Root's Retreat rewards and hard mode tiers
Root's Retreat rewards, shard prices and exact hard mode tier planning.
Root’s Retreat unlocks the hard mode board. Your tier is the total spent on its shard layers. Add the price of every selected layer and the result is the tier for that run.
Listed talent-point rewards
The board lists talent-point rewards at thirteen thresholds:
Scroll horizontally to view the full table
| Tier | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 | 18 | 21 | 24 | 27 | 30 | 35 | 40 | 50 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Talent points | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
The in-game notice is explicit: Skipped lower tiers are never backfilled. Take the tiers in order to collect every listed reward. The rewards across all thirteen tiers add up to twenty talent points.
What a layer costs
A shard has layers, and each layer carries its own step price. Raising a shard to layer 3 costs the first three steps added together, not three times a unit price.
Most shards keep the same price at every layer. Ferocious Claws and Tenacious Body use 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, while Proliferation uses 1, 2. Their full costs are 8, 8 and 3. The seventh layer of Ferocious Claws costs 2 points and changes enemy damage from +48% to +56%.
The whole board, priced
Seventeen shards, in three types. Demon shards make the enemies harder, World shards change the run’s world and economy, Plan shards attack your build and your rewards.
Scroll horizontally to view the full table
| Shard | Type | Layers | Step prices | Full cost | What the layers do |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ferocious Claws | Demon | 7 | 1,1,1,1,1,1,2 | 8 | Enemy damage +8% per layer, up to +56% |
| Tenacious Body | Demon | 7 | 1,1,1,1,1,1,2 | 8 | Enemy HP +15%, then +25/35/45/55/65/75% |
| Protective Armor | Demon | 3 | 1,1,1 | 3 | Enemy Defense grows by 2, 4 or 6 as stages pass |
| Agile Claws | Demon | 2 | 2,2 | 4 | Enemy move and attack speed +20%, then +35%, in combat |
| Evil Energy | Demon | 1 | 1 | 1 | Damage to Super-Armoured enemies drops from 65% to 50% |
| False Vanguard | Demon | 1 | 2 | 2 | Mini bosses become stronger |
| Combat Stance | Demon | 1 | 3 | 3 | All bosses attack more aggressively |
| Festival of Blood | Demon | 1 | 3 | 3 | Enemies heal 15% on hitting you; minibosses and bosses 6% |
| Decline | World | 3 | 2,2,2 | 6 | HP recovery effects −5%, −10%, −20% |
| Severed Exchange | World | 2 | 1,1 | 2 | Merchant Barter +20, then +40 |
| Rebellion of Machines | World | 2 | 1,1 | 2 | Trap damage +100%, then +200% |
| Proliferation | World | 2 | 1,2 | 3 | Regular enemy count +10%, then +25% |
| Deterioration | Plan | 4 | 1,1,1,1 | 4 | HP restored on level up −10/25/40/60% |
| Tension | Plan | 1 | 1 | 1 | No potions during boss fights |
| Dizziness | Plan | 2 | 2,2 | 4 | One, then two fewer artifact and tablet choices |
| Dispossession | Plan | 2 | 2,2 | 4 | Boss-dropped tablets fixed to grade 1, then grade 2 |
| Heavy Heart | Plan | 1 | 2 | 2 | Start with Heavy Heart, an artifact with no abilities you cannot discard |
Everything at once totals 60 points. That is the ceiling, and it matters in a moment.
Protective Armor is priced like a cheap shard and does not behave like one. Its defence is not a flat bonus. It adds its value again for every stage past the first, so at layer 3 it is nothing on the opening stage and a great deal of enemy defence by the end of a run. And enemy Defense reads the same logarithmic curve yours does, the one where the early points bite hardest: the first 40 Defense an enemy gains removes 30.8% of every hit you land on it. A modest-looking number removes a noticeable share of your damage. Damage math has the whole curve.
Planning between reward thresholds
Spend 3 points and you reach the listed threshold at 3. Spend 4 and you are above it but below the next threshold at 6. That extra point raises the difficulty total without reaching another listed talent-point threshold. The panel shows this difference while you adjust the board.
The good news is that exact totals are always reachable. Twenty-six layers on the board cost a single point each: the first six of both big scalers, all of Protective Armor and Deterioration, both layers of Severed Exchange and Rebellion of Machines, Proliferation’s first, plus Evil Energy and Tension. With that many one-point steps you can always trim a plan down to land precisely on 3, 6, 9 and every tier after.
The maximum total is 60, ten points above the highest listed reward threshold at 50.
Planning an exact total
Choose a target threshold first, then select layers whose step prices add to it. Twenty-six layers cost 1 point each, so small adjustments are available throughout the board. The listed thresholds can all be formed exactly with the available step prices.
Shard effects still matter when two combinations have the same total. Read the descriptions in the table before choosing. Heavy Heart, for example, occupies a bag slot for the run; the bag planner can show the resulting layout. The hard mode planner calculates the total, the current listed threshold and the number of points to the next one.
What the points are for
The rewards listed here are talent points. Talent Point entries at the village tree are another documented way to obtain them (the two systems, side by side).
Wrath level 10 grants boss damage and Endure level 20 grants a revive. Whether either fits a run depends on the build. Use the talent order guide and costume guide to compare their effects before choosing.