This guide covers the traits which primarily affect your resource income in “Remnant: From the Ashes” like XP Gain, consumables, extra Scrap or Lumenite Crystals. Traits are passive bonuses your character has that can be leveled up, increasing the strength of the effect up to their max level of 20. These bonuses can grant a variety of buffing effects that make your character more powerful and increase their abilities.
Resource traits are usually less about directly affecting your survival, with the exception of Glutton, but are more quality of life traits that make the games grind easier on you by increasing the value of the resources you find throughout the game. One in particular, Elder Knowledge, even helps with the amount of XP you gain by killing monsters in Remnant, which makes earning every trait point after that, a fair bit quicker.
Last Updated for Patch: Subject 2923 DLC (August 20th, 2020)
Resource & Item Use Traits By Importance
Note: Traits are listed in terms of my own analysis of their overall importance and impact, starting with the best Trait to max out first (Elder Knowledge) and ending with the least important or impactful (Luminescent). If you disagree with me or have a reason why this order should be changed, I would love to hear your opinions in the comments section below!
Elder Knowledge takes the top spot in priorities thanks to the bonus to XP which makes earning levels for all your other Trait’s significantly faster. The sooner you max this out, the better the benefit for you in the long run.
Glutton takes the second spot in the priorities list because the boost to consumable use can actually increase your survivability, by allowing you to dodge, move and shoot sooner after using a potion or Dragon Heart.
Potency is in the third spot because while it won’t directly make you more survivable, having longer durations on your potions, Adrenalines and so forth, can save you a lot of resources for crafting while making it more easy to have these enhancing buffs active more often.
After Potency, there is a sharp drop in the usefulness of the traits in this category. Scavenger has no real impact on gameplay, but can make it easier to afford buff potions or crafting upgrades if you are feeling starved for resources. It’s easy enough to do some resource focused runs in places with lots of breakables like Rhom, so there’s other means to get more scrap in a pinch that don’t require you dedicating 20 passive points to a trait that does so little to keep you alive, when there are many more important ones that do. By the time you’ll have the extra trait points to waste, you probably won’t have much need for scrap anymore.
Unless you really happen to be crafting a lot of boss weapons late in the game, and for some reason avoided killing elites up until you get to the point of being able to unlock this trait, you won’t really need it ever. Luminescents seem like they are more rare than they really are, but their demand is limited to the point where you should easily end up with way more than you need in a normal game progression.