Upgrading

## Description

Upgrading is a Game Mechanic that describes the process of improving a block in order to make it stronger. In order to upgrade a block, one must have the materials needed for the upgrade in the character inventory and have an appropriate construction tool equipped. An upgradeable block is targeted with the crosshairs, and clicking the right mouse-button will initiate the upgrading process.

## Appropriate Tools

There are only a handful of tools that can upgrade blocks, some easier to obtain compared to others.

* Stone Axe
* Taza's Stone Axe
* Claw Hammer
* Nailgun

Both stone axes will upgrade 1/3 every use, requiring three uses to completely upgrade a block. Claw hammer upgrades 1/2 every use, requiring two uses to completely upgrade a block.

The nailgun upgrades blocks instantly with a single use. This, however, means that the player should be very careful when repairing blocks with it as they can be accidentally upgraded to a higher level.

## Block Upgrade Materials

These are the different upgrade materials that could be used during the process of upgrading building blocks.

* Wood is the most basic upgrade material. It is used to upgrade Wood Frames into Wood Blocks and Secure Wood Door into a Reinforced Secure Wooden Door
* Cobblestone Rocks are used to upgrade Wood Blocks into Cobblestone Blocks. They offer a lot more durability than wooden blocks making them valuable for defending against the zombies.
* Concrete Mix is used to upgrade Cobblestone Blocks to Concrete Blocks.
* Forged Steel is the most durable resource and is used to upgrade Concrete Blocks into Steel Blocks and other furniture, such as doors and hatches.

## Other Upgrade Materials

* Forged Iron is used to upgrade furniture, such as doors and Wood Spikes.

## Upgrade Process

Starting with Wood Frames you can upgrade all the way to Steel Blocks, but it is much more efficient to just craft the Steel Blocks directly.

## Resource Efficiency

Crafting Cobblestone Blocks, Concrete Blocks, and Steel Blocks is the most efficient way to create them as the crafting cost is identical to the upgrading cost. For example it takes 10 Cobblestone Rocks to upgrade one Wood Block to Cobblestone, but it also takes 10 Cobblestone Rocks to craft one Cobblestone Block. If a player is building a new structure out of these materials it is recommended to craft them directly instead of using materials on the earlier steps in the process and then upgrading. However, it is much faster to upgrade existing structures than tearing them down and rebuilding.

Wood Blocks take 10 Wood to craft, and a total of 10 Wood (8 from the upgrade, 2 for the frame) to upgrade from Wood Frames. As there are no previous tiers to take up materials, the only benefit to crafting Wood Blocks directly is to save time upgrading. Additionally Wood Frames can be picked up and moved. When building a wooden structure it may be beneficial to place the frame blocks and then upgrade. This can be helpful if a player has not quite decided on a shape or layout of a building, and is experimenting. There is one more benefit to upgrading Wood Frames in this manner: experience.

Upgrading gives a significant amount of experience. Upgrading a large structure may even be enough to level up once or twice. Further research into the exact experience point rewards needs to be done.

## Doors

### Secure Wooden Door

This upgrade path starts with a Secure Wooden Door as the base block and ends with Vault Door\_v3

## Notes

Prior to Alpha 20 a number of other steps in the upgrade process existed such as Flagstone Blocks, Iron Blocks, Reinforced Concrete, and Reinforced Wood. You can no longer craft these and the many step upgrading process was reduced to just 5 steps. It is now a much more straightforward and easy task to upgrade from Wood Frames to Steel Blocks. There was also a mechanic were poured concrete was wet and had to dry. The Wet Concrete couldn't hold as much and required scaffolding to keep it up when building things like floors. This has been entirely removed, Concrete Blocks are placed as solid and fully set blocks of concrete.