Did you know you can upgrade weapons and armor in Weird West? This can be an easy feature to miss if you get distracted and never go to the right place. While you can find better rarity gear through looting, you can also improve it yourself. Make sure you know how to upgrade weapons.
Depending on what you’re trying to improve, it will cost a different amount of materials. Our guide covers how to get ore, skins, and hides for upgrading your gear. Or perhaps you’d prefer to steal what you need instead.
How to Upgrade Weapons in Weird West
Ore veins can be easy to miss but here’s what they look like. If you don’t have a pickaxe, you may be able to blow them up instead.
You can start upgrading gear as early as Grackle once the town has recovered from the first Stillwaters raid. It’s possible you can start before then since you don’t need to interact with an NPC to do it. However, chances are unlikely that you’ll have what you need to do it.
The process varies slightly depending on whether you’re upgrading a weapon or a vest. So we’ll start with how it works for upgrading weapons in Weird West first. You’ll need to visit a town that has a Blacksmith represented by the hammer and anvil symbol. While there are multiple towns that have one available, if you’re still early in the story, just head over to Grackle.
One of the neat parts of upgrading your gear is that it doesn’t require any money.
The Blacksmith is near the edge of town across from the Stable where you can buy horses. Regardless of whether there is an NPC here, you don’t need to speak with them. All you need to do is interact with the lit Forge that has the hammer and anvil symbol above it. If you have the right amount of ore needed, you should see the upgraded version of your item in a new window.
Now you just need to select it to create the upgraded version. Depending on your Weird West platform, this may vary slightly. But, for those of you on PC, you can click the item or press E when hovering over it.
Hovering over an item in your inventory is another way to see what materials are required for upgrading it.
Every rarity seems to require the same amount of nuggets regardless of the weapon type. Although, if your nuggets are in the form of a bar, you won’t be able to use them. So you’ll need to convert them back which you can also do at the Forge. I’ve listed the costs for each rarity below.
- White to Green – 2 Copper Nuggets
- Green to Blue – 7 Silver Nuggets
- Blue to Purple – 10 Gold Nuggets
- The legendary rarity can’t be crafted/upgraded to.
If you don’t have enough nuggets yet, you can loot them or mine ore veins instead. While you’ll frequently run into ore inside caves, you can find veins along mountains as well. So keep an eye out for every opportunity while making sure you have a pickaxe on you.
How to Upgrade Vests in Weird West
Finding a Tailor in Weird West is a good place to find Tanning Racks for crafting or upgrading your vest.
Upgrading your vest follows a similar process to the previous section, but there can be a lot more to it as well. Instead of using a Blacksmith or Forge, you’ll need to find a Tanning Rack. Fortunately, these are more common than Forges since you can randomly run into them. However, you can always find one inside a Tailor’s shop.
Once you’ve found a Tanning Rack, simply interact with it to pop open a new window. Similar to upgrading weapons, this will only show items that you have the materials to upgrade or craft. Unlike the Blacksmith, you can actually craft new vests from animal skins.
Tanning Racks are easy to notice since they have a hide stretched over them. The rack to the right of my character works as well.
If you have two Snake Skins you can create a Simple Snake Scale Vest. This may not give a lot of protection against bullets with 5%, but it does have a 25% Poison Resistance buff. As you upgrade it further, the protection percentage will continue to increase. Each vest type in Weird West has its’ own benefits that make it unique.
- Bison Vests provide Fire Resistance.
- Snake Vests provide Poison Resistance.
- Deer Vests provide Lightning Resistance.
- Bear Vests provide more protection against bullets/melee.
You may find certain vests are better for each scenario but I’m always a fan of more protection.
Once again unlike upgrading weapons, the required materials for each vest tier vary. While a green tier Deer Vest requires 4 Deer Leather, a green Snake Vest requires 3 Snake Skin. Fortunately, you can purchase skins from a Tailor or go hunting yourself. A good way to find animals is by setting a camp on the overworld map.
Make sure you have a Skinning Toolbag before you go hunting. Otherwise, you won’t be able to skin any animals in Weird West. I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten them from the Tailor, but I’m not positive off-hand.
Players on PC can easily set a camp on the overworld by pressing C when hovering over a spot. This is a good opportunity to sleep for health, cook food, or go hunting.
That’s all there is to this guide on how to upgrade weapons and vests in Weird West. Good luck in your travels against the many enemies and odd creatures you’ll encounter. For more guides here at Slyther Games check out some of our recommendations below.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.