One connected web
The hero sits at the centre of the disc, and every talent grows outward along connected lines. A talent can be bought only if it touches one already owned — a build is a path drawn outward from the centre, not a shopping list.
Seven slices, one per thing the hero does, arranged clockwise from the top: Fire, Water, Wind, Aegis, Sword, Bow, Earth. Each slice holds 10 talents across five rings.
| Ring | Cost | Holds |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | The weapon's or spell's rank II, plus a talent or general talent |
| 2 | 1 | Rank III and two talents |
| 3 | 2 | Two talents |
| 4 | 2 | The capstone (changes how the weapon or spell works) and a talent |
| 5 ★ | 4 | One big upgrade, at the outer edge |
Rank I is the weapon or spell itself — free, gained automatically.
Try it
Try the talent disc below — pan, zoom and click through the slices. (If it does not render inline, open assets/talent-disc/index.html directly.)
The talent screen (planned)
How the talent disc is planned to look in-game:
- It opens on one element's tree at a time, unrolled upright with the hero at the bottom.
- LB and RB switch to the previous or next element.
- R3 shows the whole disc at once.
When each slice opens
- Sword and Bow: open from the start.
- Aegis: opens when the hero's first element wakes.
- Each element's slice: opens when that element wakes — the first is the keeper's choice, and all four open during act one.
- An element's outer two rings (ring 4 and the ★): open only when that element's Guardian falls.
- Mastery gates spending further in: tier one (25 enemies' worth of damage with that line) opens ring 3; tier two (100 enemies' worth) opens the ★. The inner two rings need no mastery, so a newly woken element can be tried immediately.
General talents
Scattered through the slices rather than grouped by level, so they're picked up naturally across the whole game:
| Slice | General talents |
|---|---|
| Bow | Climber, Runner |
| Sword | Second Wind, Sure Footing, and Evasion as its big upgrade (the full dodge roll) |
| Aegis | Clarity, Resilience |
| Water | Swimmer |
| Wind | Double Jump |
| Earth | Forager |
A general talent must improve something every build does, regardless of weapon or element.
Link talents
Sitting on the borders between neighbouring slices, at 2 points each, so a build can cross into a neighbouring slice without walking back to the centre. The elemental links follow the fusion pairs (see Lore and History): Fire–Water (steam), Water–Wind (ice), Earth–Fire (lava). A circle of seven seats only three of the four pairs side by side, so the fourth — Wind–Earth, sandstorm — sits as a link on the outer rim instead. The physical borders (Wind–Aegis, Aegis–Sword, Sword–Bow, Bow–Earth) have their own, smaller combinations.
Big upgrades at the edge
| Slice | Big upgrade |
|---|---|
| Fire | Piercing Spear |
| Water | Crashing Wave |
| Wind | Reel In — pulls the targeted enemy to the hero |
| Earth | Spreading Roots |
| Sword | Evasion |
| Bow | Seeker Arrows |
| Aegis | Warded Strikes |
Water Hammer's talents
The only element with its talents fully written so far:
- Ring 1: Water Hammer II (6 s tapped, 12 s charged) and Swimmer.
- Ring 2: Water Attunement; Water Hammer III (each landed swing adds 1 s, up to 3 s); Deep Soak (Soaked 5 s, 40% slow).
- Ring 3: Breaker (+10% swing damage per extra enemy hit, up to 40%); Undertow (the slam drags enemies within 4 m about 1.5 m inward).
- Ring 4: Breaking Tide, the capstone (at full size, every swing is a slam); Tidepool (the slam and finisher leave a 3 m soaking pool for 4 s).
- ★ Crashing Wave: at full size the finisher runs 8 m forward as a wave, knocking down and soaking everything it hits.
Budget
| Talents | Points | |
|---|---|---|
| One full slice | 10 | 17 |
| A straight run, centre to edge | 5 | 10 |
| All seven border links plus the rim link | 8 | 16 |
| The whole disc | 78 | 135 |
59 points across a full playthrough is 44% of the disc — roughly two full slices, plus 25 points for another 15 to 20 talents. A disc you can mostly fill produces one build; one you can fill less than half of produces many.
Points come from levelling (3 attribute points and 1 talent point per level, to the level-40 cap) plus 5 further talent points for every Guardian killed — 20 extra across the four spires, landing a burst of build progress at every act break.