Bosbrand – Ultimate Upgrade Tier List Guide

A guide to the available upgrades, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the fun. From novice to seasoned vet, the upgrades play an important role in your attempts to wreak absolute havoc.

Direct Upgrades (as of Patch 0.5.0)

Direct upgrades are upgrades that immediately take effect and increase a stat or apply a specific modifier.

I, Helaas, don’t have the exact numbers memorized, but I’ve played enough with each upgrade to toy around with it and see how it plays. How it looks and how it feels are two separate categories. They will be scored on priority (in this case the rating indicates how high or low you should prioritize the upgrade when you get the pop-up) and usefulness (how well it will serve you throughout the run) on a scale of 1 (least important/useful) naar 10 (most important/useful)

These upgrades are (in alphabetical order):

[Function: Increases the speed of burning objects such as trees, olie, and houses
Priority Rating: 6/10
Usefulness Rating 5/10
This one is good to start with but only on later levels that require more area of scorched earth. It’s not incredibly necessary once you start racking up EXP to permanently boost burn speed in the upgrade menu.

Function: Destroys a single nearby cloud. Subsequent upgrades increase number of clouds targeted
Priority: 3/10
Usefulness: 8/10
While useful in early to mid game, it doesn’t hold up to the scrutiny of late game barrages of clouds without the period upgrade. Echter, comboing a level 2 cloud zap with a level 2 zap period will delete clouds fairly often. Unadvised for level completion runs though upcoming endless mode may prove a worthy field for this upgrade.

Function: Decreases health loss when travelling without starting a fire
Priority: 10/10
Usefulness: 10/10
This upgrade is really important if you want to just explore or travel long distance in any regard. This is especially important in late stage when storms are coming in every 10 seconds and you need to dodge more frequently.

Function: Throws out embers that can start other fires. Subsequent upgrades increase the number of embers throw.
Priority: 2/10
Usefulness: 1/10
Since the flinging of embers is random in distance and location, it’s not a suitable upgrade in the vast majority of circumstances. If there’s nothing better, then it will do.

Priority: 10/10
Usefulness: 10/10
Function: Increases the number of embers throw from explosive objects such as buses, trucks, and fuel stations. Subsequent upgrades increase the number of embers
This is by far not only one of the most useful upgrades, but the most fun. Blowing stuff up is fun, but blowing stuff up ever harder is more fun. Any time this upgrade comes up as an option, get it ASAP.

Function: Turns humans into explosive objects. Subsequent upgrades increase embers from explosions.
Priority: 10/10
Usefulness: 9/10
Almost as fun as explosion multiplier but loses a point because humans no longer run around, they simply just detonate like a Taco Bell meal in one’s large intestine. This makes humans worse at starting other fires to gather inferno points but does make it more fun to light them up. Houses and factories make excellent firework shows and grant you more points than usual.

Function: Increases base HP
Priority Rating: 2/10
Usefulness Rating 3/10
Not a terribly impressive upgrade. Though it does restore your HP if you’re in a jam. Aside from that, just stick with the permanent health upgrade.

Function: Attacks helicopters with seeking balls of fire. Subsequent upgrades increase the number of great balls of fire.
Priority: 4/10
Usefulness 6/10
The base flame (orange/red) already attacks helicopters. Helicopter base speed is slower than an upgraded fire so you can always just hover outside the attack range of the chopper and pick it off from a distance. Absolutely required on other flames (ie white or green), but those are rare to come by as of now.

Function: Decreases how much the High Wind event shoves you around
Priority: 2/10
Usefulness: 6/10
It won’t pay itself off until much later in your run where high wind is coupled with frequent storms, however you can entirely avoid this upgrade and simply just save up your inferno mode and use it during high wind.

Function: Increases the amount of HP healed when igniting objects
Priority: 10/10
Usefulness: 10/10
This is an absolute must-have upgrade it makes longer runs substantially easier to do even when frequently taking damage. You regen health by igniting objects, including oil, so be sure to chase oil and go the longest way through it to get the maximum benefit.

Function: Strikes a random spot of trees on screen. Subsequent upgrades increase the number of simultaneous bolts.
Priority: 5/10
Usefulness: 4/10
It’s definitely worth getting the first tier to clear levels faster, but further upgrades are redundant because lightning may not strike the same spot twice, but it will strike the same group of trees twice.

Function: Increases drop rate of powerups.
Priority: 1/10
Usefulness: 2/10
Not a particularly helpful upgrade to get in a single run, just upgrade luck in the menu and you get a much better return.

Function: Drops a random blob of oil onscreen. Subsequent upgrades increase the number of blobs.
Priority: 8/10
Usefulness: 5/10
This is an important upgrade to grab, especially if you’ve been stacking your fire in favor of Ignition Health. Since Dawn soap is unavailable in game to wash it off the wildlife, you’re clear to burn down whatever it lands on. Though it does not float on water, so be warned.

Function: Stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water. Fires a projectile that splits a path through water in a random direction. Subsequent upgrades increase the number of projectiles.
Priority: 1/10
Usefulness: 1/10
A disappointing upgrade. Due to the random nature of the direction, it’s nearly impossible to figure out whether or not you’re gonna split the sea or simply waste it by it deciding to go in a different direction.

Function: Attracts nearby powerups. Subsequent upgrades increase the radius of attraction.
Priority: 6/10
Usefulness: 4/10
A nice upgrade to have, but there’s better ones to pick up if they are available. The radius does get quite beefy and allows you to pickup powerups at a substantial distance.

Function: And it burns burns burns. The ring of fire. Ignites a fire in a ring around you at specific intervals. Subsequent upgrades increase the thickness of the ring and radius.
Priority: 3/10
Usefulness 1/10
While the upgrade seems like a load of fun, the intervalic nature makes it noticeably worthless. To my knowledge it also does not credit ignition health.

Function: Increases your movement speed
Priority: 7/10
Usefulness: 8/10
This upgrade is incredibly effective, making me believe that it is either a flat percentage buff or an exponential buff to the movement speed. The second level is incredibly effective and allows you to traverse area substantially faster than even having speed maxed out on the upgrade menu.

Function: Summons a random tumbleweed that will drift around with the potential to start fires if ignited. Subsequent upgrades increase the number of tumbleweeds.
Priority: 4/10
Usefulness: 7/10
Not something to immediately go for, there’s better upgrades but the tumbleweeds are immune to high wind and will continue aimlessly drifting and causing mayhem if they are ignited.

Function: Decreases damage taken when travelling through water. Subsequent upgrades decrease damage further. DOES NOT APPLY TO CLOUDS
Priority: 9/10
Usefulness: 9/10
If you’re like me and get a bit careless in late game, this is definitely an upgrade to pick up. It’ll let you take shortcuts through water with minimal damage and you can always just heal by starting another fire.

Frequency Upgrades (as of Patch 0.5.0)

Frequency upgrades are upgrades that increase the frequency of an existing upgrade. They are labeled “Period” in het spel. These require their direct upgrade complement to function and will be rated accordingly.

These upgrade are (in alphabetical order):

Function: Decreases time between cloud zaps
Priority: 8/10
Usefulness: 10/10
An absolutely incredible upgrade, higher levels mean that you can zap clouds sooner and pairing with more clouds to zap makes it a necessity.

Function: Decreases time between embers thrown.
Priority: 8/10
Usefulness: 4/10
Because the initial ember toss upgrade is pretty mediocre, you have to get this one but I don’t recommend ember toss anyway. The random nature of it is lackluster but increasing how often they are thrown is necessary to improve the odds it lands on something you want to burn.

Function: Increases attack speed against helicopters.
Priority: 5/10
Usefulness: 6/10
As previously mentioned, you can pretty much just hang outside the chopper’s attack range and pick it off from a safe distance. This makes it faster but it’s practically the same as the regular upgrade. Pairing level 2 attack and level 1 period can be quite fun, but choppers aren’t nearly prevalent enough to make this a requirement.

Function: Decreases amount of time when stationary to start a fire.
Priority: 10/10
Usefulness: 10/10
Absolutely necessary for later game runs, making stop and go less time consuming while running away from constant storms.

Function: Decreases time between lightning bolts.
Priority: 9/10
Usefulness: 4/10
Lighting faster equals more likelihood of fires.

Function: Drops oil faster
Priority: 10/10
Usefulness: 9/10
Very important, drops oil around faster and couples well with higher Oil Drop upgrades

Function: Launches projectiles that clears water more frequently
Priority: 5/10
Usefulness: 7/10
Due to random nature of the initial path cutter upgrade, this makes it less frustrating when the projectile inevitably goes the opposite direction

Function: Increases number of times ring of fire is deployed
Priority: 6/10
Usefulness: 3/10
See cons of Ring of Fire under direct upgrades

Function: Sends tumbleweeds more often
Priority: 7/10
Usefulness: 6/10
Noticeably faster but the random nature of the travel path of tumbleweeds makes them unreliable. Though this upgrade can be used to pump up how often they appear and by extension the chances of getting them to be useful

Conclusie

This list is subject to change in future updates and new sections will be added for different patches.

This list is based on my opinion, you are free to agree or disagree with the ratings. Het belangrijkste is, have fun with whatever build you want to go for. This list was made mainly to help inform newer players about what are the better of the upgrades and consistency is most important in my view which is why the Pathcutter and Ember Toss upgrades are places very low in usefulness and priority since they are determined by RNG instead of directly assisting.