Abilities are the basis for Soul’s character progression in Phantom Blade Zero, and the tree is rather simplistic in how it functions compared to other games in the genre. With 32 Abilities to unlock over five distinct rows, your choices are only limited by the possession of certain collectibles.
This guide for Phantom Blade Zero explains how to go about expanding Soul’s skill set by fully unlocking his Abilities.
How To Train Abilities
The Abilities menu is presented as a simple grid of nodes spread over five rows. The first, third, and fifth row correspond to Attack Power and Guard Break; Sha-Chi; and Health Abilities. Unlike complex skill trees, these Ability nodes can only be unlocked from the left to the right, which means you won’t be skipping past any of them in order to conserve resources. The best Abilities in each group will only be unlocked towards the endgame.
All nodes require the basic Remnant Dust currency in order to unlock, in addition to another specific type of resource for each Ability group.
The final nodes of each Ability group all require a single Banyan’s Heart each.
Attack Power And Guard Break Abilities
The Abilities in the top row for Attack Power and Guard Break require an increasing number of Blackstones to be held in your possession in order to unlock them. Each of these Blackstones are assembled from four Blackstone Fragments that you will have to scour the world in order to obtain.
Sha-Chi Abilities
The equivalent of stamina or energy, this group of Abilities needs Sha-Chi Embers created from four Sha-Chi Ember Fragments. The Fragments are usually locked in chests, or rewarded for puzzle completion.
Health Abilities
The Abilities in the bottom row for Health require Memory Flowers in order to unlock, most of which come from collecting and putting together Memory Flower Petals. These are often awarded by NPCs, or found inside containers.
Banyan’s Heart Abilities Upper Row
This second row of Abilities is gated by your progression in the two rows it is sandwiched between, namely the Attack Power And Guard Break row and the Sha-Chi row. Once those two connected nodes are unlocked, the first of the Abilities in this row can be unlocked as well, but for an additional resource requirement: the Banyan’s Heart.
There are exactly eight Banyan’s Hearts to be found in the game per playthrough, corresponding to the number of Abilities they unlock. Five of them are earned from completion of Banyan Tree wave-type combat encounters.
The remaining three can simply be bought from the merchant Quick Hand Zhang, but for the hefty sum of 100,000 Remnant Dust each. Fortunately, some of his own side quests offer up the kind of massive rewards in Remnant Dust you will be needing in order to purchase those Banyan’s Hearts.
Banyan’s Heart Abilities Lower Row
Squeezed between the Sha-Chi row and the Health row, this fourth row of Abilities follows the same principle as the upper set: unlock the connected nodes from outer two rows in order to buy the linked Ability in this row.
Banyan’s Heart In New Game Plus Cycles
Additional Banyan’s Hearts earned in subsequent playthroughs, i.e. cycles of New Game Plus, can be put towards upgrading the level of the final node in each of the three main Ability rows.
There are 30 levels to each of those last nodes, but only a range of five are made available per cycle. This means you will have to replay the game an additional 5 times in order to unlock access to the full range of 30 levels, and have a total of just over 12 playthroughs in order to earn enough Banyan’s Hearts to actually fully unlock every node.
How To Respec
You can choose to reset all Abilities at any time for absolutely no penalty whatsoever. Simply access the Train Abilities menu and press the Reset button in the bottom right corner. All nodes will be refunded in full, which means the entirety of your spent Remnant Dust will be returned to you for reallocation.
That is everything there is to know about unlocking and resetting Abilities in Phantom Blade Zero.
