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R.E.P.O. (Retrieve, Extract, & Profit Operation) is an interesting spin on the co-op extraction looter genre due to a greater emphasis on upgrading one’s character compared to something like Lethal Company (a game with which it shares many similarities but which focuses moreon equipment).
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This guide aims to help new players understand how they may want to upgrade their character as they progress through the first few rounds, including how you may want to divvy up purchased upgrades between the whole crew.
What to Prioritize
R.E.P.O. has a big pool of potential upgrades that stores might sell, many of which have effects that can stack on themselves. While not all upgrades will always be available for sale, most of what you’ll want to prioritize early on is usually available. A group will slowly need to learn what builds work best for them (and how to adjust if they come to a store low on cash or with the desired upgrades unavailable) but some major early boosts include:
When choosing what to purchase, make sure to pay attention to prices. Many upgrades have a range of costs they might be available at and, if the same upgrade appears multiple times in a single store, they will often cost different amounts.
Sharing Versus Hoarding Upgrades
A crew’s natural instinct is likely be to spread purchased upgrades out roughly evenly among their robotic allies. This is a perfectly reasonable way to play and certainly helps prevent arguments, but there’s value to heaping upgrades onto a single crew member you believe is most likely to do well in the next round. You should typically prioritizewhatever form of cooperationis most likely to let you progress.
Focusing Strength Upgrades onto one player can be especially valuable, as the stacked effects of the upgrades mean that a single crewmate may be able to handle items that once took multiple people to move effectively. Consider the difference between one player known to be careful having the strength to pick up sensitive valuables like large Vases versus needing multiple people to coordinate and maneuver that same heavy object. With this in mind, even just two Strength Upgrades is usually enough to move most objects on your own.
Other upgrades, like Health and Stamina Upgrades, can be focused on a single player to make them a bit hardier when fighting or needing to run. Alternatively, spreading these upgrades out can make the overall team more survivable, so the best way to use these upgrades is more debatable. A single heavily upgraded crewmate can be a point of weakness; it means one death can remove a great deal of power from the overall team.
Don’t Ignore Your Other Options
Whenever you have the opportunity to make purchases, the appeal of just buying character upgrades is pretty obvious. They permanently boost your abilities in a way other purchases won’t. However, you can’tonlypurchase character upgrades if you want to progress.
For one, failing to buy any sort of weapon is eventually going to be an issue. By default, R.E.P.O. crewmates don’t have much of a response to most of the game’s sturdier enemies, beyond doing one’s best to avoid them. The Huntsman in particular (the blind gunman who can shoot at anyone that makes too much noise with deadly accuracy) can be a major hassle without at least a Tranq Gun to shut him down. With the right tools, you can start outright killingthe Horrors,rather than just running from them. Many even drop valuable loot when defeated.
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More obvious is that you’ll periodically need to top off with healing, assuming you and your crew aren’t either very lucky or extremely skilled. The best way to heal will depend on your situation and resources; keep in mind that a Health Upgrade is going to also heal a character 20 HP, in addition to raising their maximum health. However, if focused purely on healing, Health Packs are more cost-efficient. The big risk istryingto heal, but under-investing.
Typically, it’s a good idea to either heal a character to at least 50 or not at all. If most enemy attacks are still going to kill you in one or two hits, spending money to heal when you could instead get a permanent upgrade is a waste. With that said, getting someone back to 50+ (or, better yet, 75+) is definitely worth doing if they’re highly upgraded. A crewcanchoose to spread health around, but should be careful not to spread it so thin that the impact of that healing barely matters. Healing should mostly be preparation for taking a heavy hit. An exception is if a crewmate is at extremely low health (10 or less), a small boost can at least let them take a hit from Gnomes where they otherwise might die.
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