Asobo Studio’s biggest game in their history launches this week. In A Plague Tale: Innocence, players will explore a 14th-century blend of grim historical fact with dangerous fantastical fiction all through the eyes of two young children.
To make it through the swarms of disease-ridden rats and the stifling Inquisition, you’ll want to know how best to take advantage of the game’s skill tree, which is based entirely around crafting survival tools.
The game slowly reveals what the skill tree looks like as you play through the story, so if you want to get a preview of what’s available and be given tips on which upgrades are most worth your precious materials, our guide will come in handy.
The Full Skill Tree
By game’s end, there are seven areas of Amicia’s skills that can be upgraded, each of them with three areas of focus totaling 21 skills overall.
Every skill won’t all be visible from the beginning and in fact it takes many hours before the full tree is visible. Here’s what to expect in the complete skill tree:
Sling
Strings
- First upgrade: Hitting enemies in the head kills them instantly
- Second upgrade: Reduces initial load time for Amicia’s sling
- Third upgrade: The sling no longer makes any noise
Pouch
- First upgrade: Reduces the time it takes to achieve maximum accuracy
- Second upgrade: Reduces reloading time
- Third upgrade: Allows two consecutive shots without priming and reloading
Equipment
- First upgrade: Holds up to 12 materials of each type
- Second upgrade: Holds up to 16 materials of each type
- Third upgrade: Holds up to 22 materials of each type
Ammunition bag
- First upgrade: Holds up to 10 ammunition of each type
- Second upgrade: Holds up to 14 ammunition of each type
- Third upgrade: Holds up to 22 ammunition of each type
Attirail
- First upgrade: Running and dodging make less noise
- Second upgrade: Amicia no longer needs a workshop to upgrade her gear
- Third upgrade: Amicia no longer needs tools to upgrade her gear
Alchemy
Containers
- First upgrade: Increases the duration of effect of Odoris and Luminosa
- Second upgrade: Allows Luminosa to be thrown with a sling
- Third upgrade: Allows Somnum to be thrown
Instruments
- First upgrade: Ignifier ammo distracts enemies
- Second upgrade: Improves the speed of ammo crafting
- Third upgrade: Shooting a stone with a sling removes the target’s helmet
Best Skill Upgrades
Not all 21 skill upgrades are created equal. After extensively playing A Plague Tale, we’ve come up with this list of recommendations as to how to spend your materials.
The world of A Plague Tale is a ruthless one, and you don’t want to use up your precious materials frivolously. Understanding that sometimes you’ll need to unlock a preceding upgrade to unlock a subsequent upgrade in the same area, these are our picks for the most advantageous skills in Amicia’s survival tool belt.
Pocket and Ammunition Capacities: All Upgrades
While there’s certainly not a surplus of materials lying about the world of A Plague Tale, good scavenging will sometimes net you more materials than you can carry, which painfully means you’ll have to leave them behind.
Upgrading both your ammo and material carrying capacities should be one of the main priorities. As the game gets tougher, you’ll want to have a more abundant and diverse arsenal, and you can’t do that unless you’re able to carry the extra materials.
Attirail: First Upgrade
Stealth is the central mechanic to A Plague Tale‘s gameplay, so that means you’ll want to very quickly make yourself quieter.
When you time things perfectly, you can often sneak past guards without running at all, but assuming you want some wiggle room, upgrading your ability to stay quiet in the shadows will greatly aid you from a very early point in the game as it’s one of the first upgrades available.
Strings: All Upgrades
Amicia isn’t a super soldier, nor is she a trained survivalist. In her story, she’s armed with only a slingshot to defend herself and Hugo against the dual threat of rats and religious tyrants. That means you really can’t go wrong with upgrading her sling’s strings to their maximum effectiveness.
You should especially consider getting the first upgrade early as it will help you with an early boss battle.
Pouch: First and Second Upgrades
Similar to the strings, Amicia’s pouch upgrades directly aid you in combat. Often you can avoid combat by staying sneaky, but sometimes the game forces you into it, or things may otherwise devolve, like how Hugo can be captured and killed fast if you don’t intervene.
It’s in these moments where you’ll either be thankful you’ve upgraded your pouch or wishing you did. Getting multiple shots off fast is hugely important as the enemy numbers increase later in the game, and it would be nearly impossible to see the end credits of A Plague Tale without spending some materials on the pouch.
Containers: First Upgrade
The alchemy branch of the skill tree isn’t available until about halfway through the game, but when you do get it, it introduces some very advantageous new tools. Particularly, Luminosa and Odoris can be huge when you’re solving some of the game’s environmental puzzles.
Luminosa illuminates areas for a short while, which keeps the rats at bay, while Odoris draws rats over to an area. Both can be used in clever and improvised ways that will help clear paths, eliminate Inquisition members, or save the life of an ally. This first upgrade simply makes their effects last longer so it’s one of the best to consider.
Skills to Ignore
If you’re not the type to chase achievements and trophies unlocking the entire skill tree, it’s likely you’ll beat the game without unlocking every skill. That means you’ll want to pass over some skills in favor of those better ones listed above.
Three skills that we don’t find necessary are:
- Attirail second upgrade
- Attirail third upgrade
- Instruments’ second upgrade
In the case of the attirails, while not needing a workshop to unlock skills may sound beneficial, they actually appear regularly enough that this skill didn’t help us very much and in the end felt like we wasted materials.
The most scarce crafting item in the game is tool kits, so you may think it’s best to not need them anymore for upgrading. However, at the time we unlocked this skill, we had three tool kits in our inventory. They are often off the beaten path in the game’s mostly linear levels, but for those who are scouring over the less-traveled areas, you’ll find enough to keep upgrading at a helpful pace.
As for the Instruments’ second upgrade, being able to throw Somnum may sound great when it’s first introduced as a sleeping agent to combat the Inquisition, but considering just how many resources it eats up and how Somnum is meant as a last resort item, you’re much better off finding alternate solutions. A single Somnum usage can be the difference between unlocking a new skill or not, and for a one-off item like that, such a cost-value proposition just doesn’t add up.
If you’re looking for more on A Plague Tale: Innocence, don’t miss the huge reveal hidden in the game’s final scene easter egg. or any of our other A Plague Tale: Innocence guides here on GameSkinny.
