The Tree of Wisdoms

**The Tree of Wisdoms** is one of the main gameplay mechanics in *The Book of Hours.* The Librarian commits skills of the relevant aspects to each of the nine branches: Illumination, Hushery, Nyctodromy, Skolekosophy, The Bosk, Preservation, Birdsong, Horomachistry, and Ithastry. Each wisdom is connected to at least one aspect and one of the three categories of Arts: Bright Arts, Night Arts, and Arts Unregarded.

This links to an extremely spoilery page only suitable for absolute perfectionists. Behold, Wisdom Revealed

### Wisdom for Dummies.

For the sake of easier planning you may look at the Tree of Wisdoms as a wheel, with most of the upper half scrambled for the sake of confusing you. Every given wisdom contributes to two given Elements of the soul and every given Element Contributes to two given Wisdoms.

Skills add their own layer of complexity into this mess and there's no obvious correlation between the groups they can "move" between. Skill levels and book accessibility complicate matters further. Yet the distribution between wisdoms and elements is rather clear-cut. You can't use the same wisdom for more than 9 elements total and you'll probably want evolution from no less than 7 skills per element. And the further you go down the same wisdom the more skill levels you'll need to keep progressing. Combined with RNG-affected book availability, it would seem the best strategy is to try to balance the spread of both wisdoms and elements 2-ways, while minding the skills with placement issues. So, for example, half of your Preservation should be slotted for Health and the other for Chor, while half your Health should come from Bosk and another from Preservation.

Also note the skills you already had by the time you assigned your journal. For example, the twice born librarian would have 1 Health (that everyone starts with) 1 Trist (that everyone gets from assigning the journal) 1 Shapt (recovered with wet journal) and 2 Phosts (1 recovered with wet journal, 1 from cataloguing the dry journal). With that much extra Phost you'll probably want more of your Illumination slotted for Mettle and more of your Ithastry slotted for Wist.

Some "starting points" for your puzzling:

* 4 Skills in Illumination=>Phost group can't evolve elsewhere, be careful when slotting other skills in this way.
* Only 4 skills can evolve in Birdsong=>Chor group, be careful when NOT slotting those skills this way.

### The Tree of OCDs

Should you want to keep both your OCD and your sanity just how you like them (on a totally unrelated note, does anyone else think that Trist Birdsong sounds like a name of a DnD character? No? Well, spend a few days sorting through this \*\*\*\* and you just might) here's a spoiler and a ready build for you. Main goals/features are:

* 70 Total Evolution opportunities across the board - not a single element slotted in a way that would make it unable to evolve anything (hopefully, unless more errors in the data this was build on pop up). Except for the 3 (and counting?) duds that can't evolve ever.
* At least 7 evolution opportunities per element of the soul. Enough to let you maximise all the elements.
* At least 8 elements of each type. Enough to let you maximise all the elements regardless of what elements you chose at the start of the game at the beach.
* Said elements are all spread 4/4 (except the one that gets the 9th element, where it's 4/5) between their two branches to smooth out the process of allocation as much as possible.
* 8 Skills on 8 branches, (9 skills on the last 9th branch) so you don't have to bypass more than one slot per branch if you want it's mastery.

Additional info:

* No attention was paid to the earliest acquisition levels of said skills. I don't think it's very likely that some wisdom branches will be held back too long as a result, but that's not outside of the realm of possibility.
* The build is focused on universality, and is not likely to be optimal for any given librarian. It will work for all of them though, which is the point.
* Some skills were split 2-ways from equivalent pairs. Obviously, those can be swapped with their twins with no consequence whatsoever. When you're lucky enough to find the first one in a a pair you can pick whatever element you prefer from them.
* The element to receive 9th skill allocation was more from circumstance than choice. The Tree of Wisdom is actually extremely rigid when you have a specific goal in mind for it *(It's just not very nice about being rigid - you will not know that most choices are wrong for your given goal unless you puzzle your way through a system of 73 binary equations on top of a few dozens of normal ones)*. Between minmaxing the total evolution opportunities and equalizing the spread, the position of the 9th skill allocation was almost determined. But I would have probably chosen this element for the 9th allocation anyway.
* That said, the build IS somewhat variable, and there IS room for sacrifice, so if you want 9 allocations somewhere else you might be able to re-arrange this to fit your preferences. Just be sure you know what you're doing when making alterations - look before you leap, measure before you cut.
* The build was made before "bancroft" update when Edicts Inviolable, Door & Wall, and Desires & Dissolutions could not evolve via Horomachistry (meaning it was made with less breathing space than there is now) and based on the data from the Wisdom Revealed page (and inherited potential errors, yikes, but no fatal ones found thus far).

P.S. If anyone thinks that this contribution does not fit the wiki style... Well, feel free to restyle it (A guide page maybe? Or a build dedicated one?). All I ask for is your understanding and data preservation. Coming up with this was rage inducing tiresome, mind-numbingly tedious, and soul-crushingly boring. I'd appreciate it if you would respect my desire to save others from such an experience.