Ascension is Shadowrealm's endgame prestige: you give up your accumulated rank to gain permanent power that applies to every future run. It is the single biggest decision in the game, and the part players consistently do not expect is not what it takes away but what it temporarily re-locks.
Ascending resets your live rank and sends you back down the progression ladder. In exchange you earn Ascension points, spent in the permanent Ascendancy tree, and your highest-ever rank is remembered separately from your current one.
Progression is also faster afterwards: an ascended character earns XP with a multiplier of 0.5x applied to the climb, so regaining ground takes far less time than the original ascent did. The loop is intended to be repeatable, not a one-off.
Most rank gates in the game read your HIGHEST ever rank, so ascending does not take your unlocks away. A handful deliberately read your LIVE rank instead, and those genuinely re-lock: city actions, travelling between cities, the stables, and heists.
This is a design decision rather than an oversight. Those four are the systems that define the shape of a run, so re-locking them is what makes a new run feel like a run at all instead of an instant return to full power. But it does mean the hours immediately after ascending are the most constrained the game ever gets, and it is worth finishing anything that depends on travel or heists BEFORE you ascend rather than after.
The tree holds 64 nodes across 7 branches, and unlike your rank it is permanent: nothing in it is ever lost to a future ascension. Points spent here are spent for the lifetime of the character.
Nodes come in tiers with prerequisites, so reaching a branch's powerful end means committing points to its cheaper nodes first. Spreading thinly across all seven branches is the most common early mistake: the tier structure rewards depth in two or three branches far more than breadth across all of them.
If you commit points badly, a full respec costs 250 shadowgems. That is a real price, so it is worth planning a route through the tree before spending rather than after.
Do not confuse the Ascendancy tree with talents. Talents are earned by RANK: every rank grants 5 talent points, so a normal climb steadily fills that tree without any prestige involved. The Ascendancy tree is filled only by ascending.
The practical difference is what happens when you ascend. Talent points follow your rank, so a reset changes what you have available there; Ascendancy nodes are permanent and never lost. That makes talents the tree to experiment in and Ascendancy the one to plan.
Both can be respecced for shadowgems, at 150 for talents and 250 for the Ascendancy tree. The price difference reflects exactly that permanence: a talent mistake is temporary, an Ascendancy mistake is not.
There is no single correct answer, but the shape of the decision is clear. Ascending early trades a short-term loss for compounding permanent bonuses that make every later run faster. Ascending late means more points banked at once but a longer stretch spent at power you have already mastered.
The practical advice: ascend when the climb has stopped teaching you anything and become routine. That is the point at which the permanent tree is worth more to you than the rank you are giving up.