Bulletin #11: what Rebel Wolves just settled about the skill trees

Most coverage of a skill tree is a list of node names. This is not that. The bulletin publishes almost nothing new about individual nodes and instead states the rules the trees operate under — which is the more useful half, because rules are what a plan is built on and names are only what fills it in.

One bar, one pool, three trees

The headline for anyone planning a run: there is a single experience bar and a single pool of skill points, shared across Swordmastery, Witchcraft and Vampirism. There is no per-tree allowance quietly topping itself up while you play in the other form.

Read one way that is generous — nothing you do is wasted, and objectives cleared as a swordsman pay for hexes. Read the other way it is the constraint the whole build is made against: every purchase competes with every other purchase, and spreading points across three trees is not free breadth, it is depth given up in all three. With an Ultimate Perk reported at 35 points, two of them is a serious fraction of a run.

When each tree actually works

This is the part that changes how a point should be valued. Two of the three trees are idle for half the run. A Swordmastery point is the only one that is never stranded by the half of the day a route puts you in — the sword is Coen's in either form — while a hex bought for a night-heavy stretch of the calendar sits unused until the sun comes back.

That does not make Witchcraft or Vampirism worse buys. It makes them buys with a shape: they are worth what the phase they belong to is worth in your particular route, which is exactly the sort of question the 30-Day Planner exists to answer.

The two gates

Witchcraft progression involves finding magic manuals, so part of that tree is gated behind exploration and loot rather than behind points alone. Points you have saved cannot open a node whose book you have not found.

Vampirism answers to Corruption, which rises through feeding on blood, and the bulletin says plainly that increasingly powerful abilities sit behind it. This had been shown in a pre-beta build; it is now stated. The consequence is uncomfortable by design: a player who feeds sparingly to keep their hands clean is also choosing to leave the bottom of the vampire tree shut. Feeding is a build decision before it is a moral one.

The bulletin also describes what the trees contain in broad terms — Witchcraft spanning offensive and defensive spells, crowd control, damage over time, buffs and debuffs, and Swordmastery branching toward either defensive resilience or offensive combinations.

What we corrected here

Two things on this site were wrong, and it is worth saying which rather than quietly fixing them. Six Swordmastery records were marked day-only, and the Witchcraft root was marked as working in both phases. Earlier coverage was genuinely muddled on both points; the bulletin is not, so the dataset now follows it and a check in the build validates every node against its tree's rule.

The rules themselves are recorded as official, and they are shown above each tree with the badge that says so — beside claims that are only reported, so the difference is visible rather than something you have to know.

What is still unknown

• The complete node lists. The trees are reported at 31, 29 and 30 nodes; no official source publishes them.
• The prerequisite edges. Which node opens which is unpublished, so this site draws no connectors it cannot source.
• The exact on-screen topology. The shape of the trees on the game's own skill screen is not public.
• Per-node point and time costs. The 35 points for an Ultimate is still the only skill-point figure anyone has stated. A retail review has since put a range on the time side — up to two chunks per purchase — but does not say which skills sit where in it.
• Corruption thresholds. The gate is confirmed; the number on it is not.
• Bloodline requirements. Coverage reports that some Vampirism unlocks are tied to particular powerful vampires, and says outright that the mechanic has not been revealed.

A detailed transcription of the trees does exist, and this site publishes what it names — the Ultimates, the rank ladders, the perks with numbers on them. It is a compilation assembled from publisher and walkthrough footage, and it is cited as one — not as a dump from the shipped game, which is a different kind of claim.