Skill trees in Dont starve elsewhere

[Capybara007]

Dont starve together has really turned me down since the addition of skill trees, they are no longer a revisit to old character reworks like winona and willow, and they dont even build on the foundation of what the point of the original character was, willow skill trees is the most obvious
Some people might say that skill trees arent that bad and the problem is how klei changed their ideas for character reworks/skill trees over the years (willow rework was bernie+some new features, now the expectative is at least 20 craftables with new combat moves)

I dont mind skill trees in DST anymore, klei wont just delete the skill trees because 2 people on the forum said they want to play the old dont starve, even i, as a maxwell main im excited to see what crazy new weapon or spell he is getting when he gets his skill tree
The main reason why i dont mind is because if we are being honest nobody plays DST for the inmersion anymore, with all the skins and goofy attack spells the characters do like they are in a MOBA, i dont mind if the next skill tree adds something dumb like a nuke

But with DSE just from that announcement the world looks so much fun, and id hate to see it ruined by some skill tree superpower nonsense (specially willow, i really hate that skill tree)

I wanted to see how much the community would miss the skill trees if they werent on the game, or how much the community would hate the game if the skill trees existed

Edited April 14 by Capybara007

[NPCMaxwell]

I hope the characters will return to their "base-gameplay" and maybe one or two of the more impactful skilltree aspects (e.g. keeping the Beard skills for Wilson, Woodie's beever tail attack, big Bearnie, Wobie fetch and so on) but not as a /tree/ but as a default

[aidancode]

Skill trees are meant to add customization, but we already have customization, 18 different characters. I would prefer for them to add new characters rather than add filler abilities to old ones. A smaller game with more tight design is better than a bigger game in my opinion, and we already have the bigger game in DST.

[mkemal23]

I just hope DSE focuses more on overall gameplay loop and less on the actuall characters.

Character updates are an endless pit of never ending expectations, So I hope that DSE characters are simple as possible with most of the character spesific abilities are added to base game.

Edited April 14 by mkemal23

[Mike23Ua]

Unfortunately… I’m pretty sure that DST is being used as a beta testing ground for features they should and should not add into Elsewhere, so skill trees will 100% be in Elsewhere in some capacity or another (even if there’s no actual skill points to invest in and characters instead just become more powerful through gaining EXP)

We won’t have to worry about that too much as long as Klei successfully handles the rest of the game to work in conjunction with it, in my opinion it’s okay for the characters to have a bunch of wacky crafts and weapons, and in brutal honesty… I hope DSE has a TON of new weapon types.. we only see ONE in the DSE announcement Trailer, but I can’t wait to bash foes with that Coral Mace. I just hope they crank weapon variety up to 11… kinda like how players can use a Bullkelp stalk as a whip in DST but it’s pretty pointless… give us whips in DSE that are actually good weapons, metal chains, hand-made survivor style daggers with shorter attack range but hit faster/does more damage, just idk some really cool weapon type stuff like some of the many many Mods that exist out there.

But ultimately, I want a world filled with dangerous hostile mobs, and weather seasons you have to prepare for with cool Navigational style puzzles you have to solve (aka there might be a tall hill you can’t reach to cross to another tall hill so chopping down one of those NEW very TALL Redforest trees could have it “fall” and smash onto the other hill to become a convenient bridge to cross)

Actually yeah update the tree chopping animations so trees visibly fall, that would be neat.

[Draggofroot]

I hope that if/when they add skilltrees, they focus more on letting duplicate characters specialize rather than making it buff combat in some way, like woodie's curse skill tree having you either focus on combat, exploration, or gathering yk?
 

[Kwaik]

I'd assume skill trees are a near guarantee. The only question is whether they come at 1.0 or come later with power creep 

[Capybara007]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

Unfortunately… I’m pretty sure that DST is being used as a beta testing ground for features they should and should not add into Elsewhere, so skill trees will 100% be in Elsewhere in some capacity or another (even if there’s no actual skill points to invest in and characters instead just become more powerful through gaining EXP)

Think about this for a second, how cool the game would be if each character,  instead of having over 5 different mechanics that have some weird interaction, it was ONE core mechanic that affected all stages of gameplay

Something like this:

- Wolfgang

Spoiler

- 200 health

- 150 hunger

- 120 sanity

His mightiness is not tied to his hunger, but his health, when he is at 100% health, more speed and damage, when he is 99% health or lower, normal, when he is 50% or lower, wimpy wolfgang

This would be a mechanic that is not tied to an item, so playing as him would be 100% unique (so no winona or warly problem) but its also so important that it always has an effect on gameplay

It also has the benefit of being extremely easy to learn, no need to watch guides on youtube, just by reading you already know how to play as him, dont get hit

Even if you are a new player it basically means avoid danger at all times (like wolfgang in character would) to always have free speed and damage, so its not some super difficult mechanic

- WX

Spoiler

- 500 health

- 200 hunger 

- 150 sanity

Because it is a robot, food will not heal it, instead as long as it is above 80% hunger his health would automatically regenerate by 10 per minute, this can be done by having a little robot arm in the health meter doing a healing animation (simpler and easy to understand) rather than having some weird module that you need to craft that heals you (complicated and unintuitive)

This ONLY perk would make it so, because the massive health and automatic health regen, day to day fights wouldnt matter for your health, and you could survive without ever needing to heal (UPSIDE)

HOWEVER, if you fight a boss that you dont know the patterns, you will take a lot of damage and you will be unable to heal instantly unlike other characters

The SAME PERK makes both a DOWNSIDE and an UPSIDE

- Wickerbottom

Spoiler

- 120 health

- 150 hunger

- 300 sanity

She "has the knowledge of an entire library" that means that she doesnt need to prototype anything, if she has the resources for a dark sword, she can make it without any crafting stations

The downside is that, while wilson can prototype something new and gain sanity for it, everytime wickerbottom crafts something she hasnt prototyped yet she looses 30 sanity, she has to craft the crafting stations normally to avoid this effect

She can also do the books (it would be too much sacrifice to remove those)

Skill trees or not, i dont want the average DSE character to be this:

WONKUS

- Can craft an special "gem sword"

- The gem sword attack changes depending on which gem it has (90 parragraphs for each gem)

- Can summon the souls of defeated enemies to aid him in battle

- Cooks an special meal on his special crockpot

- Can craft a crossbow with 17 special arrow types (the game ends up not designed for ranged combat which makes this item horrible, look at walters slingshot or wanda's alarming clock)

- +5 sanity when close to a potato cup (it reminds him of his uncle or something)

Edited April 14 by Capybara007

[Harrowick]

If they bring back skilltrees I think it'd be neat to see each skill introduce an upside, and a downside. Trade-offs and that kind of thing. Maybe offer a few skills that replace upsides with new ways to interact with that character.

A quick example would be a perk that gives Wilson's hair natural rain resistance (paired with a straw hat would negate wetness altogether?) but as a tradeoff your beard can only grow to its first stage, something like that!

 

I don't mind if trees are in either way, the game looks so good already AHHH

[Bumber64]

If they do, they shouldn't put a bunch of filler skills in. Limit it to a small, meaningful tree, or don't do it at all.

DST is too many skills for too many characters. The boring number boosts were unavoidable.

[xhyom]

4 hours ago, aidancode said:

Skill trees are meant to add customization, but we already have customization, 18 different characters. I would prefer for them to add new characters rather than add filler abilities to old ones. A smaller game with more tight design is better than a bigger game in my opinion, and we already have the bigger game in DST.

I think it's arguable that it don't even add customization to the game, since basically all of them have very obvious choices and you can easily have everything without sacrificing anything. I like the improvements they bring to the characters, like Willow, who without her skill tree is just a bland, maybe even bad, character, but the skilltree as a mechanic is completely irrelevant, It would simply be easier if everything that's there was just in the base kit, and the choice was only in a special ability related to the moon/shadow, and that's it.

 

The way Klei started doing the skill trees is also kinda dumb, because not all characters were aligned to receive one, and since they committed in principle to making a skill tree for EVERYONE, you end up with weaker characters getting trees that just fix them, while stronger ones get even more buffs. It’s like everyone needs to get something, just for the sake of having a skill tree. Maybe things will be different in Elsewhere if everyone starts from a more equal baseline but I’d rather Klei just decide what each character is supposed to be, keep things at least somewhat balanced, tweak stuff when needed, and just not bother with skill trees at all. It doesn’t really feel like a system they fully figured out, and there’s no real reason to crack their heads on it.

BUT

If skill trees are going to be a thing no matter what, I’d much rather they go all-in on it like, give every character a clean base with just stats and core downsides, and put everything else into the skill tree, only stat differences and those more characteristic downsides, leave the rest in the skill tree. It's very difficult to create a skill tree on top of something that already exists, If they did it this way, there’d be way more room for variety. They could make really different path playstyles, like a Wigfrid that gives up tankiness and damage to be more of a bard, or a Webber that doesn’t focus on building a spider army but instead leans into his own spider enhanced abilities, climbing walls, leaping, trapping stuff with silk, etc.

Edited April 14 by xhyom

[NPCMaxwell]

3 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Unfortunately… I’m pretty sure that DST is being used as a beta testing ground for features they should and should not add into Elsewhere, so skill trees will 100% be in Elsewhere in some capacity or another (even if there’s no actual skill points to invest in and characters instead just become more powerful through gaining EXP)

We won’t have to worry about that too much as long as Klei successfully handles the rest of the game to work in conjunction with it, in my opinion it’s okay for the characters to have a bunch of wacky crafts and weapons, and in brutal honesty… I hope DSE has a TON of new weapon types.. we only see ONE in the DSE announcement Trailer, but I can’t wait to bash foes with that Coral Mace. I just hope they crank weapon variety up to 11… kinda like how players can use a Bullkelp stalk as a whip in DST but it’s pretty pointless… give us whips in DSE that are actually good weapons, metal chains, hand-made survivor style daggers with shorter attack range but hit faster/does more damage, just idk some really cool weapon type stuff like some of the many many Mods that exist out there.

But ultimately, I want a world filled with dangerous hostile mobs, and weather seasons you have to prepare for with cool Navigational style puzzles you have to solve (aka there might be a tall hill you can’t reach to cross to another tall hill so chopping down one of those NEW very TALL Redforest trees could have it “fall” and smash onto the other hill to become a convenient bridge to cross)

Actually yeah update the tree chopping animations so trees visibly fall, that would be neat.

New skills in the sense of XP is something I can tolerate though! It is the confusing decision sickness and user disagreements what I hate most about the skilltree stuff

[Mike23Ua]

9 minutes ago, NPCMaxwell said:

New skills in the sense of XP is something I can tolerate though! It is the confusing decision sickness and user disagreements what I hate most about the skilltree stuff

Yeah I like the idea of Wolfgang starting out wimpy by default but as he gains EXP through doing stuff he becomes stronger, instead of just doing 2x damage, he can start out doing like .50 damage and as you play and fight as him he eventually reaches 2.0. No confusing skill trees it’s all just built right in from the start, as you level up gaining Exp you’ll unlock new abilities (yes technically this IS A SKILL TREE) except: You don’t get to pick and choose what your unlocking, and I’m only going to use Wolfgang as my example because his is most simple to explain. As you gain body strength (by hitting enemies in the face) you’ll get strong enough to perform other tasks (faster resource mining, effortlessly carrying heavy objects etc) but again… this is a PER WORLD EXP SYSTEM THAT AUTOMATICALLY UNLOCKS SKILLS you don’t just get to set around being idle unlock 15 skill points and invest them however you please to drop into a new game world already at God Tier Status.

[Karitha]

Skill trees sound interesting on paper, like increasing replayability, but it's not. I usually stick to two skill trees, one of them is for long-term and one is for short-term gameplay, which only have a few differences (like I pick tree guards idols on Woodie if I'm going to rush and pick a walking cane, etc).

My feelings about skill trees are mixed. They really add content per character, they focus on them, but they take their challenges from them. Characters lost their identity to become whatever I want, which I don't like very much. There were farmer, fighter, collector, discoverer characters; now most of them can do anything. You can play with any character, which makes character swapping less important. Also I want to mention how long it takes to give a character skill trees, which maybe it's only for me, but makes characters without skill trees feel boring to play. I love Warly, for example, but I don't play with him. Being able to cook with garlic powder is nothing when you consider the WX-78 body swap and drone mechanics. It feels outdated.

So in the end, I would like to see hardcoded, detailed character updates instead of the “you can be anything, pick whatever fits you” concept. I already pick whatever I want on the character menu.

Also I am really shocked at how many users don't want skill trees on DSE. I was really expecting that it would be among the last picks. Let's hope devs think same with us.

[Cassielu]

I hope that DSE will place more emphasis on the game world content rather than the characters content.

DST has crossed the line at that.

[Mysterious box]

My main issue with most skill trees is that they give the illusion of giving depth despite having next to none and give the illusion making characters more unique. Since skill trees have started the cast has begun to blend together far more than ever before. Multiple characters now have character exclusive revival methods, temperature control methods, ways to increase work speed, a primary weapon pushed by the game, and perhaps most noticable to a silly degree exclusive followers. There's very few actually unique character mechanics left in dst which also makes it much easier to start drawing comparisons between characters and makes it easier to feel dissatisfied with the state of one character when compared to another.

All that said skill tree skills are fun but they have plenty of issues and even in many cases don't really encourage meaningful progression to players like they were advertised to do initially.

[Picklesaurus]

16 hours ago, NPCMaxwell said:

I hope the characters will return to their "base-gameplay" and maybe one or two of the more impactful skilltree aspects (e.g. keeping the Beard skills for Wilson, Woodie's beever tail attack, big Bearnie, Wobie fetch and so on) but not as a /tree/ but as a default

More impactful skilltree aspects and beaver tail attack on the same phrase doesn't fit well.  Weremoose's third hit mega punch fits that tho, When I last played Woodie I couldn't imagine myself without it, it feels really good to use and is literally impactful - the player screen shakes. The beaver tail "attack"  is more forgettable than the semi useless Weregoose random fly.

Edited April 15 by Picklesaurus

[NPCMaxwell]

3 hours ago, Picklesaurus said:

More impactful skilltree aspects and beaver tail attack on the same phrase doesn't fit well.  Weremoose's third hit mega punch fits that tho, When I last played Woodie I couldn't imagine myself without it, it feels really good to use and is literally impactful - the player screen shakes. The beaver tail "attack"  is more forgettable than the semi useless Weregoose random fly.

It was just an EXAMPLE. Since I don't use skilltrees and have no overview of them I just mentioned a skill that I was /READING/ about a lot (which is the beaver tail) so I assumed it had some impact. (consider it a /PLACEHOLDER/ from a person who despites skilltrees and just remembered random aspects from skilltrees)

[Hungry French]

No. Thank you. Let this trash system remain only in Together. And the rest of the systems and features of Together too. 

[Juny Pear]

If there's gonna be skilltrees I'd definitely prefer for them to be kept simpler with a small handful of choices that differ greatly and base character perks that feel substantial in their own right, rather than a ton of smaller random things just to pad out the tree while most character perks end up underwhelming without the tree. I can appreciate customizability like that when you have a smaller selection that feels more impactful in return, like how different weapon choices in tf2 are usually extremely different, but you're still limited to only selecting one choice per weapon slot. Though it'd also be nice if they were something you had to earn per world, and couldn't just have right off the bat on day 1 once you unlocked a perk in a prior world.

Now that being said I'd definitely rather not have them in elsewhere to begin with, I think just having characters benefit more from certain in-world items than others and varying your playthroughs with the use of new strategies is more interesting to me than clicking a button on a menu and unlocking a perk that screams 'win harder'.
Basically just have certain items synergize better with certain characters instead and I think we'd be golden.

[Capybara007]

The problem is that if you really think about it skill trees in DST dont work like skill trees, it doesnt branch, its more like a stick

As wigfrid you dont choose to be a tank, or a bard that buffs allies, or an assassin, you always choose the same skills with maybe some variation

90% of the skill tree would work just fine if they were base kit, klei just wanted to make a skill tree system to increase the power level of early characters that got their rework like winona and willow

if klei approaches character design similarly for DSE then after 3 years of release every character will be able to shoot lazer eyes and fly because of the need of every character to be in the same level of power (but remember guys balance doesnt matter!!! You should be ok with every character being able to collect embers and shoot flames!!)

Also unrelated but i really hate how they give qol stuff to characters instead of everyone (winona winbots) hopefully characters in dse are going to be special not just because of their items, but also because of their downside

Edited April 20 by Capybara007

[Mike23Ua]

20 minutes ago, Capybara007 said:

The problem is that if you really think about it skill trees in DST dont work like skill trees, it doesnt branch of, its more like a stick

As wigfrid you dont choose to be a tank, or a bard that buffs allies, or an , you always choose the same skills with maybe some variation

90% of the skill tree would work just fine if they were base kit, klei just wanted to make a skill tree system to increase the power level of early characters that got their rework like winona and willow

if klei approaches character design similarly for DSE then after 3 years of release every character will be able to shoot lazer eyes and fly because of the need of every character to be in the same level of power (but remember guys balance doesnt matter!!! You should be ok with every character being able to collect embers and shoot flames!!)

Also unrelated but i really hate how they give qol stuff to characters instead of everyone (winona winbots) hopefully characters in dse are going to be special not just because of their items, but also because of their downside

The difference between DST & DSE is likely hundreds if not thousands of new animations. Re-watch the announcement trailer for example: when the bat boss crashes down into the caves he knocks Willow down face first into a pool of water, we see water drops visibly drip off both the bat creature, and Willow as she recovers. I believe that these new animations will #1 reason they can not just port over all the DST skin sets into DSE. But it’ll also probably make doing skill trees in DSE far more complicated as well.

Currently: We know that DSE has goats & some weird uhh cultist like CoTL style worshipers that can ram or punch the character and send them flying halfway across the screen (watch the trailer in slow-mo it is hilarious!) But when you start adding skill trees into the mix things get more complicated.

For example imagine WX78 getting a “Heavy Weighted” Skill Tree perk, being a Robot means they weigh more and can ground themselves to brace for impact, which can reduce the distance WX can be knocked back when hit, or fully negate it altogether.

This takes a brand new element of gameplay in a brand new DS game, and it immediately removes any kind of gameplay that could have come from that.

For this reason: I heavily prefer DSE NOT to have skill trees.

[goblinball]

I liked skill trees allowing you to do a lot of new fun things with characters and closing the gap between the weakest and strongest characters but I think DSE would be much better off without them. As cool as DST’s characters are now I can’t deny that I yearn for the days when all the characters were so much simpler. This is an opportunity to start off with a fresh slate and make the characters’ abilities much more focused than they are in dst.

[Ridley]

On 4/14/2026 at 11:24 AM, Capybara007 said:

and they dont even build on the foundation of what the point of the original character was, willow skill trees is the most obvious

Wasn't Willow's original foundation extremely unpopular? The problem was that she was a fire themed character who never used fire outside lighting the campfire. The skill tree gave her the ability to kill burning enemies without losing the loot, spread or contain fire quickly, summon a dwarf star, etc. I know that it isn't everyone's preferred way of solving Willow being a lame character to play, but there was no point to playing the original Willow before.

I doubt Klei is considering making the best parts of skill trees basekit for the characters either, since the whole point of gaining insight is to encourage new players to not give up. Maybe Klei will go back to letting you unlock characters this way instead? Although, I can't imagine that being a very popular decision. 

I'm interested in playing DSE regardless of whatever decision Klei makes on skill trees, but I wonder if they are tempted in having a game where all characters have skill trees on release date.

 

 

[Juny Pear]

52 minutes ago, Ridley said:

Wasn't Willow's original foundation extremely unpopular? The problem was that she was a fire themed character who never used fire outside lighting the campfire. The skill tree gave her the ability to kill burning enemies without losing the loot, spread or contain fire quickly, summon a dwarf star, etc. I know that it isn't everyone's preferred way of solving Willow being a lame character to play, but there was no point to playing the original Willow before.

I doubt Klei is considering making the best parts of skill trees basekit for the characters either, since the whole point of gaining insight is to encourage new players to not give up. Maybe Klei will go back to letting you unlock characters this way instead? Although, I can't imagine that being a very popular decision. 

I'm interested in playing DSE regardless of whatever decision Klei makes on skill trees, but I wonder if they are tempted in having a game where all characters have skill trees on release date.

 

 

I mean yeah she wasn't really popular but that was down to way more than her just not making much unique use of fire. And honestly most of those things could realistically just be touched up as a whole rather than just for a single character, and if fire were to be improved in those aspects it'd already encourage making more use of even a fairly simply designed willow without the need to give her crazy abilities.

Like you already mentioned she had no way of securing loot from burning enemies before she was given a skill that prevents drops becoming ash, but I can easily see that just becoming a baseline for fire mechanics as a whole since it would open up options for even more characters than just willow alone.

Another lesser discussed aspect though is that fire damage just kind of sucks, it's 8 damage per second, scaling up to 12/s after a short time, which would be decent, however with about a second of grace period where no damage is taken and with how low of a duration fire is often applied at, this usually ends up dealing pitiful damage unless you go out of your way to constantly reapply the fire instead of just attacking straight up [and this is assuming the mob itself is on fire, but often it'll just walk into an open flame and then immediately panic and go right back out, which resets the ramp up]. But once again this is something that could honestly just be improved at base with fire damage being more potent right off the bat and the game just having something akin to shipwrecked's obsidian spear to ignite mobs while dealing regular damage, once again something that could also benefit other characters, just to a lesser degree.

Really the only things I'd say would be odd to include are the more magical fire conjuring abilities because those would just feel sorta tacked on imo. The only one I could maybe see making kind of a return is the dwarf star one, maybe recontextualized as burning the ground using the lighter to start a pseudo campfire without the need for logs or grass.

But okay either way my point is that I think certain aspects of skilltrees could in my eyes totally be included into the characters' basekits or even as universal mechanics so long as they aren't too over the top.