Skill Tree Explained: All Abilities

Last updated: 2026-10-30

Every trip to the surface makes your Raider stronger. The skill tree is your out-of-raid progression: it defines your stamina pool, sprint economy, carry weight, looting speed and how long you survive when a squad jumps you Topside. It splits into three branches — Conditioning, Mobility and Survival — and because points are capped and gated, spending them well matters: it decides whether you extract with a full backpack or die at the evac.

• Points: one Skill Point per level-up (76 from leveling), plus up to 5 bonus points per completed Expedition, capped at 15.
• Persistence: points stick across raids and deaths — dying never costs you a point.
• Gating: deeper perks require a set number of points already spent in that branch, and parent nodes must be unlocked before children.
• Respec: a full reset costs 2,000 Coins per allocated point; you cannot reset individual branches.

The Three Branches

Each branch leans toward a playstyle, but an effective Raider puts points into all three. Conditioning suits the Raider who walks in first; Mobility fits hit-fast-and-leave play; Survival rewards the prepared.

How Skill Points Work

You earn one point every time you gain enough experience to level up — from raiding, completing quests and earning Topside XP — for 76 leveling-derived points. Completed Expeditions add up to 5 bonus points each (permanent, capped at 15), on top of the leveling total.

Because the budget is tightly limited you cannot fill every branch. The tree uses prerequisite gating: many skills only appear after a certain number of points are spent in that branch, so dabbling across all three leaves you locked out of the strongest perks. Pick a lane and commit — that’s where the payoff lives.

Best Conditioning Skills

Conditioning keeps you alive in fights and in the downed state, and speeds up breaching.

Used to the Weight is the first Conditioning node and one of the best picks in the whole tree: you carry a shield on basically every raid, so it is effectively free movement and carry capacity.

Best Mobility Skills

Mobility is where most experienced Raiders sink their early points, because stamina governs everything Topside.

Marathon Runner and Youthful Lungs sit on the same chain and together transform your sprint economy — the single biggest early-game quality-of-life jump.

Best Survival Skills

Survival is the loot-and-extract branch that most directly turns raids into profit.

Security Breach opens containers that hold some of the rarest loot in the game, including blueprints and upgraded gear — but you need to learn the locker spawns on each map to make it useful.

Recommended Starting Distributions

Pick one primary branch (40–60 points) and a secondary (15–30) rather than spreading evenly:

Common Beginner Mistakes

• Spreading points too thin — investing equally in all three leaves you good at nothing. Choose a primary branch.
• Ignoring health — zero Conditioning investment gets you dropped instantly; at minimum pick up early durability nodes.
• Respeccing too often — stick with a build for 10+ levels before changing; respecs cost 2,000 Coins per point.
• Following the meta blindly — copy other players’ nodes only once you understand why each choice fits your playstyle.
• Forgetting category gates — check how many points a deep perk needs in its branch before you start investing, so you do not waste points on the way to a lock.

Respec and the Expedition Reset

From the Skill Tree menu, Reset Skill Tree refunds all points at 2,000 Coins per point — it is all-or-nothing, with no option to refund a single branch or node. A fully invested tree runs into six figures, so plan your spend rather than resetting casually. The other reset is the Expedition: voluntarily sending your Raider off resets level, points, gear and workshop back to scratch on a roughly two-month cycle, but banks permanent bonus points in return.