Soldier and village progression
Understand the confirmed permanent progression in Tears of Metal: battalion experience and skills, settlement shops, upgrades, challenges, and unlocks.
Last verified against official sources:
This page covers confirmed systems and preparation only. It will not publish names, values, or outcomes that have not been reproduced in the release build.
Two permanent progression tracks
The official description separates long-term growth into soldiers and the settlement. Soldiers gain experience and permanent skills between campaigns. Settlement expansion opens shops, permanent upgrades, and difficult challenges with greater rewards. Special objectives can also reveal artifacts, playable characters, cosmetics, upgrades, and combos.
That is enough to prepare a progression map, but not enough to publish an upgrade order. Costs, prerequisites, currencies, and unlock timing are not included in the captured official material.
| Track | Confirmed function | Unknown before release |
|---|---|---|
| Soldiers | Recruit, upgrade, and fight alongside troops that gain permanent skills. | Recruitment limits, individual stats, skill trees, injury or loss rules. |
| Settlement | Expand to access shops, permanent upgrades, and harder challenges. | Building order, costs, shop inventories, upgrade prerequisites. |
| Special objectives | Can unlock artifacts, characters, cosmetics, upgrades, and combos. | Objective list, reward mapping, and completion conditions. |
Battalion progression checklist
- Record whether soldiers are named, grouped, or individually selectable in the release build.
- Capture when experience is awarded: during combat, at an objective, or on the campaign summary screen.
- Separate a soldier's permanent skill from a hero upgrade or temporary campaign effect.
- Note the exact recruitment and upgrade interface before describing any limit or cost.
- Test what happens to progression after victory, defeat, disconnect, and voluntary exit.
These checks matter because “permanent” describes the skills in official copy, not every surrounding condition. A reliable guide has to show how permanence works at the save, soldier, and campaign levels.
Settlement progression checklist
- List only buildings and shops visible in the current build.
- Copy the prerequisite, cost, and effect wording exactly.
- Mark whether an upgrade affects the hero, soldiers, campaign options, rewards, or another system.
- Keep difficult challenges separate from ordinary permanent upgrades.
- Link each special objective to a reward only after the game confirms the connection.
How to choose an upgrade without a fake tier list
Before exact costs and effects are known, the honest approach is to define the next problem you want to solve. After release, compare available upgrades against one of four observable needs:
- Access: opens a shop, character, challenge, artifact, combo, or other option named by the game.
- Consistency: improves something that applies across many campaign situations.
- Experimentation: unlocks a new way to test builds or objectives.
- Specialization: supports a particular hero, battalion setup, or campaign plan already recorded in your field log.
Those are decision categories, not confirmed upgrade labels. Actual recommendations will cite the launch-build text and cost.
Progression record template
| Checkpoint | Record | Do not assume |
|---|---|---|
| Before campaign | Settlement state, shops, soldier roster, visible permanent skills | That all menu changes affect the next run |
| Campaign end | Experience, currency or rewards shown, special objectives completed | That a displayed reward is already saved |
| After spending | Exact cost, prerequisite, effect, and new options | That the upgrade is reversible |
| Next campaign | What visibly changed for hero, soldiers, or scenario | That correlation proves the source of a change |
Progression questions
Are soldier upgrades permanent?
Yes. Paper Cult says soldiers gain permanent skills between campaigns. The exact skill system and persistence edge cases still require launch verification.
What does village expansion unlock?
The official listing names new shops, permanent upgrades, and difficult challenges with greater rewards. It does not yet publish a building tree or costs.
Can special objectives unlock heroes?
Official material says special objectives can discover new playable characters along with artifacts, cosmetics, upgrades, and combos. Exact objectives and reward pairings are not yet documented.
After release, the first pass will map the initial settlement screen, the soldier experience flow, and the first visible prerequisites without recommending an order prematurely.