Best Skills to Unlock First in Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy

How the tree actually works

Resonance ships with six mastery branches. Each branch has a square skill plus two masteries. Buying anything on a branch raises the price of every remaining branch. Full completion costs exactly 165 Resonance Points; the island hides 200, so you can miss 35 and still finish the tree for the Like a warrior trophy.

Resonance Points do not carry over in Chapter Select. They only save at the next checkpoint. Die before that checkpoint and you must pick them up again. Reload an earlier chapter and your total snaps back to whatever you had when you first reached it. Plan the 165 on a single continuous run.

You can reset and reinvest at any time from Touchpad / menu → Sophia → Skills. Order still matters because early chapters starve you of points. Focus Attack is free and unlocks automatically in Chapter IV — it is not one of the six paid branches.

Recommended first-playthrough order

1. Aegean Deflect. Perfect parries already stun; this doubles that stun and, with Mastery 1, lets you parry red attacks that would otherwise force a dodge. Mastery 2 stacks bonus sword damage after each deflect. Nothing else in the tree changes the feel of combat this much.

2. Hero's Step. The extra dodge is what keeps Nightmare and packed courtyards playable. Take Mastery 1 (near-invulnerability on the step) over the spin attack. You will use this constantly once Brutes start chaining red overheads.

3. Bullbreaker Kick. Shield soldiers and club Brutes stop eating your stamina once the second kick guarantees a shove. Kick them into spikes or off ledges for the Overboard trophy while you are here.

Leave Echo's Return, Heroic Surge, and Fated Cast for the second half of the campaign unless you specifically want the Skilled maneuverer trophy early. Fated Cast is the weakest of the six for a first clear.

Point economy

Branch costs scale: 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, then 40. Unlock Deflect and Hero's Step before Chapter V's battle grounds. Track your running total in the Artefacts screen (bottom-left). White glints in the world are point pickups; a few also drop from scripted fights.

Pair this order with our skill tree and builds guide and the live table on the skill tree reference. For the missable point route, use the collectibles guide.