if the game just decides to put the crumble on 2 of your pieces at once, as it did here, there's no way to save both
in my case its even worse because I knowingly put my 3rd piece at risk, thinking I'll have a turn to get away, so now Im forced to lose 2/3 of my pieces thanks to RNG
so balancing a meta-progression system in roguelites is hard, if you make it too strong, the game will become either too easy with upgrades or impossible without them
but your game doesnt actually need 500 upgrades to be worth playing
I would much rather have just a handful impactful ones, or even none at all
in general I think unlocking new things (such as characters, weapons, areas etc) is much more exciting meta-progression than making your existing arsenal straight up stronger, but if you're going to go with the latter I'd at least hope that the upgrades are perceptible to the human eye
above are just the examples I've seen today:
- terratech legion, craft upgrades: I'm never going to notice a 2% acceleration rate difference, even 10% would be hard to see without comparing it side by side
- witchfire, ascension: the titular 1% reload speed upgrade, switching from my 500 hours lvl 100 profile to a brand new one, I barely notice the difference