Destiny Inscription: what to buy first

Take every entry that costs nothing, then the talent ranks that cost one Sapphire, then the cheap unlocks that widen what a run can contain. Save the twelve-Sapphire conveniences for when Sapphires stop feeling scarce.

That order is not a matter of taste. It falls out of how the tree is priced.

How the board charges you

Three things about the pricing decide everything else:

• Every entry sets its own price, and they range from nothing at all to twelve Sapphires. There is no tier system where deeper means better — a 2-Sapphire entry and a 12-Sapphire entry sit on the same board and the cheap one is frequently the more useful.
• Repeatable entries price each rank separately, and a later rank never costs less than the one before it. Level Up Restoration charges 4, then 6, then 8, then 10 for its four purchases. MP Regeneration charges 6 then 8. The Talent Point entries climb from 1 to 2 or 3. The consequence: the opening rank of an entry is its cheapest rank, so buying the first rank of several entries beats buying one entry to the top.
• Entries are connected to each other on the board, and those connections are what you walk along as you spend. Each entry’s page lists what it connects to, so you can see the neighbourhood before you commit — every entry on the board is listed with what it unlocks, how many times it can be bought and what sits next to it.

Step 1: take everything priced at zero

Several entries cost nothing. Tablet — the one that switches tablets on in the first place — is free, and so is Root’s Retreat, which is the hard mode object. So are the eleven entries called New Items, each of which adds a batch of items to what the tower can offer you.

There is no argument to have here. Free permanent unlocks are free.

Step 2: the one-Sapphire talent ranks

Five entries on the board are called Talent Point, each buyable five times, each purchase paying one talent point. Their price ladders are 1, 1, 1, 2, 2 on two of them, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2 on two more, and 2, 2, 2, 3, 3 on the last.

Count the ones: ten talent points at a Sapphire apiece. Nothing else on the board converts a single Sapphire into permanent power that efficiently, and talent points are the scarcer of your two currencies — they do not drop in the tower at all. Buy every one-Sapphire rank before you buy anything in the next section, then come back for the two-Sapphire ranks later. Which talents to spend them on matters more than how fast you collect them, but not much more.

Step 3: the cheap unlocks that change a run

Now the entries priced at 2 to 5, which is where most of the tree’s real value sits:

Entry	Sapphires	What it puts in your runs
Heavy Weapon Training	2	The greatsword branch, by far the cheapest weapon on the board
Home Repairs	3	Rebuilds your house in the village centre
Rylie’s Gift	3	A gift prepared for you by the elevator
Wishing Fountain	3	You start each run with an artifact of your choosing
Bond Artifact	3	A new artifact that ties several combos together
Magic Workshop	4	The workshop under the magic school
Terrain Recovery	4	Fills the holes in front of the Ark
Expanding Pouch	4	Inventory slots, three ranks; a second pouch entry opens at 7
New Artifacts	5 and up	A batch of new artifacts in the tower’s pools
Fruit Skewer	5	The skewer stand, which biases rewards toward a combo you choose

Wishing Fountain is the one to take early if you have any build in mind at all: starting a run with a chosen artifact is the closest the game gets to letting you plan an opening, and it pairs directly with Willpower’s Fountain capacity levels.

Expanding Pouch is the one that compounds. Bag space is the currency every other system is denominated in, and unlike a stat it never stops being relevant. If you want to see what a slot is actually worth before spending on it, lay a run out on the bag planner.

The weapon trainings are priced very unevenly. The greatsword branch costs 2. The dagger branch costs 8. The crossbow, blade and staff branches cost 10 each. Buy the branch you want to play rather than the one that is cheap, but know that the cheap one is genuinely cheap — and if you have not decided, the upgrade routes show what each branch turns into before you pay for it.

Step 4: what compounds, and what merely helps

The entries worth prioritising after that are the ones that change what can appear, because their value multiplies by every run you have not played yet:

• New Artifacts — eight separate entries, priced from 5 to 11, each adding a group of artifacts to the pools. More artifacts in the pool means more chances at the ones your combo wants. This is the least exciting purchase on the board and one of the best.
• Dice entries and Dice Acquisition (7) — dice reroll item rewards, and a reroll is worth roughly as much as your build is specific.
• Dice Transformation (8) — a die when you turn down an item reward, which quietly turns every bad offer into a resource.
• Side Bag — three ranks at 2, 3 and 4, on two separate entries. Worth knowing before you buy: items in the Side Bag do not function. It is storage, not capacity.

And the ones to leave until Sapphires are plentiful, because they help a run rather than reshape it: Level Up Restoration (4/6/8/10), Increase HP (two entries, opening at 2 and 4), MP Regeneration (6/8), Seed Money (200 Leaf in your pocket at the start), Extra Experience Drop (12) and Chest of Possibilities (12), which lets you spend Sapphires restocking a merchant.

Basement (10) and Hide and Seek (10) are village content rather than run power. Buy them when you want them, not because they are on the way to something.

The one thing to do before hard mode

Root’s Retreat costs nothing, and it is the entry that opens hard mode. Take it as soon as you see it, even if you have no intention of climbing yet, because the thirteen hard mode reward tiers are the other half of your talent point income — twenty points across a save, and the way the points are priced rewards planning far more than it rewards bravery. If you would rather see what a plan costs before committing a run to it, the hard mode planner prices every combination and names the tier it lands on.

If the two systems still blur together, the difference between the tree and the talent panel is the shortest thing on this site worth reading twice.