How perks actually work
Caldarus grants the ability to sense and collect Essence on Year 1, Spring 3. From then on, Essence drops from activities tied to any skill, and you spend it at a statue. Each skill has at least four tiers of perks, with the fifth tier unlocked at level 60. Version 1.0 added seven new perks on top of the existing set.
Pick by your bottleneck, not by a tier list
The useful question is not “which perk is strongest” but “what is currently costing me the most time”. Find your bottleneck in the left column and start there.
| What is slowing you down | Skills to spend in | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Running out of day | Farming, Ranching | The repeated chores — watering, feeding, petting — are where automation perks pay back daily |
| Running out of Tesserae | Farming, Fishing, Mining | Yield and quality perks compound with every single harvest or haul |
| Fainting in the mines | Combat | Guardian’s Shield reflects the first hit you take each day |
| Missing collectibles | Archaeology, Mining | Lost to History opens ritual chambers; Treasure Hunter opens treasure rooms |
| Slow tool upgrades | Blacksmithing | Forge times shorten and infusion chance rises from 15% to 20% |
Combat perks worth understanding early
Combat perks change how a mine run feels more than they change raw damage numbers.
- Guardian’s Shield — once per day, the first hit you take is reflected.
- True Strike — enables critical hits, which deal double damage.
- Jump Attack — a mid-air attack that damages enemies in a radius.
- Well Armed — allows biome-unique equipment to drop from treasure chests.
Essence is not only for perks
Before you spend everything at a statue, note that Essence is also a crafting material. The Stone Refinery turns it into essence stones that charge magical tools, and Archaeology needs it to retrieve items from Mist Spots.
| Stone | Essence cost | Tool charge |
|---|---|---|
| Tiny | 5 | 1 day |
| Small | 25 | 5 days |
| Medium | 50 | 10 days |
| Large | 100 | 20 days |
| Giant | 200 | 40 days |
What this page will not do
We do not publish a ranked one-to-ten perk list with invented percentages. Where the public sources do not state an exact value, this page describes what the perk does and leaves the number out rather than filling it in.
Primary sources
Checked against these public pages. Official sources define confirmed features and status; community sources are labelled as such and used for game data that the developer does not publish directly.