Miseria Upgrade Priority Guide

Upgrade priority is how you stop being rich in gold and poor in progress. Miseria will happily let you sprinkle coins across every blacksmith button; the abyss will not reward that fairness. This page gives a spend order for temporary forge power that matches Blacksmith Equipment, your stage build, and the permanent Church plan from the Church upgrades tier list.

Priority principles

1. Bottleneck first. Buy the slot that fixes the reason you stopped descending.
2. Active party only. Gold on undeployed characters is a donation to the void.
3. Core before crowd. Knight, then Alchemist, then later slots (Party and Characters).
4. Church economy changes cadence, not logic. Magnet / auto-gold means visit the forge more often—not buy worse upgrades faster.
5. Reborn truncates priority. Near a reset, hold gold rather than chase vanity tiers (How to Reborn, Reborn planner).

Early-game spend order

Follow this while on Early Game Build:

1. Knight weapon until pack clear feels responsive.
2. Knight armor until cheap deaths stop.
3. Small Agility/tempo-facing pieces only if you already survive.
4. After Strange Plant → Alchemist unlock: Alchemist primary damage/skill gear, then shared survivability.
5. Only then sprinkle secondary slots.

Stat pairing reminder from Stats Explained: multiply Strength on the Knight, Intelligence on the Alchemist, Vigor on anyone who stands in thorns range.

Mid-game spend order

Once Mid Game Build applies:

1. Restore Knight weapon/armor to “online” immediately after each Reborn.
2. Restore Alchemist kit next—do not delay Intelligence gear for ten floors.
3. Push bottleneck slots toward your Floor 19 checkpoint readiness.
4. Minimum viable kits for new party members before deep pushes (character tier list).
5. Overflow into secondary slots only when the core clears stably while idle.

If thorns Church ranks are carrying combat, bias overflow into armor/Vigor multipliers so procs never turn off. If skills carry bosses, bias overflow into Alchemist potency.

Decision tree (use at the anvil)

• Dying often? → Armor / Vigor gear.
• Immortal but slow? → Weapons / Strength or Intelligence gear.
• Gold lying around unused? → You need magnet Church nodes and a forge visit habit, not a new philosophy.
• Tiny gains per upgrade? → Consider Reborn instead of another tap.
• New slot just opened? → Divert a dedicated gold block to them, then resume core priority.

What not to prioritize

• Even level numbers across every slot for aesthetics.
• Forging through a soft wall that is clearly Church-shaped.
• Buying luxury slots before the Alchemist owns basic gear.
• Spending the gold you will lose to Reborn in five minutes on micro-upgrades.

Linking priority to the rest of the wiki

Items priority is the gold half of progression; blessing priority is the Church half. Keep both tabs open with Builds Hub stage guides. New players should still skim Getting Started so town visits are part of the loop, not an afterthought.

Return to the Items Hub when you need the category map. Perfect priority will not delete every wall—but bad priority invents walls that never needed to exist. Spend like a miser with a plan; the game’s title suggests the mood, not the strategy of refusing the forge.

Example gold blocks

Treat income as blocks of purpose rather than a continuous drizzle. A “survival block” dumps several armor/Vigor purchases until deaths stop. A “clear block” dumps weapons until idle clear returns. A “recruit block” funds a new slot to minimum viable status. A “pre-Reborn block” stops entirely and banks for the Church. Naming the block before you open the blacksmith UI prevents the most common mid-game leak: half-finishing four goals and completing none. Cross-check the active block against Blacksmith Equipment so you still understand why a slot multiplies your stats, not only that the priority list said to click it.