What to upgrade first?

[Karsk]

I am not sure what to prioritize especially in the core stats like hp, intelligence, strength etc.

[FreddyTheMonkey]

I personally upgraded almost everything evenly and never had a problem. HP, STR and INT are all important, especially because later in NG+ you need both STR and INT to make the Life/Soul Steal Runes scale well.

Armor is useful, but you can upgrade it a bit less than other stats in the beginning, because you start to need lots of it only in advanced NG+ cycles and only if you use Folding Rune to raise the armor's block cap.

I completely ignored every upgrade relating to Magic Crit, just unlocked them and that's it, because I just don't rely on it much.

It's pricey, but upgrade Gold Gain to the max as soon as possible. It's definitely worth it. Aether and Ore Gain are useful too, but you can not prioritize them as much. Put points in them in between raising the core stats.

Equip weight and Rune weight are another priority early on, especially Equip so you don't get your resolve crushed by good gear. I personally prioritized it over Resolve, because Resolve upgrade are quite expensive and I started to mass buy them later on when gold is more abundant.

In general, just follow your playstyle, but don't neglect INT.

[Amble]

I'd suggest trying to open up as much of the tree as possible at first, which means putting at least one point in everything. This doesn't cost much and gets you all the classes as quickly as possible and exposes as many options as possible.

After that I'd say to evenly level up str and int if you want to be able to play every class effectively, dex is also nice but less important in the early game when you don't have a high crit chance. Don't ignore it but keep it a bit behind the others. Level up HP and armor slightly more than the damage stats. Armor caps out in usefulness at around 40-50 for the first playthrough, so that's a good point to reach.

Once you've got the tree opened up fully you can dump points where ever you feel is smart. Level equip and rune weight as needed. Just avoid overleveling armor and avoid neglecting int and focus, lots of players seem to do that. Focus is good even in early game since all spells are easy to deal crits with or always crit automatically.

[Aeralis]

I'll echo the advice of "get one point into everything." This unlocks more classes and gets you some really convenient stuff, like adding a fourth choice to your heir selection or being able to reroll relic options. And then once you have everything opened you can make better choices about what you need and you'll have open access to everything. It would suck to get to a point where you think "I really need more vitality" but you don't know where to find a new vitality node to invest in.

Aside from that, your best investment is gear. Like, sure, you can invest a couple thousand gold in the castle to get maybe one or two more points of strength, or you could spend that gold on a new sword and get 10 more points. Plus you get unity bonuses, which seems pretty underwhelming at first (a little more resolve, or more crit damage? Early on, those both kinda suck) but they get extremely useful later on. (We're talking things like over a hundred extra armor, dozens of extra strength points, all on top of the stats the gear is already giving you.) Invest in gear immediately, and when you find the option to do so, upgrade them right away.

Runes fall into the same area as gear does, but less immediately important. Most of them don't get impressive until you can stack multiples of them, or only really shine in specialized builds. But I will say you'll always want Magnesis (I use two, but one is just fine) and all of the lifesteal, soulsteal, and folded runes you can possibly hold. (Folded may be the most important rune in the game, as it raises the max amount of damage your armor can block.) I also run one extra jump and airdash rune each, just because its nice to have.

[Mitrovarr]

One of the best upgrades early on is the thing that makes potions recharge your ability. This is extremely helpful on the chef, a class that's really powerful in the early game and is great for getting gold quickly. It basically turns all the potions you get into heals... heals you can carry around and use when you need them, even (but just on the Chef).

[SalmonSnake]

My advice is to focus on gold and equipment/rune weight upgrades first but pick some main stat upgrades on the way too. HP and strength are the most important ones because every class benefits from them. And like others before me said, opening up your upgrade tree is quite important too because it unlocks more classes and more classes = more levels = main stats and rune weight

[Stanis23]

It really depends on your build and playstyle.

I kept playing Astro only until all the way of NG2 so upgrading more classes just don't do anything for me. Then I discovered mastery bonus being a thing.

With that said, Strength is relevant for like 90% of the chars so can always go for it. More damage, faster kill and also more heal from runes.

Crit damage and crit chance once again are more late game stuff. Generally I would recommend crit chance over damage cause it doesn't matter how much cd you have if you can't crit, of course unless you are mainly playing classes that can spam crit like Barb, Assa and have Lightning Storm.

Int is a bit more niche, it isn't useless but it just really varied depends on the chars and spells and even talent (Ronin for example needs int to spam talent). Also it scales up your food. Generally probably around 3:1 between str and int would be good, but balance is fine too.

And of course always a good idea to max those gold and trait bonus.

[gibbousmoon100]

Lots of good advice in this thread, but allow me to add this: Max any gold gain stats as soon as possible. It is mathematically demonstrable that failing to do so will increase your overall grind requirements to upgrade everything else. Good luck!

[Karsk]

Originally posted by gibbousmoon100:

Lots of good advice in this thread, but allow me to add this: Max any gold gain stats as soon as possible. It is mathematically demonstrable that failing to do so will increase your overall grind requirements to upgrade everything else. Good luck!

Yea very good advice from everyone I appreciate it!

[FDru]

Gold gains first, then anything that improves resolve (including enough equip weight to get "light" armor class), preference after that. Of course, unlock the entire tree before trying to max anything.

I personally found rune weight to be almost the most useful stat, as you can gain so many other bonuses/perks from it.

But don't entirely neglect anything because many bonuses are percentage increases that benefit from your raw stats... you can never rely entirely on any one upgrade path.