The Prestige Tree: thirty skills, three branches, one budget
At prestige five a tree opens with thirty skills on it, ten in each of three branches: power, economy and energy. Every ordinary skill goes to five levels, and every one of them waits for a prestige level of its own — five for the first ones, ten for the last.
It is the one place in TAPCO where the game does not expect you to buy everything. The prestige levels that unlock the deepest skills take a long time to reach, so what you spend early decides which branch is finished when you get there.
Three branches, and what each is for
Power is about the tap itself and about the boss: tap power, automatic tapping, boss damage, critical chance and critical damage, automatic speed, the boss timer, the fusion bonus, and a tap combo — ending in a single Ultimate Power that has one level and waits for prestige ten.
Economy is about what things pay and what they cost: passive income and passive storage, weekly rewards, boss rewards, research and fusion efficiency, event rewards, automatic collection speed, and offline income — ending in Golden Passive. Two of these are the discounts that make the research lab and the fusion lab cheaper.
Energy is about the tank: maximum energy, regeneration, efficiency, a tap bonus tied to energy, a burst, a recharge, an overload, a shield and automatic use — ending in Hyper Energy. Because the tank is what limits a day, this branch is the one that changes how much a day can hold rather than what each tap is worth.
Prerequisites, and why the tree is a tree
Many skills sit behind another skill in the same branch. Automatic tapping wants two levels of tap power first; critical damage wants two levels of critical chance; passive storage wants two levels of passive income; offline income wants passive storage finished outright.
The three ultimates want two finished skills each, and they are the reason the tree cannot be shopped from at random. Ultimate Power wants a full tap combo and a full critical damage; Golden Passive wants offline income and collection speed both at five; Hyper Energy wants a full energy burst and four levels of overload.
So a branch is a route rather than a shelf, and the prestige requirement on each skill sets when the route can be walked at all. A skill at prestige eight is not for sale at prestige six no matter what you have.
What a skill costs
Every skill is priced on its own, from what it actually gives back, and the server is the only place those prices exist. The game asks for them and draws the card; a card with no price does not offer a purchase, because a price the browser worked out would be a price a browser could change.
They are not all close to each other. The cheapest in the tree is Research Efficiency and the dearest are the ultimates, and the gap between them is the difference between a skill that pays back in a day and one that is the last thing an account buys.
Everything a skill pays for is on the far side of a prestige reset, which is the point: the tree is what a run leaves behind. Where all of it lands together is the end-game loop.