Days Gone is the latest arrival in the PlayStation exclusives’ lineup, and it’s a big one. Lead by the biker Deacon St. John in a post-apocalyptic setting, it introduces a huge open-world for you to explore. Which can become a hard task if you’re not properly prepared for it.
The best way to increase your attack and movements possibilities, along with your chances of survival, is to carefully spend your skill points whenever you gain a new level in all three skill trees. These are divided in Melee, Ranged, and Survival, and there are 45 of them to unlock in 5 tiers for within the trees, each with three skills to unlock at a time.
So, in order to unlock the next tier, it’s likely that you will have to choose at least two of them. After spending a significant time with Days Gone, here are the ones that proved to be the most helpful during my travels.
Melee Skill Tree
Tier 1
- Escape Artist: You will get caught by enemies a lot, usually lurking in the shadows or surprising you during your time on the road. If you get grappled by one of the smaller enemies, this skill will let you kill them after successfully making an escape.
- Field Repairs: This one is pretty straightforward, and also one of the first you’d want to unlock. Melee weapons can break easily, and with this you’ll be able to use scrap to repair them.
Tier 2
- Hard Hitter: It may take awhile for you to get the best fire weapons, so investing in melee weapons is a priority. Hard Hitter increases the damage of both the ones you craft and find as loot.
- Busted Lip: You’ll find yourself using the sprint or roll to escape from risky situations, and this skill grants you the ability to regenerate stamina for every melee skill.
- Talk Shit, Get Hit: There’s a chance that the third tier will be unlocked after getting the first two skills, but you don’t want to miss this one since you’ll be able to perform longer combos with melee weapons.
Tier 3
- Bull Rush: If you happen to find yourself sprinting and either a human enemy or a swarmer gets in your way, you’ll be able to stun them with a melee attack with this skill. Very helpful for the constant escapes that you’ll be doing in Days Gone.
- The Reckoning: Gives melee weapons a chance for a critical takedown on humans, Swarmers, and Newts. Does not work with the Boot Knife. This always come in handy, since it enables a chance for a critical hit on humans, Swarmers, and Newts with melee weapons.
Tier 4
- Just roll with it: This is a must, since it reduces stamina cost from rolling, which is by default way too higher than it should be if you ask me.
- Home Run: A follow up to Hard Hitter, Home Run increases your damage even further, also from both crafted and found melee weapons. In Days Gone, you want to make every single hit count. Trust me.
Tier 5
- Switch It Up: The Boot Knife has saved me countless of times, and this skill allows you to deal twice the damage with it.
- Executioner: This allows you to not only stealth attack heavy freakers, but also be able to kill both them and large animals when escaping from a grapple.
Range Skill Tree
Tier 1
- Focused Shot: I have no idea why this doesn’t come available from the get go, but make sure to spend a skill point in this to unlock Focus during aiming, which allows you to slow time. Moving forward, this can be upgraded with skills from this tree and by using Nero Injectors in the game.
- Vicious Cycle: You’ll be able to follow up a melee attack with a ranged attack with this, which can be useful for using a shotgun in close quarters.
Tier 2
- Crowd Control: Reduces the time for Focus to regenerate. Simple enough, but essential.
- Suppressing Fire: Also for Focus, your range weapons get an increased chance to stop weaker enemies.
Tier 3
- On The Move: Another one that should be enabled by default. If you want to be able to reload while sprinting (oh yeah, you will) then this is the one for you.
- Iron Grip: This skill “significantly” reduces the recoil from range weapons, which is always welcome since every bullet counts in Days Gone.
Tier 4
- Under Pressure: This will erase Focus consumption when reloading permanently, which can allow you to gain a few extra seconds.
- Deadshot: Increases ranged weapon accuracy. Yes, please.
Tier 5
- Up The Ante: You’ll get higher ammo capacity for all ranged weapons. Mandatory!
- Head Rush: Headshot kills recover health. So simple, yet so effective.
Survival Skill Tree
I’m gonna be honest with you: I barely spent any points in this one, since the first tiers can be somewhat underwhelming. That being said, here are a few that you should absolutely obtain if you have skill points to spare.
- Hawkeyed: Plants will now show up in the mini-map. There are dozens in Days Gone, and they can be very useful to gain camp credits easily.
- Green Thumb: If you want to upgrade Hawkeyed, this skill will double the loot.
- Catch Your Breath: This skill reduces the cooldown for stamina to recover. Really useful.
- Monkey Wrench: Doubles the effectiveness of scrap while repairing the bike. I wish this would be available in previous tiers.
Feel free to experiment or mix these combinations differently depending on your playstyle, but do keep an eye on the additional abilities since they can highly improve your experience. The sooner you can get to them, the better.
