Monster Survivors features a permanent upgrade system that persists across all runs, allowing you to gradually increase your power through strategic gold investments. Unlike the temporary upgrades you select during each run, these permanent enhancements fundamentally improve your baseline capabilities and unlock new strategic options. Understanding which upgrades to prioritize can dramatically accelerate your progression and help you reach deeper stages more consistently.
The upgrade system creates a satisfying progression loop where each run makes you stronger, even when you don't survive as long as you'd like. Gold earned during gameplay can be spent on various categories of improvements, from basic stat increases to unlocking entirely new gameplay mechanics. Smart gold management is crucial because while you'll eventually be able to purchase everything, the order in which you invest makes a significant difference in how quickly you progress.
Understanding the Gold System
How Gold Works
Gold is the permanent currency in Monster Survivors that you accumulate across all runs. During each playthrough, defeated enemies drop gold coins that automatically collect when you walk over them. The amount of gold you earn increases as you progress deeper into stages and defeat tougher enemies, with elite monsters and bosses providing particularly generous rewards. Gold persists even when you die, so every run contributes to your overall progression regardless of how far you make it.
Your gold balance is displayed in the main menu and carries over between all game sessions. There's no maximum gold cap, so you can accumulate as much as you need for expensive upgrades. The game tracks your lifetime gold earnings and current balance separately, allowing you to see both how much you've earned total and how much you have available to spend. This transparency helps you plan your upgrade investments and track your progression over time.
Gold Earning Tips
Focus on surviving longer rather than farming specific enemies, as stage progression provides the best gold-per-minute rates. Elite enemies and bosses drop significantly more gold than regular monsters. Picking up all gold during a run maximizes your earnings, though you shouldn't risk death chasing distant coins in dangerous situations.
Saving vs Spending
It's generally better to purchase upgrades regularly rather than hoarding gold. Each small improvement makes subsequent runs easier and more profitable. However, if you're close to affording a particularly impactful upgrade, it can be worth saving for one or two more runs to reach that goal rather than spreading the gold across less significant purchases.
Upgrade Categories Explained
The permanent upgrade system is organized into several distinct categories, each affecting different aspects of your character's capabilities. Understanding what each category provides helps you make informed decisions about where to invest your limited gold resources. Some upgrades offer immediate power increases, while others unlock new strategic possibilities or improve your long-term efficiency.
Base Stats
Base stat upgrades directly improve your character's fundamental attributes like maximum health, movement speed, and pickup range. These upgrades affect every single run you play, making them incredibly valuable investments. Health increases give you more room for error and help you survive longer in dangerous situations. Movement speed improvements make it easier to dodge enemy attacks and collect experience gems efficiently. Pickup range reduces the time you spend chasing items and lets you collect resources while maintaining safer positioning.
The compound effect of stat upgrades means they become more valuable as you acquire more of them. A modest health increase early on provides decent survivability, but stacking multiple health upgrades transforms you into a significantly more durable survivor. These upgrades scale well into late game because they benefit all characters and build strategies equally, making them reliable investments regardless of your preferred playstyle.
Weapon & Item Unlocks
Weapon and passive item unlocks expand your strategic options by making new equipment available during runs. Each unlock adds another choice to the equipment pool you can select from during level-ups and at the start of runs. While having more options is generally beneficial, not all unlocks provide equal value. Some weapons and items are significantly more powerful or versatile than others, making the order of your unlocks important.
Before purchasing unlocks indiscriminately, consider whether you actually want that weapon appearing in your upgrade pool. Adding weaker equipment to the pool can slightly dilute the chances of seeing your preferred options, though the random selection system ensures you'll still get good choices regularly. Focus on unlocking weapons and items that synergize well with your favorite strategies or fill gaps in your current arsenal, as detailed in our weapon guide.
Experience & Progression
Experience-related upgrades affect how quickly you level up during runs, which directly impacts how fast you can build your character's power through weapon and passive selections. Increased experience gain means reaching level-up breakpoints sooner, allowing you to assemble powerful synergies earlier in each run. This acceleration effect compounds throughout longer runs, potentially letting you reach power levels that would otherwise be impossible in the available time.
These upgrades create a positive feedback loop where faster leveling leads to better builds, which helps you survive longer and earn more gold for additional experience upgrades. The value of experience boosts increases in proportion to your skill level—better players who can survive longer benefit more from accelerated experience gain because they have more time to capitalize on those early power spikes.
Special Features
Special feature unlocks introduce unique mechanics or convenience improvements that change how you interact with the game. These might include quality-of-life enhancements like faster menu navigation, cosmetic options for personalizing your experience, or gameplay modifiers that add variety to your runs. While these upgrades can be enjoyable and add replay value, they typically don't directly increase your combat effectiveness the way stat boosts or weapon unlocks do. Consider these purchases after you've secured the fundamental upgrades that improve your actual survival chances.
Upgrade Priority Strategy
Core Investment Philosophy
Prioritize upgrades that make every run better over those that only benefit specific strategies. Universal improvements like health, movement speed, and experience gain provide consistent value regardless of which weapons or items you acquire. Specialized unlocks become more valuable once you have a solid foundation of base capabilities.
The Foundation First Approach
New players should focus on building a strong foundation before branching into specialized upgrades. Base health and movement speed provide immediate benefits that help you survive longer in every single run, regardless of what weapons or items you find. These foundational improvements also make learning the game more forgiving by giving you extra room for mistakes while you're still developing your dodging skills and strategic understanding.
Experience gain upgrades become increasingly valuable as you improve at the game. When you're first starting and can only survive a few minutes, modest experience boosts provide limited benefit. However, once you can consistently survive 10-15 minutes or longer, accelerated experience gain allows you to reach powerful late-game builds that can carry you through the toughest challenges. This creates a natural progression where you invest in survivability first, then multiply that survivability through faster character development.
Strategic Unlock Timing
Weapon and item unlocks should be purchased strategically rather than sequentially. Before unlocking a new weapon, consider whether it fits into your preferred playstyle or fills a gap in your current options. Having access to a wide variety of mediocre weapons is often less valuable than having a focused selection of proven performers that you understand well. Our weapon choice guide can help you understand which options provide the best return on investment.
Some players find success by deliberately avoiding certain unlocks to keep their equipment pool focused on high-quality options. While you'll eventually want everything unlocked, maintaining a curated selection during your learning phase can actually improve your success rate by ensuring you more frequently encounter the weapons and items you know how to use effectively.
The Power Spike Approach
Some players prefer to save gold for significant power spike upgrades rather than incrementally improving everything at once. This approach involves identifying particularly impactful upgrades and prioritizing them even if it means passing on smaller improvements in the short term. For example, if a major experience boost costs substantially more than a modest health increase, it might be worth saving for the experience upgrade because it will accelerate all future progression. This strategy works best for players who can already survive reasonably well and want to maximize their long-term efficiency rather than immediate comfort.
Early Game vs Late Game Investment
Early Game Focus (First 10-20 Runs)
Your first priority should be survivability through health upgrades and movement speed improvements. These investments pay immediate dividends by helping you survive longer in each run, which translates to more gold earned and faster overall progression. Don't worry about optimizing for maximum efficiency—just focus on making each run feel noticeably better than the last.
Recommended First Purchases:
Start with basic health increases to give yourself more margin for error while learning enemy patterns. Follow up with movement speed to improve your ability to dodge attacks and collect experience gems. Pick up one or two weapon unlocks that suit your playstyle, focusing on versatile options that work in most situations rather than specialized tools.
Avoid expensive late-game unlocks at this stage. The gold you'd spend on one costly upgrade could instead fund several smaller improvements that collectively make a bigger difference to your current progression. You'll naturally accumulate gold faster as you improve, making those expensive purchases more affordable later.
Late Game Focus (After 20+ Runs)
Once you have a solid foundation of base stats, shift your focus toward experience gain and specialized unlocks that enable advanced strategies. At this stage, you should be surviving long enough that accelerated leveling provides substantial value by letting you assemble powerful builds earlier in each run. This compounds your effectiveness and helps you push into later stages where the best gold rewards await.
Optimization Priorities:
Maximize your experience gain to reach powerful builds as quickly as possible. Complete your weapon and item collection to ensure access to all strategic options. Consider any special features that improve quality of life or enable specific challenge runs you want to attempt.
At this point, you're refining rather than rebuilding, so feel free to experiment with purchases that interest you personally even if they're not strictly optimal. The difference between a perfectly optimized upgrade path and a good-enough approach diminishes significantly once you have strong fundamentals in place.
The Transition Phase
The shift from early to late game priorities happens gradually as you become more skilled and consistent. You'll know you're ready to transition when you can regularly survive 10+ minutes and consistently earn enough gold per run to afford mid-tier upgrades without excessive grinding. This is also when specialized builds become more viable because you have the base stats to support riskier strategies, as discussed in our comprehensive beginner's guide.
Common Upgrade Mistakes to Avoid
Spreading Gold Too Thin
Trying to upgrade everything equally often results in having many level one upgrades instead of fewer maxed-out improvements. It's usually better to fully invest in a few high-priority categories before spreading out. Completed upgrade paths provide their full benefit immediately, while partially upgraded systems may not offer enough improvement to change your actual performance.
Unlocking Weapons Indiscriminately
Adding every weapon to your unlock pool without understanding which ones work well can actually make your runs less consistent. Some weapons are significantly harder to use effectively or only shine in specific builds. Research weapons before unlocking them, and focus on options that have proven successful for your playstyle. A smaller pool of excellent weapons often performs better than a large pool of mixed quality.
Saving for Too Long
While it's sometimes worth saving for a major upgrade, hoarding gold for many runs delays your progression unnecessarily. Each upgrade you purchase makes subsequent runs easier and more profitable, creating a compound effect. If you're sitting on enough gold for several meaningful upgrades, buy them rather than waiting for some future perfect purchase. The improved performance will likely earn back that gold quickly.
Ignoring Fundamental Stats
Chasing exciting weapon unlocks while neglecting base health and movement speed is a common pitfall. No weapon is powerful enough to compensate for dying too quickly or being unable to position yourself effectively. Always ensure your fundamental survivability stats are respectable before investing heavily in build diversity. The most powerful weapon selection means nothing if you can't stay alive to use it.
Related Strategy Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I max out one upgrade tree before starting another?
It depends on the upgrade type. For base stats like health and movement speed, it's usually efficient to max them relatively early since each tier provides meaningful improvement. However, for weapon unlocks, it often makes more sense to unlock several different options before maxing any single weapon's upgrade path, giving you strategic flexibility. The key is balancing immediate power gains against long-term versatility.
How much gold should I save before spending?
There's no need to save large amounts of gold unless you're specifically targeting an expensive upgrade that will make a significant difference. In general, spend gold regularly on whatever upgrade provides the best value for your current progression level. The compound effect of continuous small improvements usually outperforms waiting for occasional large purchases. If you have enough gold for several meaningful upgrades, buy them rather than hoarding.
Can I refund or reset my permanent upgrades?
Permanent upgrades cannot typically be refunded or reset in most roguelite games, and Monster Survivors follows this pattern. This means your upgrade choices are permanent, making it important to invest thoughtfully rather than randomly. However, this shouldn't cause anxiety—there are no truly bad upgrade paths, only some that are more efficient than others. You'll eventually be able to purchase everything, so early mistakes only slightly delay your progression rather than permanently harming it.
Do upgrades affect all characters equally?
Base stat upgrades like health, movement speed, and experience gain apply universally to all characters, making them excellent investments regardless of who you play. Weapon and item unlocks also become available for all characters, though different characters may have varying starting weapons that synergize better with certain unlocked options. This universal application is another reason why fundamental upgrades should be prioritized—they improve every strategy and playstyle simultaneously.
What's the most efficient upgrade path for experienced players?
Experienced players who can already survive consistently should prioritize experience gain upgrades above almost everything else. Faster leveling translates directly into earlier power spikes and access to evolved weapons sooner in each run. Combine this with movement speed improvements for better positioning and gem collection, then fill in weapon unlocks strategically based on your preferred builds. The exact optimal path varies by playstyle, but the general principle of investing in acceleration mechanics holds true for skilled players.