Your first ten runs

What the level-up screen is actually asking you, and how not to waste it.

A run is thirty minutes long and you spend it doing one thing: choosing between three or four cards every time you level. Everything else - moving, dodging, picking up gems - is there to get you to the next card. So the whole game is what you take, and in what order.

You have 6 weapon slots and 6 passive slots. That is the entire budget. A weapon at level 1 does very little; the same weapon maxed does a great deal, and a maxed weapon plus the right passive stops being that weapon at all and becomes one of the game's 151 evolutions. Six half-levelled weapons is the single most common way a first run dies at minute twenty.

The three rules that carry the early game

• Finish what you start. Push two or three weapons to max rather than spreading levels across six. The planner's Where to spend your levels panel exists because this is the choice people get wrong most often.
• Take the passive that finishes a recipe. A passive is rarely exciting on its own. Hollow Heart is 20% more health; Hollow Heart next to a maxed Whip is Whip (max) + Hollow Heart, which is a different weapon entirely.
• Open the chest late. Evolutions happen when you open a treasure chest dropped by a stage boss, from ten minutes in. One chest resolves every recipe you have finished, so topping up a second weapon before you crack it is usually better than opening it the moment the first is ready.

Gold is not wasted. Everything you bank goes into permanent PowerUps in the shop, and those apply to every future run, so a failed run that banked 2,000 gold still moved you forward.