Bones and Coins Skill Tree

The Bones and Coins skill tree is the real campaign map. Steam’s store copy says 160+ upgrades; the August 2026 full-game post says 180 skills with permanent bonuses. Demo v0.8.0 added nodes and rebalanced costs. You will not fill the graph in the first hour, and you should not try. This guide is a routing philosophy plus the early nodes that show up again and again in playtest and demo footage.

Open the tree from the top tab next to Blacksmith and Guild. The graph is a web of icons, not a single spine. That matters: you can path into party slots without finishing a weapon branch, and you can strand yourself in a pretty combat leaf with no income.

The three budgets

Treat every node as one of three budgets.

Income. Skeleton spawn count, coin drop value, silver-coin unlocks, on-kill summons, wooden chests, item drop chance. These print the currency that buys everything else. Getting Started already told you to start here. This page tells you to stay here longer than you want.

Capacity. Party slots, inventory quality, Blacksmith access, room unlocks such as Rusty Mines. Capacity does not raise DPS by itself. It lets heroes and weapons exist.

Combat. Weapon area, attack duration, crit, lightning-strike summons, “bigger circle” nodes that streamers misread as map size. Combat nodes feel good in the clip. They feel bad if the pack is tiny.

A clean early route is income → one capacity slot → recruit → more income → second capacity (Blacksmith or next room) → then combat. The loot and economy page explains why silver and bones should not fund the first combat leaf.

Max-upgrade Bones and Coins run — how the tree actually spends

Nodes confirmed in public footage

These are not a datamine. They are nodes called out in playtest and demo videos, plus developer comments:

Node (as spoken on stream)	Why it matters
+5 / +10 initial skeleton spawn	More targets per torch
Coin drop value / “coins worth more”	Multiplies every kill
+1 party slot	Unlocks Guild recruits
5% summon skeleton on kill	Stops rooms from going quiet
0.5% wooden chest after kill	Burst copper/silver
2.5% item drop chance	Feeds Blacksmith and sell value
Weapon area size	Larger torch circle
Enable silver coin drop	Second currency, grindier
Lightning strike summon chance	Combat proc, easy to overbuy
Unlock Rusty Mines	New dungeon room
Auto-collect items	Quality of life, later

Developer Kemal confirmed coins already auto-collect, and that items become automatic after a tree upgrade. If a guide still tells you to vacuum every copper, it is outdated.

Blacksmith and Guild sit on the same bar for a reason

Forging a dagger with ~25 damage and a 0.01 crit chance is a prototype-era snapshot, not a live balance sheet. The lesson is the order: the Blacksmith tab is useless until item drops exist, and item drops are a tree node. Buy chance, then forge, then worry about attack animations. Every full-release weapon has its own animation — sixteen of them — which is why the weapon tier list exists as a separate page instead of a column in this graph.

Guild upgrades for heroes (paths, abilities, blessings) are also gated by slots you buy here. A blessing with no body in the slot is a sticker.

Room nodes versus global nodes

Demo v0.8.0 gave each dungeon room its own progression and bonuses. Some tree purchases still look global (spawn count, coin value). Room XP is local. If you dump combat nodes and then hop to a fresh catacomb, that room’s bonus layer is still thin. Train a room, then spend, then train again. The dungeon rooms guide covers caps, music, and late-session skeleton flow.

What “max tree” videos are actually showing

Max-upgrade clips look like a solved game because the income engine is finished. They are not a buy order. Copying a late graph onto a fresh save is how you go broke on lightning procs. Use those videos to learn which leaves exist — extra arrows, mark multipliers, chest luck — then reverse-engineer the trunk you still lack.

A practical checkpoint before you open combat leaves:

1. Spawn count has been bought at least twice.
2. Coin value is up.
3. One party slot is filled with a Barbarian.
4. Item chance or chests exist.
5. You can finish a torch without staring at an empty floor.

Then buy weapon area, then the next room, then the second hero recommended in party building. If a node text is ambiguous (streamers thought “bigger circle” meant the map), read it twice. Several demo videos wasted a purchase on that misread.

Full-release scale

Expect the 180-node graph to hide Expedition-related leaves and blessing prerequisites that the demo never showed. Do not wait for a community spreadsheet before playing; the routing rule does not change: print coins, then print bodies, then print damage. Revisit this page after you unlock Expeditions and compare your path to the build tier list.