Far Far West Weapon Upgrades: What to Level First

Most upgrade advice answers the wrong question. It tells you which gun to max. The useful question is what an upgrade actually changes, because Far Far West hands you three ladders that do not scale the same way. Spend on the wrong one and the gun gets stronger without getting better.

One gun, three separate ladders

Your hunter, each individual weapon, and your spell kit all level independently — confirmed by the store description's split between gun, spell, and skill upgrades, and by every hands-on write-up of the town vendors.

Three consequences follow.

XP is use-based. A weapon you never fire never improves. Carrying a gun while your spells do the work earns it nothing, which is why "level it passively" is bad advice here.

The hunter track is the only upgrade that survives a loadout change. Health, ammo capacity, and movement apply to everything you equip. If you are still deciding what you like, the character is the safest place to spend.

Spells level on their own track. A magic build is not competing with your gun for XP — only for currency at the vendor, where every track draws from the same pocket.

What each stat line actually buys

A community build planner mirrors the upgrade screens with these lines. The exact set is reported rather than official.

The default purchase is damage, and past a point it is the wrong one. Damage solves a problem you probably do not have — killing — and not the one that ends runs, which is being out of bullets, out of position, or out of health at the wrong moment. Buy uptime before power. A gun that reloads while you are still alive outdamages a gun that hits harder and spends four seconds doing nothing.

Jokers are the upgrade that changes behavior

Weapons and the hunter carry a point budget for Joker cards, with rarer cards costing more of it — reported at roughly one to five points per card against a base budget in the mid-teens, plus two extra slots from prestige.

Two things follow. First, slot count beats card quality: an extra slot is permanent capacity, while a single legendary card eats a large share of the budget and forces everything else out. Second, stats are linear and Jokers are conditional. Forty percent more damage produces exactly the same gun, louder. A card that only pays off under a condition — while aiming, while the magazine is low, after a streak of kills — produces a different gun. Build identity lives in the conditional effects, which is why the first Joker slot is the real power spike and the stats before it are just the entry fee.

This is also where the tier list logic in /weapons/best-weapons-tier-list stops applying. That page answers whether to spread investment across guns. This page answers what to buy inside one.

Prestige is a refund, not a reset

At level 100 a track can be prestiged. The level number returns to one, you receive five tokens, and everything you previously bought — stats, Jokers, skins, unlocked perks — stays.

The token shop is where the trap is. Reported options are an extra Joker slot, extra upgrade slots, XP tickets, gold, and souls. Because a track can only be prestiged a finite number of times, tokens are a closing budget: spending them on currency is the one purchase you cannot walk back, and it permanently costs you slot capacity on that gun. Slots first, always. Currency last, only on a track you have already finished.

Prestige the weapon before the hunter if you only do one. Weapons level from damage dealt and cycle faster, and the tickets they generate are the usual way to push the slow hero track.

When to stop investing

Four rules cover almost every case.

Stop when the gun's job is covered. Two half-built weapons lose to one finished weapon in the same role. Depth beats breadth, and the reasoning is on /weapons/best-weapons-tier-list.

Finish the slot economy before chasing stats. Slots are capacity; stats are numbers. Capacity compounds, numbers do not.

Do not invest past the first tier in a farming gun. If a weapon exists to earn fragments for a different weapon, every coin in it is a coin not spent on the thing you actually want.

Pick one track and commit for a week. The most common progression stall is a player with four guns at level 20 and none with a second Joker slot.

Verifying costs at the counter

Sources disagree about which currency buys which upgrade — some write-ups say gold covers permanent stat upgrades and souls cover Jokers, others reverse it, and at least one claims both feed stats. Do not plan around a blog. Open the vendor, read the price in the currency you actually hold, and buy the cheapest item that removes your worst moment in a fight.

For what the guns themselves do, see /weapons/all-weapons-list; for where the currency comes from, /guide/bounty-hunting-guide; for how upgrades interact with a spell build, /spells/best-spell-combos.

The short version

Level what you fire. Buy uptime before damage. Take Joker slots before anything else at prestige. Stop investing the moment a gun stops being the answer to a problem you have. Everything else is bookkeeping.