Devlog: Skills & Skill Trees – Master Them All!

In Shadows of Dragonholde, progression isn’t just about leveling up your combat level. It’s about learning how to survive, adapt, and thrive using the world’s systems—skills that shape how you gather, craft, explore, and fight.

Each skill in the game has an accompanying skill tree that lets you specialize in how that skill plays out.

The overall max level of skills will be 60 when the game launches. But for now the cap is 20 and currently only the bottom tier of the skilltree is implemented. Every 2 levels you will gain a skill point to be used in the skills respective skill tree.

There are 7 core skills already implemented, with more planned.

⛏️ Mining – Dig Deep

Break ore veins and harvest resources throughout the world.

• Specialize in vein detection, rare gem extraction, or efficient mining

• Unlock nodes for faster action speed, non-depletion chance, and resource bonuses

• Synergizes with Smithing, Gem Crafting (future), and some dungeons

🔥 Smithing – Forge Your Legacy

Create powerful gear you can’t get anywhere else.

• Focus on armor, weapons, or special modifiers

• Late-tree perks include unique item bases, forge-only gem slots, and crafting modifiers

• Connects deeply with Mining and combat builds

🪓 Woodcutting – Chop chop!

Chop trees for logs, reagents, and rare materials.

• Choose between speedy harvesting, rare barks, or extra reagents

• Will eventually feed directly into Whittling, a carving-based modifier skill

🌿 Herbalism – Gather round!

Pick herbs and plants scattered across the world.

• Currently functions as a gathering system, but will evolve into Farming/Horticulture

• Tree focuses on herb yield, proximity picking, and herb preservation

• Great synergy with Potionology

🧪 Potionology – Brew Power

Craft potions and flasks that fuel your builds and tactics.

• Potions stack in 4-dose flasks, assigned to flask slots

• Tree nodes include duration boosts, resource efficiency, and special effects

• Cross-synergizes with Herbalism, Fishing, Cooking, and monster hunting

🎣 Fishing – Here fishy!

Find a shady spot and fish up ingredients, treasures, or even monsters.

• Relaxing?

• Skill tree lets you fish for rarity, quantity, or more experience

• Links into Cooking

🥘 Cooking – Yes, Chef!

Turn ingredients into powerful one-time-use meals.

• Food provides healing, buffs, and temporary status effects

• Trees allow you to focus on stat stacking, rare dishes, or seasoning efficiency

• You’ll also find secret recipes throughout the game

🛠️ Planned Future Skills

• 🪵 Whittling – Carve logs into powerful Idols with passive modifiers

• 💎 Gem Crafting – Create gear sockets, teleport gems, and passive jewels

• 🌱 Horticulture – Realistic gardening and crop mechanics tied to season and soil

• 🐍 Monster Hunting – Track, slay, and harvest beasts for gear with rare modifiers

🌱 Skill Tree Design Philosophy

• Every skill has multiple progression paths—you don’t have to unlock everything

• Trees are built around player identity: choose efficiency, rarity, or a mix

🧰 Tools & Success Rates

Tools are critical to skill success.

• Start with 100 durability (5% chance per action to lose 1 durability)

• Higher-tier tools = more durability and higher success chance

• Tools are primarily crafted with Smithing

• Some tools have bonus modifiers, like:

  • +3% chance to not deplete the node

  • +3% bonus XP per successful action

  • +x% faster action speed

🔧 Unique tool bases drop from bosses or tough quests.

Skill Check Formula

Skill Modifier = (Current Skill Level / Max Skill Level) × 50

Success Chance (%) = (Base Action Chance × Tool Modifier) + Skill Modifier

A skill check is performed every 1.5s while performing an action.

Collection skills have a small chance to spawn a little wisp that you can defeat for an extra chance at some of the resources it spawned from!

Wisps:

Earth from mining, fire from smithing (not a collection skill, I know), water from fishing, wind/nature from woodcutting.

These little guys play an important role in the skilling random events in dungeons, but I'll get to that another time!

Mining skill tree WIP

I wanted a system designed in a way that you can customise the skills the way you want to. Want to afk and put your feet up with almost 0% Depletion chance and chop forever? Or powermine your way to the bank with speed and stashing upgrades! Just head back to a master to respec when you want a change of pace.

Let me know which skill you’d spec into first—or what kind of skills you’d love to see added!