How the reworked Witcher 3 skill trees work
The Witcher 3 remaster replaced the old five-column skill lists with four proper trees, and this page draws each of them the way the character screen lays them out. Swords, Signs, Alchemy and General hold twenty skills apiece, every one of them worth three ability points, and the lines between them are the order you have to buy them in.
A Witcher 3 skill is no longer unlocked by points alone. Each node names the skills that open it, so a tree is entered at one of its root skills and spent outwards along the branches: Swords opens at Muscle Memory or Arrow Deflection, Signs at any of its five sign skills, Alchemy at Refreshment, Efficiency or Frenzy, and General at one of the six School Techniques.
Twenty of the eighty Witcher 3 skills keep a points-spent requirement on top of their unlock path, needing six, twelve or eighteen points already spent in that tree before they can be bought. Those are marked on the node in the trees below.
Core skills and ability slots
Above each tree sit the core skills: Fast Attack, Strong Attack, Defense, Marksmanship and Battle Trance for Swords, the five signs for Signs, and Brewing, Oil Preparation, Bomb Creation, Mutation and Trial of the Grasses for Alchemy. Geralt has these from the start and they take a single level.
A Witcher 3 skill still only works once it is slotted. The character screen has twelve ability slots in four groups of three, and a skill bought in the tree does nothing until it is placed in one of them, which is what makes a Witcher 3 build a question of which twelve abilities to run rather than how far down a tree to spend.
Mutagens and the colours of a Witcher 3 build
Each group of three ability slots has a mutagen slot beside it. A mutagen raises the bonus it grants for every slotted skill in that group whose colour matches it, so filling a group with red Swords skills next to a greater red mutagen is worth far more than spreading colours across the board. Swords skills are red, Signs blue, Alchemy green and General perks yellow.
Witcher 3 mutations from Blood and Wine
Blood and Wine adds mutations, a second layer on top of the skill trees that the remaster left untouched. There are twelve of them plus Strengthened Synapses, and each one costs both ability points and mutagens of a given colour gathered from monsters. Unlocking a mutation also opens extra ability slots, which is the main reason Euphoria and Piercing Cold reshape a late Witcher 3 build so completely.