In Obsidian Knight: Roguelike RPG, spend your Obsidian Orbs on core skill tier upgrades before using them to modify equipment attributes. Skill tier promotions apply permanent stat scaling and cooldown reductions that persist through every run, whereas gear modifications tie valuable orbs to individual items you might replace. Once you secure rare, epic, or legendary gear that you plan to keep long-term, redirect your orbs into reforging and enhancing item attributes.
How to Upgrade Skill Tiers
Upgrading skills with Obsidian Orbs breaks through skill tier caps, permanently increasing ability coefficients, lowering cooldowns, or adding secondary effects like freeze, burn, and area splash damage.
Follow these steps to upgrade your skill nodes:
- Open the Skill Interface: Navigate to your character menu and select the skill upgrade tab from the hub or inventory screen.
- Select Your Primary Skills: Choose the active ability responsible for your main damage rotation or area-of-effect clear. Follow up with passive nodes that increase attack percentage or critical multipliers.
- Review the Costs: Check the required number of Obsidian Orbs alongside supporting resources like gold and crests.
- Confirm Promotion: Apply the materials to push the node into its next tier bracket, unlocking higher scaling and reduced resource costs.
Focus your initial orbs on abilities you cast constantly. Pouring scarce currency into a situational defensive skill with a long cooldown produces far less combat value than upgrading your primary attack rotation.
Modifying and Enhancing Item Attributes
Obsidian Orbs allow you to elevate base gear stats and reforge randomized secondary affixes on high-tier equipment. Do not spend orbs on common or uncommon pieces that will be swapped out quickly. Save your currency until you find gear featuring at least two preferred base stats.
| Equipment Slot | Priority Attributes | Combat Role |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Weapon | Flat Attack, Critical Hit Rate, Critical Damage | Increases dungeon clear speed and single-target boss burst |
| Defensive Armor | Maximum Health, Flat Defense, Damage Reduction | Mitigates sustained incoming burst damage in difficult runs |
| Accessories | Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage %, Leech | Stabilizes skill rotations and sustains character health pools |
When reforging, target weak secondary lines and replace them with critical strike chance, flat damage, or life steal to raise your character's baseline performance.
When to Shift Investment from Skills to Gear
Deciding where to allocate Obsidian Orbs depends on the stability of your current inventory:
- Early to Mid Progression: Invest exclusively in core active skills and universal passives. Skill improvements are permanent account gains that cannot be lost when swapping equipment.
- Endgame Gear Optimization: Shift your orbs toward reforging weapon and armor attributes once gear replacement slows down. Rolling high-value offensive modifiers on a permanent weapon provides a faster power spike than paying exponential orb costs for high-tier skill diminishing returns.
Best Practices for Managing Obsidian Orbs
Because higher upgrade tiers demand steep orb costs, misallocating your currency can halt your progress against late-game bosses. Follow these rules to protect your orb economy:
- Avoid Early Reforging: Never reforge low-rarity gear that will be discarded after a few runs.
- Max Primary Nodes First: Bring one primary offensive skill and one core survivability skill to their target upgrade thresholds before investing in secondary utility perks.
- Maintain an Item Reserve: Keep a reserve pool of Obsidian Orbs ready so you can immediately enhance top-tier weapon drops without waiting on farming runs.
- Weigh Diminishing Returns: If a high-tier skill upgrade costs dozens of orbs for a minor incremental gain, allocate those orbs to reforge gear slots instead.
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Player Comments
133 players commented on this guide.
Nice guide. I am checking the other Obsidian Knight: Roguelike RPG articles next.
I tried this today and it worked better than my old setup.
This guide answered the exact question I had.
Good guide for Obsidian Knight: Roguelike RPG players. The early game part was useful.