Are comitted skills worth upgrading?

[Mr. Graae]

I don't really know how common lessons are and how many skills exist, so i have only really upgraded skills when i need to get higher on the tree of wisdom to acess more elements of the soul. Do you need to dedicate yourself to one branch, like birdsong? Is that how you win the game? if you already have committed a skill is there then any reason to upgrade it, scince you can't progress further up the tree?

Thanks in advance!!

[Wintermute]

If they do something extra, like curse removal - yes, at least to the level where you can comfortably get 7 of their aspect together with memories and skills on workbenches.

Lessons are common enough. I'm doing a playthrough where I only commit lessons to their specific skills, and so far I was able to climb to level 6 on some of them. It's suboptimal, but point is - there's a lot of lessons.

As for dedication to wisdoms - there's no point in just locking yourself to one branch. You need all of the soul aspects anyway. I'm not sure how the major victories are achieved yet, but I don't think it has to do with how high you are on the branch.

[SK RaZoR]

The design is stupid in the way, that it onboards the player poorly.

If you view the tree expecting it to conform to any sort of gameplay knowledge you have, it will further confuse you.

The normal progression is counter intutitive.

Naturally you need high levels skills to reach high level books, but having your highest level skills stuck to slot 1 of the tree is an infuriating waste of material, that you didnt even see coming, when you were learning the game. And can leave you struggling to progress through books.

Generally I find this game relies on familiarity with Cultist Simulator. But anyone not having played CS will have an even harder time getting started here.

[Tubers]

Upgrading skills is useful for crafting and reading books. It’s a good idea to have several high level skills spread across the aspects, or to level up skills with useful crafting.

Soul parts are important but are not the most important. Even a ++ upgraded soul part will only provide a fraction of the aspect amount you can get from crafting and skills. So don’t sweat it too much.

[Wintermute]

Originally posted by SK RaZoR:

Generally I find this game relies on familiarity with Cultist Simulator. But anyone not having played CS will have an even harder time getting started here.

Yeah. Imagine having to learn the aspect system from scratch...

[LuluMaster]

I do think it is worth upgrading because only certain skill can be used to craft certain memory and it requires sometimes 10 aspects (I only know that the memory named wormwood dream (6 winter 6 moon) can be crafted with Edicts Martial). In addition, to be honest, completing the tree only gives you extra soul cards and chance to upgrade them, so practically there is no need to go for level 9 for a wisdom. I have preservation 7 but my Chor is already +++ (mainly from preservation and some from birdsong) so I did just upgrade some useful committed skills (Edicts Martial and Edicts Inviolable) instead of going for preservation 8.

[Mr_Drasuz]

how to explain.... the tree is mostly there to give you more soul aspect , choosing the correct combination of "skill" and "skill tree place" is important if you want to upgrade the corresponding soul aspect... but not obligatory. I never had the need to get more than a ++ soul aspect , most of the time you can work with the normal one or the + one ....
Now upgrading skill is important for crafting , If you want to explore the whole house , you need a bit of everything .. be it memory , tools , food , beverage , ... For this you need more skills and upgraded skill for beter recipe

[Delichon]

Originally posted by Wintermute:

If they do something extra, like curse removal - yes, at least to the level where you can comfortably get 7 of their aspect together with memories and skills on workbenches.

In my playthrough skills that do curse / corruption / infestation removal do NOT have aspects required for removal of the curses / corruptions / infestations they are applicable to.
If the curse requires Heart - the skill that can remove that curse will NOT have heart as one of its attributes.

Which in my mind was done specifically so that people would not stress, whether their skills are advanced or not: It does not matter what level your skill is, if you are planning to use it to remove curse - it will not influence the process. It can as well be level 1.

Now - I didn't check all the skills that contribute to curse removal, but in all of the specific cases I looked for my own benefit, it was the case

[Yxklyx]

I'm going for a Chor+++ at the moment because I don't see a way yet to get the extra heart I need.

[Ten4]

Originally posted by Yxklyx:

I'm going for a Chor+++ at the moment because I don't see a way yet to get the extra heart I need.

I had a really hard time with getting hearts as well. I didn’t find a level 4 book until opening halfway through the house. But then i got extra lessons so i leveled up where i was deficient. I’m not sure if thats intentional or just bad RNG. I’ve restarted a few times and alway have been missing something until I reached the rooms around or past the Kitchen.

This game has been Hearts and Necture. So far I’ve found no books for Nectar.

[jokeserver]

Frankly the benefits from upgrading skills (higher aspects = easier crafting and book challenges) regardless of whether you've put them on the tree seem to outweigh any strategizing on the tree. I haven't found any good reason to go Skolekosophy as recommended at the start, there's no real gameplay impact from having more on one branch than another as far as I've seen, aside from the ability to merge soul pieces at appropriate workstations. I'm just tactically taking soul pieces to fill gaps and getting around to leveling up new skills later to add more soul pieces.

Having more soul pieces is good, but I've reached a point where it doesn't matter as much and I'm leveling up skills to enable higher-level crafting recipes and read higher-level books.

[super_jqp]

I don't how they are not. They might not fill the tree of wisdoms any further but they get upgraded themselves.

As long as you don't waste lessons and know where to get the memories it's the only way forward.

[Mr. Graae]

What are the best wys to get memories then? i only know that you can reread books, is there a more efficent way?

[alex.fullmoon]

People on Reddit did some calculations. Apparently, there is just enough skills/lessons to fill the whole tree, with few extra lessons.

Likewise, there are just enough skill slots to theoretically get all souls to level 4 with a bit of leeway: https://www.reddit.com/r/weatherfactory/comments/162fxsc/an_analysis_of_soul_evolution_in_boh/

Originally posted by jokeserver:

I haven't found any good reason to go Skolekosophy as recommended at the start, there's no real gameplay impact from having more on one branch than another as far as I've seen, aside from the ability to merge soul pieces at appropriate workstations.

As I understand, it matters for advanced victory conditions — at the beginning it says that your character need to record specific History with, I would assume, maxed specific Wisdom, but any History win is possible.