# Attunement, Commander progression and talent trees

9 September 2026 · Tom's requested addition to the Lastlight plan

**Long-term progression is a central feature of this game.** A player develops a Commander, experiments with specializations, completes attunement chains and brings that identity into each expedition. This supersedes the initial proposal for a mostly cosmetic permanent layer. Individual tower specializations still provide the changing build within a run.

The reference is the pleasure of planning a WoW build and earning entry to something substantial. Blizzard's documented class/specialization split, prerequisite rows, free build changes and saved loadouts are useful design references; its classic attunement chains demonstrate the separate idea of earning access through a sequence of quests. Lastlight's content and mechanics below are original proposals. These references describe specific WoW systems, not a claim about every version of WoW today. Sources: [Blizzard talent overview](https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/23865972/let-your-new-talents-shine-in-dragonflight), [Blizzard classic attunement overview](https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/news/23716331/get-attuned-and-face-the-overlords-of-outland).

## Current implementation

The Commander first-branches release implements rank0–8, eight common nodes, five named builds and validated draft codes. Old cleared checkpoints earn XP once; new defenses capture their equipped talent snapshot. See [Commander acceptance](commander-acceptance.md) for exact values, current locks and verification. The [Bastion first path](bastion-acceptance.md) adds Armored Heart, Brace and the first affordable Thick Bulkheads rank to that foundation, with separate specialization points and versioned builds. The [Stormwright first path](stormwright-acceptance.md) adds Charged Coils, Grounding Spike and the first affordable Deep Charge rank, with explicit specialization selection per build. The [Riftbinder first path](riftbinder-acceptance.md) adds Heavy Space, Rift Anchor and the first affordable Gravity Lens rank with fixed route-region controls. The [attunement journal](journal-acceptance.md) records Prism Coil and Null Shard discoveries and shows all three complete chains. Later steps remain unavailable. The remaining specialization lanes, rank30, trials and complete attunement chains below remain the required target. The standalone full-tree planner is still a design preview and never awards progress.

## Four different forms of progress

| Layer | Persists through defeat? | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| **Commander rank and common talents** | Yes | A durable feeling of growing stronger and becoming a better-equipped commander. |
| **Specialization talents and loadouts** | Yes | A chosen play style with a different active ability, interactions and capstone. |
| **Attunements** | Yes, permanently for the local player profile | Earn access to deeper talent rows, special trials and advanced expeditions. |
| **Individual tower experience and choices** | Within the current expedition; archived afterward | Adapt to this run's map, enemies and opportunities. Two veterans can travel between its sectors. |

The Commander is the player's identity; veteran towers are the expedition's cast. A Stormwright Commander can favor charged marks and conduction before the run begins, then decide whether the particular Gauss tower becomes Railbreaker or Conductor as that run develops.

## The full progression target

- **30 Commander ranks.** The first rank's common point is awarded with the first completed tutorial encounter. Subsequent even ranks grant a specialization point; subsequent odd ranks grant a common point. At rank 30 the player has **15 common points and 15 specialization points**. The first two ranks arrive within the opening sector; final XP pacing follows playtests.
- **18 common talent nodes**, arranged around logistics, battlefield command and recovery. Some have two ranks; the budget cannot buy everything.
- **Three 21-node specialization trees:** **Bastion**, **Stormwright**, and **Riftbinder**. Only one specialization is active in an expedition. Its 15-point budget is independent of the common tree.
- **81 designed nodes total**, with **114 purchasable ranks** across all four trees. These are design entries, not 81 implemented effects. The canonical draft is [talent-trees.json](talent-trees.json).
- Seven rows in each specialization: modest but useful early bonuses, abilities and interactions in the middle, attunement-gated powers at the bottom. The common tree has six rows.
- The final row contains three mutually exclusive capstones. A player cannot take all three or borrow another specialization's points.

Baseline power, salvage and integrity in the main design are untalented values. Permanent talents are allowed to make earlier encounters easier; do not secretly scale enemies to erase that reward. Harder optional expeditions provide an explicit next challenge. Balance the initial campaign for its expected rank range and retain a viable starter loadout for each specialization.

XP is earned from resolved encounters, first discoveries and completed objectives, not wall-clock waiting. A defeat retains rewards from previously completed encounters. A retry does not award the same encounter ID twice. Completing a fresh expedition is legitimate repeatable progress; the pacing should favor learning and clearing content over deliberately farming a trivial opening.

## The three identities

| Specialization | Fantasy | Signature active | Three final choices |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Bastion** | The engineer who refuses to lose the position | **Brace:** temporarily reduce incoming core damage | **Citadel Protocol** adds a barrier; **Last Word** turns a low-health crisis into Autocannon overdrive; **Living Fortress** strengthens the core as districts return. |
| **Stormwright** | The commander who turns a column into one electrical system | **Grounding Spike:** mark and fracture a chosen threat | **Thunderhead** creates capped arcs; **Event Horizon** adds a short control opening; **Perfect Equation** rewards precision elite kills with an extra shot. |
| **Riftbinder** | The commander who turns the Void's forces against it | **Rift Anchor:** create a temporary control field on a legal route region | **Black Sun** ends in a pull and burst; **Phoenix Circuit** creates controlled fire from an elite kill; **The Quiet Between** interrupts a telegraphed disruption. |

Each identity has three connected lanes. Cross-connections allow hybrid paths within that identity. Specializations complement the tower arsenal rather than requiring a single weapon. For example, Stormwright's active can supply the mark needed by a Pulse build even when the player chose the Foundry instead of the Observatory.

Common talents create consequential supporting choices: sacrifice a late recovery capstone for **Coordinated Assault**, take **Efficient Wiring** to free capacity for an Extractor, or use **Emergency Grid** to retain one defense during a suppression. Early percentage bonuses exist, but they lead to abilities and altered behavior; the deep tree is not a list of larger numbers.

## Exact draft tree rules

One click selects a node to inspect. Explicit **Invest point** and **Refund point** actions change the draft. Each rank costs one point. A child requires at least one listed parent fully ranked. Deep rows also require points spent in earlier rows. Choice groups allow one node in the group, regardless of remaining budget.

Specialization row gates from top to bottom: **0, 0, 3, 5, 7, 9, 12** points spent above that row. The common tree uses **0, 0, 3, 5, 8, 11**. Specialization row six additionally requires **Aligned** attunement; row seven requires **Attuned**. All root/mid-row two-rank nodes require both ranks before unlocking their dependent nodes.

Refunding a prerequisite prunes every descendant that is no longer legal, recursively refunds its ranks, and recalculates row gates. It must never produce a dangling paid talent. The draft planner demonstrates this graph behavior; production combat still needs its own implementation and acceptance tests.

The planning page offers a full-rank example and simulated attunement states to explore the design. Those controls are visibly labelled as previews and do not award actual player progression.

## Attunement is an adventure

Attunements have a visible journal with the complete chain, next location, current objective and reward. Necessary relics have guaranteed drops when their declared conditions are met. Previous qualifying discoveries count retroactively where the objective permits. Completed chains never expire or reset on respec.

Every specialization chain has four steps. Step two grants **Aligned** status, opening row six. Step four grants **Attuned**, opening capstones and that specialization's advanced trial. Each step is a meaningful scenario or discovery rather than a quantity of routine kills.

| Chain | 1 · Discover | 2 · Restore / Aligned | 3 · Demonstrate | 4 · Trial / Attuned |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| **Oath of the Bastion** | Recover the Aegis Core from the first Warden clear | Restore the Habitat Ring and finish its defense with the core alive | Prevent a declared amount of damage with Brace across a single successful encounter; journal shows the exact target | **The Broken Gate:** a short authored defense with alternating approaches, a supplied Bastion loadout and one vulnerable relay. Clear it to earn the Aegis Sigil. |
| **The Stormwright's Circuit** | Recover the Prism Coil on the first Observatory clear | Complete the Observatory relay defense and interrupt its exposed disruptor | Kill a marked elite after at least two weapon classes contributed; control counts as contribution | **The Silent Array:** restore three charged junctions in a fixed-budget precision trial. Clear it to earn the Storm Sigil. |
| **The Riftbinder's Descent** | Recover the Null Shard from a successful Signal elite encounter | Restore the Capacitor Yard and survive the announced rift surge | Defeat an elite inside Rift Anchor with both control and burn contributions | **The Hollow Star:** contain a rotating series of clearly forecast breaches. Clear it to earn the Rift Sigil. |

The Bastion demonstration threshold is initially **12 prevented core damage** in one cleared encounter; show progress and test its attainability with the supplied early loadout. Other objective conditions are binary, explicit events. These are authored design targets subject to balance testing, not implemented quests.

Trials provide a fixed budget and a curated specialization loadout that temporarily supersedes the player's normal talent effects. They test understanding at a known baseline. Trial completion changes only the attunement record and declared rewards, then restores the normal loadout. Failing a trial allows immediate retry without consuming a key or erasing the chain.

**The Black Star Protocol** is the major expedition attunement. Clear the three base sectors, finish any one specialization attunement, and recover three guaranteed sector transmission fragments. Those records open an advanced version of the expedition with authored threat modifiers and a new final encounter pattern. Other specializations are optional breadth, not a forced requirement to switch classes. More expedition attunements can be added after this one proves worthwhile.

## Respec, saved builds and clarity

Talent respec and specialization changes are free in the command room between expeditions. They are locked for the active expedition, including transit, so a player cannot switch into an income build for a payout and immediately switch back. Talent points earned mid-run are banked for the next command-room visit; individual tower choices continue during the run.

Allow at least five named loadouts per specialization plus curated starter builds. Editing a draft does not mutate an active run. **Apply** validates the complete graph and atomically stores a versioned loadout. Loadouts may leave points unspent. Build codes carry the content version and selected ranks, never entitlement claims; imports must validate point budget, prerequisites, rank limits and attunements against the receiving profile.

Talent descriptions must show the actual applied value, next-rank change, prerequisites, affected tower/effect tags and whether the benefit is an active ability. Spell effects need readable icons, cooldowns and targeting; the initial release should cap the ordinary active bar at three abilities. If a loadout unlocks more than three, the command room requires choosing three before launch. Passive triggers do not occupy an active slot. Pause remains free.

## Delivery sequence

The first sector includes a real progression taste: Commander ranks 1–8, the common tree and all three specialization previews, a functioning early path for each specialization, saved builds, and the first attunement chain's introduction. Rows beyond the current rank/content are visible with truthful unlock requirements. No selectable node may spend currency or points on an unimplemented effect.

The technical proof can implement one common lane and one specialization lane first, but that is an engineering step—not the finished progression promise. The complete expedition includes the full three trees, rank 30, all three four-step attunements and Black Star access. Build reusable effect hooks and prove one chain before filling all content.

The expanded scope deserves its own playtest: observe whether players can describe their build, anticipate the next attractive unlock, change a build without assistance, and complete an attunement step using only the journal. Inspect branch diversity and unused nodes. If one build dominates, adjust interactions or encounter demands; avoid making a respec expensive to conceal imbalance.

## Acceptance additions

1. **Point accounting:** rank 30 awards exactly 15 common and 15 active-specialization points; repeated rank/claim events do not duplicate them. A saved run keeps the loadout snapshot it started with.
2. **Graph legality:** enumerate starter and capstone paths in all four trees; every published node is reachable within its budget and unlock requirements. Spend/refund round trips preserve totals and prune invalid descendants. Invalid imports reject atomically.
3. **Effect truth:** each purchasable node has a production effect binding and at least one scenario demonstrating its stated result. Test representative damage, duration, capacity, refund, active targeting and trigger-cap cases against real simulation events. Descriptions and values use the same definitions. Locked or absent content cannot consume points.
4. **Cross-system interactions:** shared and specialization modifiers have explicit stacking rules. Cap secondary effects, choose the strongest slow, prevent recursive arcs/explosions, and prevent duplicate triggered rewards. Test all nine capstones with their intended tower combinations and at both simulation speeds.
5. **Attunement durability:** execute discover → restore → demonstrate → trial → unlock; refresh after every boundary. Progress persists, rewards apply once, retry costs no key, and switching specializations preserves prior attunements. Unqualified events do not advance the journal.
6. **Trial isolation:** enter with a normal loadout, run the fixed trial, fail/retry/complete, and verify the original normal loadout and resources are restored without importing trial currency or temporary abilities.
7. **Build UX:** keyboard and touch players can inspect, invest, refund, reset, save, apply and switch a legal loadout. Every lock explains its reason. The active-ability limit is enforced before launch. No mid-expedition edit affects that run.
8. **Progression playtest:** observe uncoached rank-ups and at least one completed chain. Record comprehension, desired next unlock, build changes, failures and voluntary replay; these observations guide tuning rather than claiming proven retention.

The reference planner and JSON are design tools. None of these acceptance criteria is satisfied merely because that planner renders correctly.