How do you Upgrade Griftlands Cards?

People sure love their card-based roguelikes these days. If you think about it, card games are kind of analog roguelikes in themselves; chance, strategy, and thinking on the fly are all a big part of winning any card game. Of course, if you’re only using the same handful of cards over and over, things’ll get boring. You gotta pump the gas, make your cards bigger and better! So, how do you upgrade Griftlands cards?

In a typical roguelike (or roguelite), your capabilities are tied to the progression of your character. This is true too in Griftlands, though in a slightly different manner: instead of leveling up your character over the course of a run, you level up your cards. Every single card, both in your battle deck and negotiation deck, has its own individual experience value. When you use these cards in combat or negotiation, that experience value is incremented. Usually, it’s just a handful of uses, often achieved over the course of multiple encounters. When you cross the experience threshold on a card, you’ll have the option to upgrade it, increasing its damage and effectiveness, or otherwise tweaking how the card functions.

How do you Upgrade Griftlands Cards?

In addition to crossing that experience threshold, you may also occasionally encounter random events during a run that allow you to upgrade a card of your choice for free. If, during an event, you’re presented with an option that results in a card upgrade, there’ll be a little notification about it before you make your selection.

One important caveat: card upgrades are on a strictly run-by-run basis. There’s no real point to dragging out an encounter to grind up experience on a card, because when you finish the run (or die), the card will be back to its base state on the next run.