Level ups and player stats
Every level-up screen asks you to pick from a set of player stats, and with 18 of them in the build the offers start repeating before you have a plan. The offers are stat boosts, not weapon picks — weapons come from the run's own systems — which means your level-up choices are really a question of which multiplier you are committing to.
Demo 1.2 rebuilt this screen around an SH Docs look, and the Warmfix build added a spreadsheet-styled Stats Manager that you can open straight from the level-up screen. Both changes exist for the same reason: the numbers are the game.
The stats and what they move
| Stat | What it does |
|---|---|
| Weapon Damage | Raises the damage your weapons deal |
| Weapon Power | Raises the number of Heat/Lag/Infect stacks applied, and strengthens knockback |
| EXP Gain | Raises experience earned — a flat percentage in the in-game text |
| Armor | Reduces incoming damage by a percentage |
| Luck | Improves the success rate of zip and RAM files |
| Coins | Increases coin income |
| HP / max health | Raises your health pool |
| Repel | Historical stat, folded into Weapon Power in Demo 1.2 |
| Movement / speed | Movement-side stat on the same offer pool |
That covers the ones visible in the demo's UI. The build ships 18 player stats in total, and the Stats Manager is the authoritative in-game list — check it rather than trusting a screenshot from an older build, because the Warmfix notes include a fix for end-of-run stat totals displaying the wrong numbers.
The three-pick rule
Most level-up screens in this game are not close calls. The order that holds up across builds:
- Weapon Power, if you are running any status weapon. It is the only stat that touches both your damage ceiling and your crowd control. On a stacking build it is worth more than Weapon Damage at every point in the run.
- Weapon Damage, if your build is direct-fire. Some weapons in the launch roster shoot straight at enemies, and those care about the damage number rather than the stack count. Do not buy Power for a weapon set that never applies a status.
- Survivability, when the last few minutes killed you. Armor and health are unglamorous and are frequently the difference between a full run and a lesson.
EXP Gain sits just behind those three. It is a snowball stat: take it early and the whole run is richer, take it at minute thirty and you will not recoup the level it cost you.
Where Luck fits
Luck does exactly one published job: it affects the success rate of zip and RAM files. Not weapon drops, not plugin rarity, not folder contents.
That makes Luck a build-conditional pick:
- Take it if your runs are file-heavy and you are regularly opening zips and RAM files.
- Ignore it if you are not, because it is a level spent on nothing.
The trap is taking Luck early because it feels like a general "better rewards" stat. In this game it is not.
Stats Manager is a tool, not a menu
The spreadsheet-styled Stats Manager tracks your weapon stats, installed plugins and player stats in one place, and as of Demo 1.2 you can open it from the level-up screen itself.
Use it for one thing above all: checking whether your stacking is actually live. If your build is supposed to be feeding Heat, Lag or Infect and the numbers say otherwise, you are missing an application weapon or a plugin that was carrying the stack — and you can find that out in-menu instead of at minute twenty-five.
The Warmfix build also added tooltips describing player stats, which is the fastest way to confirm what a stat does in the build you are actually playing.
What the offer screen actually shows
Read straight off a level 27 demo panel:
| Offer | Rarity | Effect as printed |
|---|---|---|
| Coin Gain | Uncommon | Increases coin gain by +5% |
| Search Size | Uncommon | Increases Search size by +10% |
| Quarantine Refresh | Uncommon | Decreases Quarantine refresh time by 15% |
| Armo(u)r | Uncommon | Increases resistance of damage taken by +3% |
| C: Drive Repel | Legendary | Increases C: Drive repel by 70% |
Three things in that list matter more than the percentages.
It is a shop, not a level-up screen. The panel's own wording is "purchase some upgrades", the reroll button costs 5 coins, and the offers are bought with coin income. That is why Coin Gain is a real stat and not a trap: your level-up quality is funded by the same currency you spend on everything else in the run.
Upgrades can be weapon-specific. "C: Drive Repel" raises knockback for one named weapon by 70% and does nothing for a build that is not carrying it. The offer pool is clearly aware of what you have — which means a run with fewer weapons gets sharper offers, and a run that grabs everything gets a diluted pool.
Rarity is on the card, and it is not cosmetic. An Uncommon Armo(u)r is +3% damage resistance; the Legendary in the same hand is +70% of a whole weapon's knockback. Reading the rarity colour before the effect text is the wrong order — read the effect, then use rarity to decide whether the number is good for its tier.
Reading an offer
When the screen shows three cards:
- The rarity colour is the offer's tier, not a guarantee. Rarity colours apply to upgrades, and they get rebalanced — the
damage_level_scalingplugin moved from Epic to Legendary in Demo 1.1. - Read the description, not the icon. Two stats can look identical in icon and differ entirely in effect.
- Declining is a real option when the alternative is a stat your build has no use for. A skipped level is a level you spend on something better.
Level-up choices are the same decision made forty times in a run, which is why they feel minor and are not. If you want the version of this decision that carries between runs, that is Beanz and meta upgrades — the same multiplier logic, applied permanently.