Leveling systems and skill trees were once the stuff RPGs were made of, but they’ve become pretty ubiquitous across pretty much every type of video game. More specifically, they have been a staple of the survival/crafting genre for some time.
It should come as no surprise, then, that Breakwaters follows in this tradition with simple yet rewarding leveling and skill point systems. You have three basic player skills that you’ll level up by completing certain tasks:
- Homesteading – Level up by building things.
- Adventuring – Level up by completing missions and defeating enemies.
- Exploration – Level up by finding new points of interests or islands.
There are also Player Attributes that you can actively beef up by spending skill points that you acquire from leveling up the aforementioned player skills.
These include:
- Agility – Boosts your max sprint/stamina meter.
- Endurance – Boosts your carrying capacity for stacked items.
- Constitution – Boosts your maximum number of hearts or health.
- Hydration Bonus – Increases the duration of time before your hydration meter is depleted.
- Hunger Bonus – Gives you more time before your hunger meter reaches zero.
It is a rather simple, yet still effective and rewarding, leveling system that ultimately allows you to focus more on exploring and crafting and less on babysitting those hydration and hunger meters.
Honestly, I didn’t uncover this aspect of the game until I was pretty deep into Breakwaters. But since I did, it has made my experience much more palatable, adding a nice personal goal system that rewards — and even encourages — venturing out on my boat to discover new islands and points of interest, as well as crafting items that I otherwise might avoid.
So there’s the Breakwaters level up system in a nutshell. If you want to learn more, you can check out my broader list of tips and tricks for survival in Breakwaters.
