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The Relic: First Guardian features twelve exclusive skill trees. They work alongside the game's five weapon masteries, and the design intent is for players to blend abilities across them to form a class of their own rather than choosing a fixed class at the start.
Twelve Exclusive Trees
The trees are described as specialised, tied to a chosen armoury, and powered by relic energy. They supply the Guardian's active abilities, including visually spectacular ultimate abilities alongside game-changing passives. Because skills run on cooldowns rather than drawing on a resource pool, the trees define what a Guardian can do moment to moment, while Relics modify how those skills behave.
Detail | Information |
|---|---|
Number of skill trees | Twelve |
Type | Exclusive, specialised per weapon armoury |
Powered by | Relic energy, spent to equip skills onto a chosen weapon |
How skills are used | Cooldowns, with no resource or mana cost |
Contents | Game-changing passives plus spectacular ultimate abilities |
Build approach | Blend abilities across trees to form a custom class |
Interaction with Relics | Relics can reshape skill behaviour and alter combat tempo |
Relic Energy and Upgrades
Relic energy is the practical constraint on a build: you spend it to equip skills onto the weapon you are carrying, so what you can bring into a fight depends on how much you have banked. Standard monsters were changed after launch to award relic energy, and it is also found in the world as Ancient Memories. The developers additionally made skill upgrades faster in direct response to player feedback, which shortened the wait between finding energy and feeling the benefit. Patch 14 pulled the one-off 2,000 stock that had sat at the second fast travel camp since Patch 8, so monsters and field pickups are now the whole supply.
That makes ordinary fights part of the build, not an obstacle to it. What each kind of monster is worth is covered on the Enemies page, and the removal itself is listed on the Updates and Patches page.
Blending Into a Custom Class
The combination of twelve skill trees and five weapon masteries is what gives the game its build variety. Players are not restricted to one tree: abilities can be mixed to suit a chosen weapon and playstyle. Layer the Relics system on top, where each Relic can reshape skill behaviour or enhance specific weapon styles, and the same set of skills can be expressed very differently from one Guardian to another.
Some skills have needed fixes since release, including two-handed weapon skill issues, a case where chaining a specific skill after a two-handed skill failed to trigger the second, and adjustments to skill attack ranges. Patch 7 fixed dagger skills that would not reactivate once their cooldown had expired, and Patch 9 fixed skill passive runes failing to apply when equipped through the rune interface.
The names of the twelve individual trees and the specific skills within each have not been published, so this page covers the confirmed structure. The count itself is not in doubt: the publisher’s own product page still describes five weapon types and twelve exclusive skill trees. What has never appeared anywhere is a single tree name. The five masteries on the Weapons page are a separate axis and should not be mistaken for five of the trees.