🌳 Ability Tree & Banyan Trials Guide

The ability tree spends whole Blackstones — the same currency the four-fragment fusions produce — on permanent active and passive unlocks. The two landmark nodes are Redirect Force (two Blackstones), which refunds Sha-Chi on clean parries and dodges, and Masterful Flow level 1 (one Blackstone), which cuts the weapon-switch cooldown by two seconds. Every node on the tree changes how the combat loop feels, which is why fragment hunting and build crafting are the same activity.

Some abilities need The Banyan's Heart, a material earned by completing the Banyan Trees' combat trials — five trial trees exist in the world, and a few Hearts can also be purchased. The trials are the game's skill checks: pure combat encounters that grade the exact habits the ability tree assumes. Completionists should treat the five trees as a fixed part of the 100% route; everyone else wants at least the trials nearest their current region.

Beyond the two landmarks, three nodes shape how builds play. Steady Composure makes the attack after a clean dodge or parry more likely to interrupt — the crowd-control answer the Seven-Stars Formation assumes. Endless Renewal converts every assassination and execution into HP and Sha-Chi — sustain for players who already break guards on schedule. And the tree's deeper tiers lean on Banyan Hearts, which is why the five trial trees belong on the completion route rather than in a side note. The pattern across all of them: the tree sells verbs, and every verb it sells assumes the fragment ledger already fed you the stats to use them.

The ability tree does not hold stat growth — Attack Power, Guard Break and Sha-Chi live on the fragment systems — and it does not hold weapon abilities, which unlock on the weapons themselves at levels 5/10/15/25. The tree's whole identity is verbs: better switching, better parries, better executions. Read it as the "how you fight" page between the "what you collect" page (fragments) and the "what you swing" page (weapon upgrades).