Hyper Light Breaker: Progression Guide

Hyper Light Breaker is a roguelite, which means it has progression that’s a bit more complicated than simply throwing yourself into runs and hoping for the best.

This translates into upgrading, going into a run, probably dying, and upgrading again until you’ve gotten so much stuff that you probably won’t be dying again any time soon.

There is some weird incentive to die, though, and I’ll be getting into that and more in this guide, which goes over the outline of how to progress and get stronger.

This piece will cover everything from progressing in the Overgrowth to the overarching game progression that’ll help you get stronger quicker, and hopefully, beat the first boss.

Explore the Overgrowth

The main thing you’ll be doing in Hyper Light Breaker is exploring the randomly generated open world, dubbed the Overgrowth, by heading to the portal at the end of the hub.

This open world contains weapons, armor, and other temporary upgrades, as well as currency that allows you to purchase permanent upgrades to assist on every run.

The easiest way to get exploration done is finding a white map icon, then heading right for it, typically fighting the enemies surrounding it to grab whatever loot it contains.

You can also go for the yellow diamonds on the map, called Prisms, but these are going to be under far greater protection from enemies. I wouldn’t recommend trying it until you’ve looped a few times.

Just remember to be cautious and vigilant about collecting good items that actually improve your build significantly.

Remember to grab any weapons, amps, or armor you won’t use because you can sell off your excess items later since you don’t need more than one good sword paired with a great run to finish most loops.

While you’re looting, you’ll probably see the curved yellow bar on the top left going up slowly. This is an indicator of how dangerous the world is getting, and how screwed you currently are.

I’d recommend leaving before it gets to halfway full, as any more than that will start slamming you with meteors, hordes of enemies, and extremely powerful minibosses that suck to fight.

The way to escape with everything you’ve collected intact, and without using one of your few Rezes, is by extracting. That is, heading to the big pink arrow on your minimap, which is usually on the opposite side of the map.

Once you reach it and activate it, you’ll have to fight a large horde of enemies with a miniboss at the end. You’ll only be healed a bit before the fight, so make sure you’ve got a decent chunk of health before trying to leave.

Buy Upgrades

Once you’re back at the hub, you can use the currency you’ve accrued to buy a bunch of different upgrades from the various shops, the most important of which being the Skill Tree.

This Skill Tree is right in front of where you spawn and requires Golden Rations to progress, which you typically get by remaking the world, either after beating every boss or dying four times.

This means you have some incentive to die with your starter loot on and nothing else if you just want Golden Rations and can’t fight all three bosses yet.

That aside, there’s a dedicated shop to buy Blades, another to purchase Rails, and one for Amps, armor, and Holobytes, all of which accept Bright Blood as currency. You can refresh the shop’s stock after returning to the hub twice.

You can also use your Golden Rations to upgrade these shopkeepers, but aside from upgrading Rail and Blade to the first affinity level, the incentive to do so isn’t great. You’re better off saving rations for something else.

You’ll need to buy two of these shops to open them up initially, but after that, you’ll always have access to them. Constantly checking shops for better gear is a great way to get stronger in the Overgrowth.

Loot Everything In Sight

Once you return to the Open World, your main goal should be to wipe every single icon off the map and thoroughly loot every piece of gear, progression item, and bit of currency you can scrap up.

I’d recommend grabbing everything around the shrine you spawn on, triggering another shrine somewhere further out on the map, extracting, and then repeating the process until you’ve got everything.

You don’t need to take every rail and blade, but they’re still worth checking to see if they’re better than your current weapon. If anything, you can sell them and get a bit of Bright Blood.

The Prisms are required to progress, but the stashes and caches are great currency sources. By exploring around, you might find an underground lab with an easy Golden Ration, which also helps you get stronger quickly.

Fight Bosses

Once you’re sufficiently strong, able to take out most normal enemies in one or two hits, you are prepared to take on a boss. Still, I suggest going for the one with the lowest requirement first.

These bosses will swarm you with a bunch of small enemies that deal a quarter of your health bar with each hit, and you need to be able to dispatch them all while also trying to parry the main threat’s attacks.

You need to have great reaction times, or just try these bosses over and over again to get the hang and timing of their offensive. I’d honestly recommend running them with throwaway gear a few times to learn them.

After you’ve learned, though, you can take them out, which gives you some really great, high-rarity gear and a special currency that’s only used for new characters and some skill tree perks.

You need to fight three bosses on the map in total. However, you can fight the same boss thrice, so you better get used to seeing that blindfolded wolf man’s hellish shockwaves.

After you’ve beaten all three, you’ll be given a prompt to reset the world without having to die for it, . This gives you a ton of Golden Rations, allowing you to make a solid dent into the Skill Tree.

Repeat All of The Above

After you’ve bested all the bosses, or more likely, after you’ve died several times and used up all your Rezes, you’ll be sent back to the hub and forced to pay up and reset the world to a new seed.

This resetting process gives you Golden Rations proportional to how well you did, namely with your Level, which is a very vague number that increases alongside the more combat encounters you win.

So, if you’re trying to unlock everything, you’ll need to go through the world, take out every group of enemies you see, constantly extract to hopefully not lose a single Rez, beat every boss, and make bank.

This isn’t most runs, though. Some are simply terrible world seeds, whereas, in others, you’ll die due to some challenging bosses. Ultimately, all runs make some sort of permanent progress, meaning you’re only getting stronger the more you play.