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I’ve now upgraded most of the cards in Dungeon Raid, the resource-management and build-crafting card roguelike, so I decided to put together some notes on how the system works.
The game doesn’t explain card upgrades particularly well, so this guide covers how to upgrade cards, where to get upgrade materials, which cards I recommend upgrading first, and how to unlock new cards.
How to Upgrade Cards in Dungeon Raid
Yes, cards can be permanently upgraded in Dungeon Raid.
The game doesn’t really explain this, but the strange gray material shown in the top-right corner of the Hero Selection screen is the resource used for card upgrades.
The number next to it shows how many upgrade materials you currently have.
To upgrade a card:
- Go to the Hero Selection screen.
- Select the anvil icon in the bottom-right corner.
- Use the arrow buttons to choose the type of card you want to upgrade.
- Press the button in the center to upgrade it.
That’s it.
How Much Do Card Upgrades Cost?
Unfortunately, the game does not show exactly how many materials are required before you press the upgrade button.
From my own testing, most upgrades seemed to cost somewhere around 8–10 upgrade materials.
Are Card Upgrades Shared Between Heroes?
Yes.
Card upgrades are shared between all heroes.
If you upgrade a card while using one character, that upgraded card will also be available when playing another character.
Because of this, you don’t necessarily need to start experimenting with difficult classes immediately.
One easy progression route is to use the Knight first, build up your permanent card upgrades, and then start trying other heroes once your overall card pool is stronger.
How to Get Card Upgrade Materials
Card upgrade materials are mainly obtained by defeating enemies.
They appear to have a chance of dropping when an enemy is killed.
So if your goal is simply to farm upgrade materials as quickly as possible, the answer is pretty straightforward:
Kill lots of enemies.
A build that can consistently survive while clearing enemies is therefore more useful for farming than one that occasionally produces extremely strong but unstable runs.
Best Class and Build for Farming Card Upgrade Materials
For early upgrade-material farming, I recommend using the Knight together with the rightmost skill that reduces all incoming damage by 1.
The Knight is particularly beginner-friendly because Armor remains useful even when you already have some.
Normally, it’s easy to waste resources in roguelikes by picking up something you can’t currently use efficiently.
The Knight has much less of that problem.
If you already have Armor, using another Armor card can still increase it, making the class both straightforward and resource-efficient.
You don’t need an especially complicated strategy to make the Knight work.
Why the -1 Damage Skill Is So Strong Early
The rightmost skill reduces all incoming damage by 1.
That may not sound particularly impressive at first.
However, many enemies near the beginning of the game only deal 1 damage.
Reducing 1 damage by 1 means:
You take zero damage.
This allows you to fight many early-game enemies almost completely safely.
That makes the skill extremely well suited to the point in the game where you are still learning the mechanics and farming your first permanent card upgrades.
Of course, once you get deeper into the dungeon, reducing damage by only 1 starts to become much less significant.
Still, for getting through the early progression grind and collecting card upgrade materials, it does its job extremely well.
Best Cards to Upgrade First
If you are using the Knight as your first main character, I recommend prioritizing upgrades roughly in this order:
- Sword with the green circle
- Armor
- Food
- Mana Potion
- Gold
Here’s why.
1. Sword With the Green Circle
This would be my first priority.
Upgrading it increases both its damage and the number of times it can be used, so it directly improves your combat power.
There isn’t much of a downside here.
More damage means enemies die faster, which also means fewer opportunities for them to damage you.
2. Armor
Armor has excellent synergy with the Knight.
The Knight benefits heavily from maintaining Armor, and fully upgrading your Armor cards also makes the class’s leftmost skill considerably easier to take advantage of.
With this skill, if you already have Armor when you use an Armor card, you gain additional Armor equal to half of the card’s listed value, rounded up.
Since the Knight can continue accumulating Armor instead of wasting it, improving Armor cards makes an already efficient resource even better.
3. Food
Food is much more important than it initially looks.
If you run out of food, Stress begins accumulating and can eventually inflict a weakened state that reduces your damage dealt by 1.
You might think:
“It’s only 1 damage. How bad can that be?”
Pretty bad, actually.
Your normal attack in Dungeon Raid only deals 1 damage to begin with.
That means a -1 damage penalty can reduce your basic attack to:
0 damage.
And yes, that can absolutely kill a run.
Keeping your food supply stable is therefore much more important than the small numbers might suggest.
4. Mana Potion
Mana Potions are another strong upgrade for the Knight.
The Knight’s special ability deals damage equal to your current Armor to all enemies while simultaneously restoring the same amount of HP.
That gives the ability several different uses at once:
- AoE damage
- HP recovery
- Saving weapon uses
- Emergency enemy clearing
Increasing the number of times you can use this ability makes your runs much more stable.
5. Gold
Gold comes slightly later in my priority list, but it is still extremely useful.
You can use dungeon shops to buy resources such as Food cards and acquire Relics that strengthen your build.
Having more access to shop purchases gives you another way to fix weaknesses in a run before they become fatal.
After upgrading these five card types, I’d recommend simply paying attention to what you personally keep running out of.
If a particular resource repeatedly causes your runs to fail, upgrade that next.
How to Unlock New Cards
You can also permanently unlock additional cards.
This system is another mechanic that isn’t particularly obvious from the UI.
From the Hero Selection screen, select the book-like icon in the bottom-right corner.
This opens the Card Encyclopedia and Monster Encyclopedia.
Look at the top-right corner of the screen.
The key icon there represents the currency used to unlock new cards.
To unlock one:
- Open the Card Encyclopedia.
- Find a locked card with a key symbol.
- Move your cursor over it.
- Click it.
- The displayed number of keys will be consumed.
- The card will be unlocked.
So if you’ve been collecting keys without knowing what they do, this is what they’re for.
Games Like Dungeon Raid: Try One Deck Dungeon
If what you enjoy about Dungeon Raid is its compact, card-based dungeon crawling, there’s also a tabletop game with a surprisingly similar appeal.
One Deck Dungeon (Amazon) uses actual physical cards to create a compact dungeon-crawling experience built around managing limited resources and overcoming encounters.
So if Dungeon Raid has left you wanting more games built around the idea of “an entire dungeon condensed into cards,” it may be worth checking out.
Final Thoughts
That’s my current overview of card upgrades and card unlocks in Dungeon Raid.
The upgrade system is surprisingly important, but the game doesn’t do a great job of explaining where the upgrade menu is, what the gray material does, or how card unlocks work.
For beginners, I’d recommend starting with the Knight, taking the -1 incoming damage skill, and using those relatively safe early runs to build up your permanent card upgrades.
My personal early upgrade priority is:
Sword → Armor → Food → Mana Potion → Gold
After that, just start upgrading whatever resource seems to be causing the most problems in your own runs.
I’m still fairly new to the game myself, so there may be mechanics or exact values I haven’t fully tested yet.
Anyway, hope this helps.
Have a great gaming life, and thanks so much for reading all the way to the end!!
