Earning and spending Experience Points inShoulders of Giantsis sort of the core gameplay loopof this extra-colorful roguelike. Players can spend the EXP they gain from missions on two specific things, Cosmetic Dyes for their characters and the Skill Tree at the Owl NPC.
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The Skill Tree inShoulders of Giantsis pretty unique because a lot of the Skills can be upgraded anywhere from 2 to 100 times, depending on the Skill. Of course, the cost of each upgrade increases with every purchase, and so does the EXP gained as players get further into the game, so let’s go over which Skills, in particular, are the best for investing in early on.
10Robot Dodge
It might seem absurd that the Skill that reduces the cooldown for the only evasive option a player has by default is at the lowest of the rankings, but it makes sense.SoGis a game that doesn’t really have ‘lock-on’ combat, and more often than not players can just avoid attacks by moving in a different direction before the attack starts or jumping at the right time.
Not only that, butthere are also Robot abilitieslike Dash, Blink, and Glide that also function as ways of evading attacks. So, while the default Dodge is important, its standard cooldown is enough at the start of the game to get by on.
9Tongue Defense
When reading this ability at first, it may not seem like something worth the EXP investment. Players would have to have a pretty fast reaction time to be able to switch to Frog and press the dodge input to stick their tongue out to be able and eat a bullet in time, right? Well, as it turns out, most projectiles in this game (outside of Frog’s) are pretty slow, and players need to be aiming down sights anywayto use all of Frog’s abilities.
There are still, of course, the sniper enemies that fire pretty fast bullets, but most enemies have these orb-like projectiles they fire at moderate speeds that players can easily react to and eat out of the air. Not only that, but the final upgrade for this Skill makes it so that players can keep themselves alive in almost any situation as long as there is a ranged unit nearby able to fire shots their way.
8Melee & Ranged Resistance
Anyone who has reached at least Heat level 2000+ can testify that the damage enemies start to do per hit in this game gets pretty absurd. A single one of those enemies that leap at the player can deal half their health in one hit depending on the difficulty of the planet.
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Therefore, it’s good to invest in both the Melee Resistance and Ranged Resistance Skills early on, and try to max them out whenever possible. Again, a lot of players like to ‘think’ they’re the type that can dodge every single attack, but that just won’t work in this game, and a 50 percent reduction to both Ranged and Melee damage is too sizeable to just ignore. And, when stacked on top of some of the benefitscertain GERM Cores provide, such as the Knight Core, players can really pump their Resistance numbers up.
7Cooldown Reduction
Again, this is probably another Skill pick that players familiar with other roguelikes or roguelites would expect to be near the top of the rankings. But, quite frankly, the default cooldown for a lot of abilities inSoGis pretty generous.
Of course, they could always come off cooldown faster, but since players can have up to 6 abilities at once plus their melee and ranged weapon options, there are a lot of different attacks they can fit in while waiting for one specific ability to come back up. Still, it’s absolutely worth putting at least a few points in early on, and as the game continues this Skill only becomes more and more important.
6Ability Damage Boost
For this entry and the next one, players can swap them in their personal rankings based on whether they prefer to use abilities or melee/gunfire attacks more. In general, players seem to use more gunfire and melee attacks than they do abilities, just simplybecause some abilities have rough cooldownsand weapons don’t.
Therefore, the Ability Damage Boost (which are two separate Skills, one for Frog’s Abilities and one for GERM’s) is just under the Weapon Damage Boost in the rankings. Again, this is another one that becomes massively more important as the game gets harder, so it’s worth investing in early, in some capacity.
5Weapon Damage Boost
Next up is the Frog Weapon Damage Boost and GERM Weapon Damage Boost, both of which (obviously) increase the damage their Weapons deal. For Frog, this increases the damage per bullet (or projectile, depending on equipped weapon), and for GERM this increases the damage of each melee swing.
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It’s yet another skill where the ‘importance’ of it is dependent on a person’s playstyle, but overall people are likelygoing to be swinging/shooting more than they’ll be activating abilities.
4Betterflies
Betterflies looks, at first, like it’d be an ‘alright’ Skill to invest in. But, as soon as players get more than an hour or two into the game, they’ll quickly realize just how vitally important this is with how much a single butterfly can heal by default.
Now, players don’t necessarily need to fully upgrade it right away, but getting at least one or two points in it should make it much easier to stay alive and refill health after every cleared Conquest mini-Monolith.
3Charged Strike & Sprint Melee Attack
Honestly, a lot of the Charged Attacks and Sprinting Attacks in this game aren’t amazing. But, with Weapons like the Sliding Shield or Gyro Fists, having these activated can really come in handy. Plus, not putting EXP into these Skills means the player literally has fewer attacks to choose from at any one time.
And, as anyone who plays a lot of roguelikes or character action games would know, it’s all about what attack options a player has at any time to respond to the situation.
2Guardian Butterfly
Now for, by far the best ‘unique’ Skill in the game (that doesn’t just buff a basic stat), Guardian Butterfly. InShoulders of Giants, the most commonly occurring level objective is Conquest, which has players destroying between 1 and 3 different smaller Monoliths to activate (and then destroy) the larger one. On a multi-stage planet, the larger Monoliths spawn just a horde of basic enemies if it’s anything but the final stage’s Monolith. On the final stage’s Monolith a boss spawns instead, And, some of these bosses can KO the player in a couple of hits easily,considering Frog is really all on his lonesome.
So, going into these boss fights with 50 percent health or less isn’t exactly helpful, especially if a player has already eaten all the butterflies around the map. But, with Guardian Butterfly, players instantly heal to full when the boss fight encounter starts, setting the player up for the highest chance of success. The additional levels in this Skill are also very useful, but it isn’t nearly the same jump in utility as it is going from no heal to a 100 percent heal.
1Extra Health
Lastly, and sadly in the most boring fashion, of course, the general Max HP increase Skill was going to be first. It’s a game all about surviving to the end of each planet to earn new rewards, so a Skill that increases the vital life force a player needs to survive is going to be the most important, regardless ofif the player is a beginneror a veteran of the game.
And, the main reason this Skill is ranked first overall, is simply because there are a mind-blowingly huge amount of levels players can invest in this Skill. 25 levels of Max HP increases, with most of them increasing the player’s health by anywhere from 70 to 100 percent per upgrade. It’s by far the best Skill to improve survivability inSoG, with no competition.
Shoulders of Giantsis available now on Xbox and PC.
