The skills tree in Enshrouded allows you to choose between 12 main class archetypes in the form of Beastmaster, Ranger, Assassin, Trickster, Wizard, Healer, Battlemage, Tank, Warrior, Barbarian, Athlete, and Survivor. Although each of these has its own dedicated pathways, it’s not necessarily advisable for you to invest in just one of them. Instead, you’ll need to think about the type of build that you want to aim for, such as a tank, while still recognizing that there are useful skills in adjacent skill trees that you might want to incorporate. On this page, we recommend three separate builds for melee: a tank build, a one-handed damage focused build, and a two-handed damage focused build.

If you want to jump to a specific type of build on this page, use the links below.

• Tank
• Warrior
• Barbarian

Best Core Skills – Crafting, Survivor, Athlete¶

As you first look at the skill menu in Enshrouded, you’ll notice that the melee-based builds are highlighted in red. These are tank, warrior, barbarian, and athlete, but in truth, you don’t need to focus on investing in just one of these. The first thing you should do is invest in some of the useful crafting and exploring-based skills on offer, especially in the initial circle of skills at the center of all trees, but also some in the Survivor tree. The skills that we recommend getting as soon as possible to make your adventures more efficient are as follows.

Essential Crafting Skills¶

There are two other central skills that you might want to consider investing in, such as Miner and Saviour. However, the former only increases the amount that you gain from mining by a relatively small amount, and you probably won’t need that unless you’re planning on doing a lot of building and crafting. The latter is exclusively useful for co-op multiplayer, so you should only worry about that if you’re playing with friends, and we’d only recommend getting it if you’re running into trouble with reviving your friends in time.

Best Survival and Athlete Skills¶

Now that we’ve covered the most essential crafting skills, we’ll discuss some of the best skills from the Survivor and Athlete skill trees that can be useful for any melee build.

Chief among these is arguably the Runner skill, which both increases your sprinting speed and reduces stamina consumption while sprinting by 10%. Similarly important is the Double Jump skill, which is invaluable to almost any player while exploring. It can also be handy in combat when combined with the Jump Attack skill, which can be invested in immediately after from the Athlete tree. You should also consider getting the Rebound skill, which is further in the Survivor tree, to regenerate base stamina 50% faster.

There are a few other skills from the Survivor and Athlete trees that you should consider investing in to enhance your core abilities, but the ones noted above are the most essential. You’ll also gain more stamina by investing in the Endurance attribute improvements along the way. If you’re curious about what else we’d recommend from these trees, see the table below, where we’ve included everything with the associated descriptions. However, keep in mind that you’ll probably want to balance your investments in these with whatever melee-based tree you’re focusing on between Barbarian, Warrior, and Tank, so you shouldn’t necessarily aim for getting these all at once. Instead, think of them as additional nice-to-haves that will enhance your build.

Tank, Warrior, or Barbarian?¶

Now we come to the choice regarding which of the three main melee skill trees you should invest in. We’ll briefly explain the main differences between each before delving into the details.

The easiest way to think about the differences between tank, warrior, and barbarian is to recognize that the tank is almost entirely focused on making you tougher to kill by increasing your armor value rating and decreasing the amount of base damage that you receive in general. By contrast, the warrior tree is focused on improving your melee damage with one-handed weapons, while the barbarian tree is focused on improving your damage with two-handed weapons. There is another difference between these last two, though; barbarian skills tend to reward blunt-damage weapons such as hammers in the later stages, while warrior rewards swords and axes.

With those basic distinctions understood, we’ll move on to the individual builds for each, including recommended gear and weapons.

Best Tank Build – Enshrouded¶

If the idea of being the toughest, most resilient melee-based character is your thing, you’ll want to invest significantly in the tank tree. However, the first thing to note here is that some of the skills within the tank tree are only relevant if you’re playing with others in co-op multiplayer. This is because they relate to the amount of threat that you draw from enemies, so if you invest in these, you’re more likely to be hit first when you face a group of hostiles, allowing you to protect your squishy friends. If you’re not playing in co-op but you still want to be tough to kill, you can invest in the first few skills of the tank tree, then focus on more damage-dealing skills from one of the others.

We’re not including the recommended skills from the crafting, survivor, and athlete skill trees for each of the builds below but keep those in mind as you consider your gameplay priorities, and how they might gel with the build you’re going for to make it more effective.

Tank Skills¶

Assuming that you are playing in co-op, we recommend the following skills for a tank.

These are the main skills relevant for a tank build in co-op, and you’ll gain a decent amount of Strength and Constitution stat upgrades along the way. If you’re not playing in co-op, you should stop investing in this tree before you hit the Nemesis skill. You can then focus on skills from other trees for utility or damage improvements. One of the more obvious skills that you can use from the warrior tree for your tank build is Feast, which increases health by an additional 15% from meat-based foods.

You’ll also benefit from any Constitution stat boosts that you can find from other trees, but there’s not much point in chasing these if the associated skills aren’t relevant to your tank build. Instead, consider those that boost resistances, such as Snake Eater from the Beastmaster tree, which boosts poison resistance by 20%.

Tank Equipment¶

The equipment that you use in terms of weapons, armor, and accessories will vary throughout your adventure. The random nature of the loot system means that we can’t really provide a reliable list of lootables, but it’s a different matter when it comes to crafted armor. Most of the best crafted armor sets are obvious enough as you progress, such as the Rising Fighter set at level 8, or the Tank set at level 13. As you approach level 20, you’ll unlock the Guardian and Mercenary sets, both of which are viable as a tank, but the Guardian set is arguably the best for co-op since it gives you the most amount of protection. Keep following that trend as you level in accordance with your needs, and you’ll be fine.

The same goes for weapons and accessories. You should aim for a decent balance of health and stamina buffs, but if your focus is to increase your survivability as a tank in co-op, rings that increase base health and health regeneration will be preferable. The weapon loot system is a bit of a lottery at the moment, so just go with whatever provides the most amount of damage alongside decent buffs where possible.

Best Warrior Build – Enshrouded¶

The warrior DPS build is good for both solo and co-op playthroughs since there are no skills associated with it that are only useful in the context of playing with others. This means you can take full advantage of all that the skill tree has to offer but remember that the last big skill will only boost your one-handed sword and axe damage, so you’ll need to invest with the intention of getting one of these as your main weapon. The skill in question, Swift Blades, doesn’t actually increase the base damage from these weapons, but it allows you to attack with both faster than you’d otherwise be able to. The exact amount is unspecified but after testing we can confirm that it’s a significant amount, allowing you to execute more hits in less time, and therefore both increasing your damage and reducing the chances of a counterattack from enemies.

Warrior Skills¶

The above skills are the main ones you should try to get as soon as possible if you plan on using a one-handed sword or axe with your main DPS build. There are others on the warrior tree that increase damage for blunt and piercing, but it’s a waste to invest in these if your end goal is Swift Blades, which is arguably the best skill from the warrior tree. You’ll have plenty of points left over to invest in other useful skills from the survivor or athlete trees with this build, giving you more flexibility as you hybridize. Alternatively, you can go for some of the crossover skills from the barbarian tree, such as Breach and Shockwave, which you can see the descriptions for below.

Crucially, if you’re going for either a one-handed or two-handed DPS build, you should invest in Merciless Attack (at the base of the tank tree) for an ability that inflicts massive damage whenever you stun-lock an enemy.

Warrior Equipment¶

As mentioned above, if you want to make this build work, you’ll need to invest in a good one-handed sword or axe whenever you can. This allows you to take advantage of Swift Blades and the associated increase in cutting damage from Slasher and Butcher, while also increasing your crit chance by 10% with Veteran. All of this contributes to an excellent one-handed DPS build, and you have the advantage of being able to use a shield at the same time for extra protection.

Other than the restriction for weapons, you should focus on any gear that contributes to improved crit chance and melee damage in general. Once again, the Rising Fighter set is a no-brainer for this, but you’ll probably want the Adventurer set over the Tank set at level 13, and the Mercenary set at level 18 will boost your overall damage even further. Follow this same pattern in terms of opting for gear that improves crit chance and melee damage, and you’ll be good to go!

In terms of rings, any will do fine so long as they provide boosts to either stamina or health, depending on your preference for this build. However, keep in mind that if you’re using Swift Blades, you’ll be consuming stamina at a much faster rate as the time between attacks is reduced.

Best Barbarian Build - Enshrouded¶

The last melee build that we’ll consider for this page focuses on the barbarian skill tree. This one is much more useful to anyone considering a two-handed DPS build over a one-handed DPS build, and that’s reflected in the types of skills on offer. Not all the skills in this tree are relevant to two-handed builds, which is part of why you can hybridize between other builds with some of them, but the general idea is that you’ll become a melee DPS powerhouse, capable of inflicting more damage per hit than any other melee build. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be more deadly with this build than the warrior build mentioned above, but it’s more a difference in playstyle preference. If you enjoy using big, brutish two-handed weapons and seeing those big numbers on the screen, this is the build for you.

Barbarian Skills¶

The above skills are the main ones that you’ll want to invest in from the barbarian tree, but you’ll soon find that you have points to spend elsewhere. Double Jump, Jump Attack, and Jump Attack II from the survivor and athlete builds work particularly well with the perks from a barbarian build, so we highly recommend investing in those where possible. You can also further increase your blunt damage (especially if you’re using a hammer) with the Brute and Hammer Time skills from the warrior tree, boosting your overall damage by a combined 30% with both.

Along the way, you’ll get The Warrior’s Path skill which also increases your melee damage by 10%, and once you get the Veteran skill from the same tree, you’ll be inflicting silly amounts of damage to most enemies in melee. This is perhaps the costliest path of all three builds, since you need to significantly invest in two different trees, but it’s well worth it if you want to hit as hard as possible, especially when you consider the amount of Strength stat boosts you’ll be getting from both trees.

Barbarian Equipment¶

The main issue with the barbarian build listed above is that if you want to take full advantage of it, you’ll need to use a two-handed hammer. You may not always have one of these at the appropriate level, but if you can find one toward the end game, it’s worth the investment. In the meantime, you’ll still benefit from the bonuses for other two-handed weapons, so long as they inflict a decent amount of blunt damage.

In terms of armor and rings, you’re essentially looking at the same choices from the warrior build, which is to say any that increase your base damage and crit chance. With that said, keep a close eye on any additional bonuses from looted armor that might increase blunt damage.

More Enshrouded Build Guides¶

If melee builds aren’t your thing and you’re more interested in a ranged or magic-based build, check out our guides for those below.

• Ranged Assassin Build - Enshrouded
• Enshrouded Mage Wand Build