which everyone will pick, and skills that are too useless which no one picks. 

[flamboyant wolf]

11 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

I know I'm being a jerk when I say this but when you get past the different animations and designs skill trees actually ended up making characters more similar rather than different.

idk about you, but my gameplay is shaped and affected by the character I play now more than ever. Depending on who I chose, I am gonna inevitably play differently, both in terms of approach and goals. Compare this to like, old Walter who barely had any reason or incentive to even use most of his kit, old Winona who only really had catapults, etc.

[Mysterious box]

4 hours ago, flamboyant wolf said:

idk about you, but my gameplay is shaped and affected by the character I play now more than ever. Depending on who I chose, I am gonna inevitably play differently, both in terms of approach and goals. Compare this to like, old Walter who barely had any reason or incentive to even use most of his kit, old Winona who only really had catapults, etc.

I'm not saying they can't do anything different I'm saying a large amount of the cast is starting to do a lot of the same things even if with slight differences.

[AliceShiki]

Klei continues making skill trees because they're consistently the most popular updates that drive the most engagement and that get more beta threads made about it.

That's basically it. If skill trees were unpopular, they would have probably been abandoned, but that was not the case.

[Ridley]

17 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

Its to offer an incentive to keep playing after death. Theres very little as tangible proof that you are progressing after each death, as far as new players are aware off. There is/was a democraphic where knowledge based progression was more than enough. The pool for that kind of player has been tapped out probably.

I believe this is the main reason. A lot of people are saying character customization, but I am pretty certain they wanted a encouragement system that is analogous to the original Don't Starve. You unlock characters just for time spent surviving in DS, which is something that was totally absent from DST.

[Hi.]

I think the main point of skill trees is to buff character's post rift with all of the planar stuff. I could be wrong though

[Cheggf]

On 3/21/2026 at 1:44 AM, Edible Coal said:

theres no way that the amount of bots and the price of dst + machine expensive can be cover by selling some 2 dollar item

The historical low for DST was $1.49 for two copies, or 75 cents for a single game. A single drop exceeds that. The game is constantly on sale for $5, or $2.50 for a single game. A single drop is unlikely to exceed that, but it can. There are tons of mods for farming drops (even though you don't need a mod), with some of them having even 70k subscribers. There are definitely at least thousands of bots farming drops, and also people who are idling for drops even if they aren't necessarily playing. 

18 hours ago, Mysterious box said:

I'm not saying they can't do anything different I'm saying a large amount of the cast is starting to do a lot of the same things even if with slight differences.

I don't know why people are arguing against this when literally every single skill tree other than Wilson's turns the characters into a fighter. Everyone is combat focused now. Everyone is about fighting, and it's very common for them to have perks related to gathering or moving. Teleporting across the entire map is now a very common feature, it went from Wanda exclusive and very expensive to something that's available to 5 characters, and all of them are way better at it than Wanda (except Woodie who's still way cheaper than Wanda but his kind of sucks).

People used to pretend like Wanda was unfathomably overpowered because she had the most expensive teleport ever, but now freely teleporting at no cost is just the status quo. Several characters do it now. Wortox is just Wanda but better. WX is just Wanda but better. I'm fully expecting Maxwell to be able to teleport, so that he too will become Wanda but better. 

[slendyproject]

22 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Teleporting across the entire map is now a very common feature, it went from Wanda exclusive and very expensive to something that's available to 5 characters, and all of them are way better at it than Wanda (except Woodie who's still way cheaper than Wanda but his kind of sucks).

Possibly hot take but this is good actually. Moving around the map sucks, it takes forever to get anywhere especially in the earlygame. The game becomes so much more fun with access to either teleportation or early movement abilities like woby or the wood canes. I personally hate using beefalo, taming them is super annoying and unfun and walking canes are still not guaranteed for everyone on a server, so characters getting movement skills is one of the best things the skill trees add in my opinion.

[Mysterious box]

7 hours ago, slendyproject said:

Possibly hot take but this is good actually. Moving around the map sucks, it takes forever to get anywhere especially in the earlygame. The game becomes so much more fun with access to either teleportation or early movement abilities like woby or the wood canes. I personally hate using beefalo, taming them is super annoying and unfun and walking canes are still not guaranteed for everyone on a server, so characters getting movement skills is one of the best things the skill trees add in my opinion.

There's a big elephant in the room when this comes up though in that if the devs realize traversal is a big issue and thus are giving a lot of character teleports I have to then ask why in the world isn't base traversal methods improving? Personally I don't mind fast travel or other special methods being exclusive to a particular character but when it's repeated among a good deal of characters at that point start reevaluating why the need for this keep coming up.