Tell Me About Talent Points
A major patch in April 2024 updated one aspect of progression. The patch removed Signs, and instead gave each character a unique talent tree. As you gather more talent points, you progress deeper in the tree to unlock some very powerful abilities.
Gaining talents is one of the pivotal markers of progress in Death Must Die, as well as a primary component to builds. As such, one of the best things that beginning players can do is amass as many points as they can. That way they can start experimenting with new items and builds.
However, it’s not immediately clear how you gain talent points. Are they lost when they are spent? What’s the maximum number of points you can hold? This article aims to give you a deeper insight to the talent point mechanic in Death Must Die.
How to Get Talent Points
Getting talent points in Death Must Die is a very simple and straightforward process. The only thing you have to do to get a talent point is beat a boss. That’s right, nothing else is required.
Seven minutes into an Act 1 run, the Necromancer boss will spawn. When you beat him, he’ll drop a purple orb called a ‘Cosmic Essence’. Those essences can be exchanged for talent points.
After you pick one up, your character status screen will have a section labeled Cosmic Essence. This section keeps a record of how many points you’ve accumulated with the character so far. Each character collects cosmic essence independently of each other, so you’ll need to play the character you want to collect points with.
Once you’ve collected your first cosmic essence and gained your first talent point, you’ll unlock a new section in your camp. Right next to Avoron, a large mirror-like portal will appear. This portal is the Constellarium.
The Constellarium: Housing the Talent Trees
The Constellarium houses the talent trees for all the characters. There you can spend the cosmic essences you have collected as talent points, to progress the trees.
The talent trees are expansive! There are a multitude of options to choose from, and each build will make use of different talents.
At the beginning of each tree the effects are fairly minimal. Most characters have an increase to blessing manipulation, or some minor stat increase. As you progress further down though, the effects are more significant. Whether it be summoning wolves to assist you through the run, completely triggering a blessing a second time, or just outright negating damage, the final tier of blessings are something to completely build around.
As previously mentioned, it’s definitely a viable new player strategy to beat bosses as quickly as possible in order to gather as many points as possible. Even if you have unlocked act 2, it’s still more beneficial to farm act 1 for talent points, and not just jump to a tougher act.
Once you spend a cosmic essence on a talent point, it cannot be individually removed. If you notice in the image above, there is a reset button in the bottom right. At a small gold cost, you’ll be able to reset all of your talent points. So there’s no need to worry about ‘wasting’ a point, since you can practically reset them at will.
The only real limit to your talents, is how many you can get.
What’s the Maximum Amount of Talent Points You Can Have?
While it would be incredible if you could get all of the talents in a single tree, that is unfortunately not the case. There is a hard cap on the amount of cosmic essence you can obtain, which in turn means a cap on the amount of talent points.
The most cosmic essences a character can have is 36. So while you will have enough points to get the bottom talent in a tree, you won’t be able to get a second capstone talent. Which is why careful build planning is important.
Luckily experimenting with talents is part of the fun of the game!
What Can You Do After Maxing Talent Points?
After you collect the maximum amount of cosmic essence, you can no longer gain anymore talent points. So once you hit that limit, beating bosses becomes a matter of progressing the run and potential loot drops. At this point you have a few options when it comes to talents.
You could just freely experiment with talents that suit your needs, since currently the cost to reset them is fairly cheap. Select a few fun talents, do a couple of runs, reset and reselect, rinse and repeat. While this is a fun option, it can get a little stale having to constantly reset.
There has to be a better way to manage multiple talent builds.
Unlocking the Mysterious Camp and the Star Tablet
As you progress through the game you will eventually unlock the mysterious camp. There, a merchant will allow you to purchase all manner of oddities. Most relevant to our talents, is the Star Tablet.
The star tablet allows you to store talent point loadouts for your characters. Purchasing loadouts becomes progressively more expensive. Starting out fairly cheap, but quickly becoming quite pricey. Additionally, each purchase is unique to the character, so you will need to buy each loadout multiple times. But this allows you to quickly switch between talents with great ease, and without fear of missing out on anything important.
After you purchase a new loadout, you can find it in the Constellarium. The tabs will be on the bottom left, with the current tab highlighted. Make sure you spend all your points in each loadout.
So as you amass more and more talent points, you’ll be able to customize and save your loadouts. Make sure you experiment and save your favorites!
Conclusion
In conclusion, talent points play a massive part in your character’s progression. They allow you to completely alter your gameplay, and allow for some incredible effects.
Collect cosmic essences by beating bosses, and then turn them into talent points in the Constellarium. You should take a quick moment to look at each character’s talent tree, and find some that are interesting to you, or fit a playstyle you want.
Since you can only ever have 36 points, it’s important to plan out a build, and make sure you select talents that compliment it. Failing that, you can always use the Star Tablet to save talent point loadouts. That way you can quickly switch between runs, and get back out in the field.
I hope this guide was helpful, and that you have a better understanding of talent points in Death Must Die.
Happy gaming, and good luck on all your future runs.