Dev Diary #2: Talent Tree Progression

Welcome back to our Dev Diary series, where we dive deep into the key features of Mandragora to give you a sneak peek of what’s coming your way. If you’ve already learned about Gear Progression in our first Dev Diary, get ready for another crucial aspect of character power: Talent Trees.

What Are Talent Trees?

In Mandragora, your character's growth isn’t just about gear; it’s also about the powerful abilities you unlock through Talent Trees. Each of the game’s six Classes has its own Talent Tree, and you’re free to mix and match talents from different Classes after reaching Level 15.

At first, it’s best to focus on your starting Class’s Talent Tree. Don’t worry about making mistakes, you can reset your Talent Tree at any time!

How Do Talent Trees Work In Mandragora?

Let’s take a look at the inner workings of the Talent Tree, using the Vanguard Class as an example. Vanguards are elite fighters within the ranks of the Inquisitors who use raw physical power, massive shields, and brutal two-handed weapons.

Whenever you level up or use an Offering Shrine, you’ll gain Talent Points to spend in the Talent Tree.

Here’s what you’ll find:

As you can see, the Talent Tree contains 4 different types of nodes:

The Starting Node: Unlocks the ability to wield specific weapons or items. For the Vanguard, it’s the Tower Shield.

Basic Attribute Nodes: These small nodes are fixed, and you can put 1 Talent point on them. All of your statistics are visible beside the Talent Tree, and the stats that are increased by the selected attribute are always highlighted in green.

Choice Nodes: Medium-sized nodes with multiple attribute options (Offensive, Defensive, Utility, or Critical). You can spend up to 3 points on these nodes, and the third point always guarantees an extra bonus.

Talents: Big Nodes. Each Class in Mandragora features 16 unique Talents within its respective Talent Tree. These powerful passive abilities can significantly enhance your character’s strength and complement your preferred playstyle. 

Talents

Some Talents offer straightforward boosts to your character's power. For example:

• Deep Wounds: Increases your Bleed Chance by 5% and extends the duration of Bleed effects by 3 seconds.

Other Talents are more intricate and require careful attention in combat:

• Armor Breaker: Grants your weapon attacks a 1% chance per point of the target's Armor to break an Armor Fragment, permanently reducing their Armor by 5. Picking up a fragment boosts your Armor by 2, stacking up to 25 times. However, taking physical damage removes 5 stacks.

Weapon Setups (Vanguard)

As a Vanguard, you have three distinct weapon setups to choose from early in the game. Each offers a unique combat experience and strategy:

• 1H Weapon + Light Shield: This setup allows you to Defend against attacks and, with precise timing, Parry enemy strikes for powerful counterattacks.
   
• 1H Weapon + Tower Shield: Similar to the Light Shield, you can Defend incoming blows, but instead of Parrying, you gain access to a powerful Charge ability. This move stuns enemies with a mighty shield bash, providing a strategic advantage.
   
• Greathammer or Greatsword (2H): These heavy weapons are slower but offer a longer reach and significantly higher stagger potential. With this setup, you also unlock the Resonance ability. When activated, successful weapon hits create expanding shockwaves that damage all enemies in their path.

Suit Your Playstyle

Your next step is to decide which Talent to aim for first based on your playstyle. The three Talents closest to the Starting Node in the Vanguard tree offer different strengths:

• Deep Wounds: Increases Bleed chance by 5% and extends Bleed duration by 3 seconds. This Talent works best with one-handed weapons and against enemies with large Health pools. Faster weapons help apply Bleed more frequently, while the effect's duration ensures maximum damage over time.
   
• Veteran: Each enemy you kill permanently increases your maximum Health by 0.01%, up to a total of 10%. This is a strong early-game Talent for any build, though it takes time to reach its full potential. It pairs well with Constitution attribute nodes, which further boost Maximum Health.
   
• Lifeblood Surge: Killing an enemy generates 20 Adrenaline and restores 5% of your missing Health. This Talent is particularly effective for two-handed builds facing smaller enemies. Since you’ll likely take more damage without a shield, the added sustain is invaluable.

Once you’ve chosen your first Talent, focus on unlocking the nodes leading to it. Afterward, you can plan your next Talent to enhance your build further. Whether you stick with your initial path or branch out deeper into the tree, each choice will shape your journey and playstyle.

What Exactly Are Choice Nodes?

Choice Nodes are crucial decision points in the Talent Tree that allow you to tailor your build by selecting attributes that best suit your playstyle and strategy. Each Choice Node offers different attribute options, each providing unique benefits:

• Offensive attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Spirit, Power. These increase the damage of your weapon and Skills. As a Vanguard, Strength is your main offensive Attribute.
  • Full unlock bonus: 1% Bleed Chance
• Defensive attributes: Constitution, Defense, Vigor. Choose Constitution if you find yourself dying too fast and need more Health. Choose Defense, if you have enough health, to mitigate incoming damage. And choose Vigor if you want to equip heavier Weapons or Armor. 
  • Full unlock bonus: 2 Armor
• Utility attributes: Endurance, Knowledge, Constitution. Knowledge increases Maximum Mana, which is usually not a good choice for a Vanguard. Choose Endurance if you need more Stamina or you can choose Constitution in this Choice Node as well for more Health. 
  • Full unlock bonus: -1% Adrenaline Cost
• Critical Attributes: Physical and Magic Critical Chance, Critical Damage. As a Vanguard you mostly need Physical Critical Chance. Critical Damage only becomes a viable choice once you have enough (over 40-50%) Physical Critical Chance.
  • Full unlock bonus: 1% All Critical Chance

While the full unlock bonuses are tempting, focus on selecting attributes that align with your build’s immediate needs. Prioritize Talents that strengthen your current playstyle and enhance your combat effectiveness. 

Once you’ve established a solid foundation, you can aim for the full-unlock bonuses to further optimize your character.

Early Game Vanguard Builds

Bleed

This build focuses on applying the Bleed status effect and maintaining solid health sustain throughout battles.

Start with Deep Wounds, and then you can grab Blood Craze, which heals you whenever your Bleed effect damages an enemy, keeping you in the fight longer. Finally, pick Lifeblood Surge, this boosts your survivability by further increasing your Health and Adrenaline sustain potential.

Maximum Adrenaline

With this build, you’ll focus on building up to and maintaining Maximum Adrenaline during combat for increased damage output.

Starting with Deep Wounds, move on to Eternal Rage, which increases your damage while at Maximum Adrenaline, making your attacks more lethal. Next, grab Warlord to generate Adrenaline for each nearby enemy in combat. This helps you reach Maximum Adrenaline faster, which will then allow you to activate Eternal Rage.

Resource

This early build focuses on increasing your primary Resources: Health, Stamina, and Adrenaline.

Start by picking Veteran to increase your Maximum Health. Next, choose Enhanced Endurance to expand your stamina pool. Finally, acquire Lifeblood Surge to sustain health and generate adrenaline more effectively.

Defend/Parry

This build revolves around defending against and parrying enemy attacks.

Start with Veteran, then pick Revenge, which generates 5 Adrenaline when you get hit and boosts your next damage by 50% after successfully defending or parrying an attack. Lastly, acquire Versatility, which increases your damage while using a Shield.

Versatility also offers benefits for a two-handed weapon build later on, as it increases all Magic Resistances by 10% if you are not wearing a Shield.

These are just a few possible examples to start out with, as you can combine Talents freely and come up with your own combination that works for you and your playstyle. Experiment and find your perfect build!

What About Mixed Class Builds?

Vanguard-Flameweaver Mixed Build

To wrap up today’s look at Talent Trees, let’s take a look at a mid-game mixed build. In the full release of Mandragora, you’ll have access to six unique Classes, each with its own Tree, for you to mix and match Talents from. Here’s a sneak peek at one powerful combination: Vanguard and Flameweaver.

This build focuses on stacking Bleed effects while maintaining maximum Adrenaline by mixing and matching Vanguard and Flameweaver Talents.

This setup works best with one-handed weapons. For your off-hand, you can choose a Fire Relic to use Flameweaver skills or a Shield for Defending, Parrying, or Shield Charging.

From the Vanguard tree, we first acquire Deep Wounds, Blood Craze, Eternal Rage, and Warlord.

Then we’ll move left, over to the Flameweaver tree, and get 2 Talents from there:
 

• Fury: Landing 4 weapon attacks within 3 seconds increases your attack speed by 15% for 6 seconds.
• Burning Blood: Converts recent damage taken into a delayed effect over 5 seconds. Weapon Attacks against the source reduce this pending damage.

For the last Talent, we’ll go back to the Vanguard Tree and grab:

• Initiative: Automatically fills your Adrenaline to 20 when entering combat.

These Talents work well together and boost each other’s strength even further. You’ll enter each battle with boosted Adrenaline thanks to Initiative, and Warlord ensures you generate even more during combat. Fury increases your Attack Speed, allowing you to apply Bleed to fill up your Adrenaline faster, activating Eternal Rage. Meanwhile, Burning Blood helps you mitigate incoming damage by spreading it over time.

In the full game, each Class Talent Tree is separate, but for illustrative purposes, we’ve combined them here to show off the full build in one picture:

Classes are ‘joined’ at the edges of each Tree, so when you’re ready to experiment, you can unlock other Class Starting Nodes and create powerful mixed builds!

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We hope you enjoyed this Dev Diary exploring another key gameplay feature.

Your choices will shape your journey in Mandragora, and we can’t wait to see how you’ll branch out and learn new Talents! Stay tuned for more details, and don’t forget to share your thoughts with us over on our Discord.