Why this site counts 243 nodes when the tree has 231 skills

Open the planner and you'll see "243 nodes" over the canvas. Open the 1.0 change list and it tracks 231 skills. Both numbers are correct, they describe the same tree, and the difference between them is 12 clickable things you never have to pay for. Here is the exact counting method, why two numbers exist at all, and the one node on the tree that still has no name.

231 skills: everything that costs points

The tree's paid content is 231 skills, and that count splits three ways by kind: 43 active skills (things you cast or trigger), 123 passive skills (permanent modifiers) and 65 attribute nodes (the +Constitution / +Intelligence / +Strength style bonuses). 43 + 123 + 65 = 231. Buying every rank of every one of them is the 675-point bill we describe in the point-economy breakdown.

12 ✦ Sparks: the free roots

Scattered at the base of the tree are 12 ✦ Sparks — the root entry points. Every build chains from one; clicking it costs zero points, forever. They are real nodes with real positions in the game data, so they belong on any honest node count — they just never show up in a skill count because there is nothing to buy. All twelve live in the core area, which produces the site's most-quoted pair of numbers: the core has 31 nodes and 19 skills, and both statements are true (19 + 12 = 31).

The whole tree, area by area

Because the Sparks all sit in core, the three class areas count the same either way, and only core differs:

Each area has its own page with the real costs and a planner pre-focused on it — ranger, mage, warrior and core.

Which number should you quote?

Both, for different jobs. "243 nodes" is what the planner shows, because the canvas renders every clickable node including the free Sparks. "231 skills" is what the change list counts, because a free root cannot change cost, move or get a new rank — it has nothing to change. That is also why the 1.0 change rows add up to exactly 231: 17 new skills, 7 moved (the dagger line into the assassin cluster), and 207 carried over from the Update 8 tree.

When a patch note or a wiki page says "over 230 skills," it is counting the paid skills; when another tool says 243, it is counting the canvas. Neither is wrong — but a source that mixes the two in one sentence usually hasn't checked either number, which is precisely the habit this site was built against.

How the counts are kept honest

A count on a page is only as good as the mechanism behind it, so here is ours. The node and skill totals are not typed into pages — they are computed from the extracted tree on every site build, and the build fails if the numbers drift from a committed baseline snapshot. When the multi-rank value bug surfaced in October 2026 (91 nodes showing one rank low), the fix shipped together with that regression guard precisely so a silent drift can't happen again: change the tree, the assertion trips; re-verify the extraction, the baseline updates on purpose, in a commit a human reviewed.

Underneath the totals, every row in the change list keeps its evidence: a verbatim changelog quote where Keen Games published one, the server-file values where they exist, and the internal node ID where a name has no source yet. The counting method itself — 243 total, 231 paid, 12 free, all twelve Sparks in core — is stated on the data sources page and re-reads from the same files every time the site builds. If 1.0.x ships a different tree, these numbers move with the data, not with a manual edit someone forgot to make.

The node nobody has named yet

One of the 243 has no published name in any source we trust: a mage node, internal game ID 1569371409, which appears as "Unknown node" in the planner and tables. Its position, cost and connections are in the server files like every other node — only the display name is missing, because the 1.0 server package ships no name strings at all. Every name on this site was taken from community data and cross-checked between at least two independent sources where possible; names resting on a single source carry a flag saying so. The unknown node gets the same treatment taken to its logical end: missing is marked, never guessed.

The same discipline applies to numbers: skill values come from the 1.0 server files (build 1267041), descriptions default to pre-1.0 text where 1.0 shipped none, and the first description verified against the live game — Warrior's Path — is flagged as such. The full accounting, source by source and flag by flag, is on the data sources page, and the short version of how to check anything we publish now also lives in the about page.