The best upgrade changes with your bottleneck
There is no single skill tree order that remains best for an entire run. The official game description confirms a branching skill tree with improvements to strength and luck plus unlockable abilities. It also confirms that hammers trade attributes such as critical chance, radius, speed, and damage. That means the practical choice depends on what currently limits your income.
The recommendations below are editorial strategy derived from those verified mechanics. They are not an official build from Rike Games, and exact node values can change between versions.
Upgrade decision table
| What happens in a normal run | Upgrade priority | What to delay |
|---|---|---|
| Piggy banks survive too many hits | Damage, critical stats, or a stronger hammer | More targets until existing ones die reliably |
| The desk becomes empty while stamina remains | Starting targets or spawn-related upgrades | More damage or speed that has nothing to hit |
| Stamina ends while killable targets remain | Maximum stamina or reliable stamina efficiency | More starting targets if the desk is already full |
| Targets die consistently but income trails the next bill | Loot, luck, and value multipliers | Small combat upgrades that do not increase completed kills |
| A hammer purchase would consume the bill reserve | Keep the reserve and delay the hammer | Any purchase that makes the next bill unsafe |
Judge the pattern across ordinary runs. One unusually lucky reward can hide an unbalanced build.
A safe early-game order
A useful default order is:
- Buy enough damage to remove the opening targets efficiently.
- Add a modest stamina improvement if useful targets remain when the run ends.
- Add starting targets or spawn only when the desk begins to empty.
- Add radius, multi-target effects, or speed after several targets are available.
- Move into luck and loot after the build already completes kills consistently.
This is a diagnostic order, not a fixed shopping list. Skip any step that does not solve the problem visible on your desk.
Damage versus attack speed
Attack speed feels immediately powerful, but faster swings help only when targets are present and the hits are strong enough to finish them. If the desk is crowded with durable piggy banks, damage and critical upgrades usually solve the immediate problem more directly.
Speed becomes more valuable once current targets die reliably, the desk remains populated, and additional hits can create more completed kills. Stop adding speed when you are waiting for targets, missing more often, or spending stamina without removing the strongest piggy bank.
When to choose stamina or spawn
Use the end of a normal run as the test:
- Stamina remaining and no targets means you need more target availability.
- Targets remaining and no stamina means you need more usable run time, provided those targets are actually killable.
- One target consuming nearly the whole run is primarily a damage problem, not a stamina or spawn problem.
This distinction prevents purchases that improve a stat without improving income.
When to replace your hammer
The official Steam description says hammers use different combinations of critical chance, radius, speed, and damage. Treat a new hammer as a package of trade-offs, not an automatic upgrade.
Buy one when its strengths address the current bottleneck and the purchase leaves enough money for the next bill. Delay it when your current hammer already clears the desk, when target availability is the real problem, or when several cheaper skill nodes solve the issue more safely.
Protect the next bill
Upgrade efficiency does not matter if the purchase leaves the next bill uncovered. Before a major purchase, separate the money required for the bill from the amount available for upgrades. The remainder is your actual upgrade budget.
The official Rike Games press kit confirms that bills, stamina, random loot, perks, the branching skill tree, and hammer trade-offs are central systems. It does not publish a universal optimal order, so this page avoids presenting one route as mandatory.
Full game versus Demo
Use this guide as a framework for the full Steam release. Do not transfer exact costs, node positions, or balance assumptions from the browser or itch.io Demo without checking them in the current full build. This wiki keeps version-specific claims separate.
Maxing the skill tree
For completion, inspect every branch available in your current build and verify the achievement condition in Steam before resetting progression. Exact hidden-node requirements and numerical breakpoints are intentionally omitted here until they can be independently verified from the full release.