Beginner Mistakes: The Resource Traps That Eat Your Shards

The most expensive mistake: upgrading anything below ★5

Weapon upgrading happens at Frye’s Weapon Stash on the Hideout Ship and consumes Spirhalite Shards only, with the cost climbing at every level. That is the whole reason the trap works: a ★3 you like keeps accepting shards and keeps getting stronger, right up to the hard stop at +5 levels. Nothing warns you first, and the shards you fed it are not available for the ★5 you find twenty hours later.

Because base attack power does not scale with rarity, a levelled ★3 genuinely feels fine — the difference is not the damage number, it is the ceiling and the slot count. One open question: no source documents whether shards spent on upgrades come back when you scrap that weapon. Assume the investment is gone until someone proves otherwise.

Where else your shards leak

Shards have six competing sinks. Game8 rates them ship facility expansion ★5, weapon upgrading ★5, gadget development ★5, parts development ★4, parts improvement ★3, weapon-power swapping ★3. GameWith argues progression order instead — weapons first, then tank attack stats, then gadget development, gadget parts, ship facilities, and Bond levels dead last. The two lists disagree about ship facilities; take the shard ratings as "what a shard is worth" and the progression order as "what to do next".

Choosing the one ★5 you actually commit to

This is the inversion most players get backwards. Weapon Powers look like the thing you have to roll for, and they are the one part you can fix later. What you cannot fix later is rarity, 絶品 status, and the weapon class. Farm the chassis, not the roll.

1. Wait for the credits — JP wikis are blunt about this: do not seriously invest in weapon levels during the story. Play with whatever drops, save the shards, and start real investment once you are farming ★5s post-clear.
2. Pick for single-hit damage, not comfort — The recommended classes are Wiper (Splatana), Brella, Stringer, Blaster, and Charger — all high damage per shot. Game8 names シートシェルターサーモ, アルペンストリンガー, and プロパンブラスター at X rank (JP names; no English names confirmed yet). Brushes are the worst pick, hard to produce DPS with and needing continuous input. The honest tension: chargers hit hardest per shot but fire slowly, so they get fewer proc windows — sources do not resolve which side wins, so treat it as a real trade-off rather than a solved question.
3. Notice the Shooter trap — Shooters are described as the easy, no-quirks beginner class, which is exactly why new players default to one and exactly why it is the wrong ★5 commitment for a freeze build. Rapid fire, low damage per shot, and the freeze multiplier only lands once.
4. Hold out for 絶品 — 絶品 (Premium) is a modifier on top of rarity, not a rarity tier: one of the weapon’s intrinsic stats — ink efficiency, range, and so on — is pushed to its extreme. It only appears on ★4 and ★5, at a higher rate on ★5, and the specialization is fixed per weapon type, so you find it or you do not. Displayed damage is identical to a normal copy; the gain is efficiency or range. Roughly 55 variants exist across the 11 weapon types, and beating the final boss guarantees you a 絶品 PET Shooter (絶品PETシューター) with fixed, ink-efficiency-specialized powers.
5. LOCK it, then scrap the duplicates — Scrapping (分解) unlocks at Ship Level 2 and returns Spirhalite Shards plus Weapon Power Shards — roughly 9 from a ★5 and 4 from a ★4. Duplicates are the intended farm. It is irreversible, so use the LOCK function on anything you might want, including 絶品 finds you have not tested yet.

Weapon Powers — and the freeze trap almost everyone falls into

Ice Breaker is the best power in the game and the most misunderstood. Its full text: attacking a frozen Salmonid deals multiplied damage, and the Salmonid is no longer frozen afterward. The freeze is consumed by the hit, so you get exactly one multiplied hit per freeze. High per-shot damage converts that window; rapid-fire classes waste it. Note also where freeze actually comes from — not the 2% Freeze power, but gadgets: カチコミシューズ, ジャンプボム, and メテオグローブ apply it at 100%, ゴレンライナー up to 60% (JP names; no English names confirmed yet). Alongside Ice Breaker, the recommended companions are In-Fight, Ink Master, and Long Range.

On the multiplier: the raw in-game text says 3x, while some build and ranking pages report 3-5x at upgraded power grades — treat anything above 3x as unconfirmed. Reported by a single source: status-effect powers (Freeze, Ferment, Scorch) do not work on the story’s 幻のシャケ (phantom Salmonids). If you want one defensive slot, イカがまん (A+) cuts damage taken by 35% while in squid form.

Before you spend: the irreversible list

Everything below is permanent. None of it is signposted in-game, and the autosave means you cannot walk any of it back.

• Skill Point allocation has no respec. It is the most permanent decision in the game, and points accumulate slowly.
• Gadget development cannot be reverted, and the materials are not refunded.
• Gadget part development and improvement cannot be reverted. Only invest in gear you actually use.
• Weapon scrapping is permanent. Use the LOCK function before you go on a scrapping run.
• Materials spent strengthening Weapon Powers are not recoverable.
• The parts cost ceiling is raised with Skill Points via Tank strengthening; the limiter unlocks at 9 and 20 total points are irreversible.
• Autosave only, one save slot. No manual saves, no rollback — Switch save-data backup is your only safety net.

Common questions