Black Myth: Wukong heavily emphasizes the “action” in “action role-playing,” as this new offering from China-based studio Game Science boasts nearly 80 bosses and hundreds of enemy variants. Given all the challenges arrayed against your character—a monkey warrior known as the Destined One—it’s important to pick the perfect perks to help you survive.

Our Black Myth: Wukong best skills guide goes over the different talent trees in the game and has all the tips you need to succeed. We’ve also included pointers on the different combat stances and magic spells you’ll wield, how to level up, and more, giving you all the tools you need to surmount even the most daunting challenges.

 

How to earn skill points and respec talents

The skills in Black Myth: Wukong use a resource called Sparks. These are earned whenever you level up or when you interact with a Meditation Spot for the first time. Once you have enough Sparks, check out the Self-Advance menu to allocate them. Note that some perks may have additional levels that grant improved effects.

You can also refund a skill point by highlighting a node and pressing the “R” key—or hold the “F” key from the Self-Advance menu to refund all points. This enables you to respec your build whenever you please, like when you encounter a tough foe and want to add more defense or specific resistances.

 

Foundation talent tree

The Foundation panel has three sub-categories:

• Stamina: Contains perks related to dodging and sprinting.
• Martial Arts: Contains the Mobile Spin ability and boosts for light attacks.
• Survival: Increase specific attributes, such as health, mana, critical hit rate, and more.

Best Foundation skills

Some of the best skills in Black Myth: Wukong are found in the Foundation tree. Firstly, there’s the right-hand side of the Stamina column. All of the perks from Simian Agility to Vengeful Mirage greatly benefit your character, since you’ll rely heavily on perfect dodges to avoid enemy blows.

As for the Martial Arts category, we recommend unlocking Mobile Spin early on to counter enemies and bosses that lob projectiles your way. Activating Mobile Spin (by holding the “V” key) deflects these projectiles while also letting you move forward to close the distance between you and ranged attackers.

Lastly, the Survival tree perk that you’ll want early in the game is Rampant Vigor, since this increases your maximum stamina. As you level up, you’ll also want to put points into Surging Momentum and perhaps a few into Rough Skin to boost your attack and defense attributes, respectively.

Staff Stances talent tree

When talking about the best skills in Black Myth: Wukong, an important component of the discussion is your preferred Staff Stance. These are:

• Smash Stance: Favors an aggressive playstyle with its flurry of blows.
• Pillar Stance: Allows the Destined One to hop on their staff to avoid ground attacks.
• Thrust Stance: A stance that’s defense- and counter-oriented.

Note that additional perks can only be selected upon activating nodes from upper rows. Doing so also increases the number of Focus Points that can be used to unleash charged and heavy attacks. You need to spend three points for the first threshold, 10 for the next set, and 20 in total for the highest-tier options.

 

Best Staff Stance-related perks

Ultimately, your choices here depend on the playstyle that suits you. Generally speaking, we’ve opted for the following utility perks:

• Exhilaration: Increases health recovery upon consuming a Focus Point.
• Versatility: Increases damage dealt by varied combos (i.e. a combination of light and heavy attacks).
• Quick Hand: Increases the charging speed of all stances.
• Secondary Damage: Heavy attacks that cost a Focus Point deal more damage to an enemy based on their remaining health.
• Endeavor: When you don’t have a Focus Point, you can still perform varied combos with significantly reduced damage.

These are what we recommend among the stance-related perks:

• Smash Stance: Take Force Unbound, as well as Resolute Counterflow, Winding Wind, and Skyfall Strike.
• Pillar Stance: Just grab Pillar Stance and Sweeping Gale.
• Thrust Stance: Activate everything as you level up.

The reason for the above is that Thrust Stance is a versatile stance and suitable to most combat engagements. After hitting an opponent with light attacks, you can do a heavy attack to perform a Tactical Retreat, a backstep that lets you avoid damage. This can be followed up with a heavy blow or a flurry of stabs.

 

Magic-based talent trees

Magic abilities in Black Myth: Wukong consume mana when cast. There are three categories, though the talent trees are separate for each spell:

• Mysticism: Contains the Immobilize and Ring of Fire spells.
• Alteration: Contains the Cloud Step and Rock Solid spells.
• Strand: Contains the A Pluck of Many spell.

Best magic-related perks

Similar to Staff Stances, the best Black Myth: Wukong skills to choose here depend somewhat on personal preference. However, during our playthrough, we relied most on the following:

• Mysticism – Immobilize: This spell was our bread-and-butter for most of the campaign, so we activated all of its perks over the course of the game. Immobilize freezes enemies in their tracks, allowing you to unleash devastating combos with impunity. Combined with the Envious Tongue relic from Chapter 4 and its “Spread the Word” perk, the spell also affects hostiles near your initial target.
• Alteration – Rock Solid: This spell is basically Black Myth: Wukong‘s parry mechanic—enemies will be staggered if you activate Rock Solid just as their attack lands. To improve it, we picked the Rapid Return, Rock Mastery, Iron Clad, and Upper Hand perks.
• Strand – A Pluck of Many: We selected all perks for this particular spell, which lets you summon multiple duplicates of the Destined One. The assorted perks increase the health, damage, and on-field duration of said clones. A Pluck of Many gets even more powerful once you reach the last node, Volition, where even your clones can randomly cast Immobilize, Ring of Fire, and Rock Solid.

Transformation talent tree

Last but not least, the Transformation panel is for the bosses that your character can shapeshift into. The large nodes you’ve unlocked by defeating major deities, remain active even if your character isn’t shapeshifted. The smaller nodes at the bottom of the panel, meanwhile, grant additional effects when you’re transformed, such as increased health, attack, and might (the resource used for this ability).

 

Best Transformation skills

We chose three options here:

• Steadfast – Azure Dust: Each point moderately increases defense.
• Cold Edge – Ebon Flow: Moderately reduces the cooldown of all Alteration spells.
• Red Eyes – Umbral Abyss: Increases attack for a long duration when you defeat an enemy. Stacks up to 30 times.

With the above, you’ll gain extra boosts to your attack and defense, while also shortening the cooldown of Alteration spells like Rock Solid (which, as mentioned, functions as Black Myth: Wukong‘s parry mechanic).

That does it for our Black Myth: Wukong best skills guide. We hope that our recommendations help you survive the battles ahead!