Best early upgrades in Atomic Heart

Atomic Heart is the first major day-one release for Xbox Game Pass, posting beautiful visuals and creepy robots that make up its environment. To stand a chance against the different types of enemies, you’ll need to ensure that you have the best gear that you can get. This is imperative, especially on the medium to harder difficulty.

Some of these upgrades will depend on the weapons you prioritize during gameplay, with certain other weapons unlocking later. Here’s all the information you need to know about the best early upgrades in Atomic Heart.

What are the best upgrades early in Atomic Heart?

Throughout Atomic Heart, players will collect resources that are used to upgrade both their weapons and the character. The resources required for the ability upgrades and weapons upgrades are separate, with more advanced weapon upgrades requiring higher-quality materials.

Best beginner weapon upgrades

Players will only get a couple of weapons early in the game, with more unlocked as they progress into the open world. Certain weapon upgrades will require a specific recipe that can be found in certain areas. You can see the rough location of the attachment blueprint by selecting “See On Map” when you highlight the item in question.

That being said, some of the best beginner weapon upgrades for the first few hours of the game include the following:

• Electro’s Polymer Rheostat: Keeps your energy expenditure to a minimum, allowing you to get more shots against robots before you run out.
• Swede’s Round Attack: You won’t have a lot of ammo in the early parts of the game and this extra attack will ensure you can keep from getting surrounded.
• MP’s Muzzle Brake: The pistol is best used when you can aim down the sights quickly, unloading a few shots into the plant zombie running at you.

Something to consider for all your weapons is the Cartridge Slots, which add elemental effects to your attacks. To start, consider adding it to your melee weapons so you don’t have to worry about ammo but can still take advantage of elemental effects against weaker enemies.

Best beginner Polymer upgrades

When you first interact with a NORA machine, you’ll be faced with multiple branching upgrade menus for the character’s abilities. Players can decide for themselves which specific glove abilities they like, be it Frostbite, Mass Telekinesis, Polymeric Jet, or Polymeric Shield. These abilities and character upgrades will apply to a wider audience.

• Wild Boar: This Character upgrade will give you a health boost, which means that you’ll last longer in a fight.
• Second Wind: Another Character upgrade, this gives the player a second dodge ability that becomes useful in some of the more intense boss battles.
• Energy Density: This Energy Management upgrade will add another bar to your capacity and you can really notice the extra ammo for your Electro pistol.
• Electrization: This Shok upgrade will cause the ability to electrify your enemies, meaning they’ll be stunned in place for a few seconds after being hit.
• Power Amplifier: Shok deals more damage to robots and pushes them back, providing a great defense against charging robots.

After this point, you can really customize the abilities however you see fit. As long as you’ve got plenty of health and energy, you can really have fun with some of the upgraded abilities for P-3.