Living Arsenal — Weapon Proficiency (WIP)

Living Arsenal

Your weapons level up as you use them, darn it. Every gun, bow, and blade earns proficiency from YOUR hits — and grows its damage, magazine, and durability as it climbs.

The intent: this is NOT scaling past the endgame — it's bringing the forgotten weapons UP to it. That first bow you loved, the revolver the tech tree left behind: use them, and they grow until they compete with late-game gear — then they stop. Weapons that are already endgame have nowhere to grow, so the mod barely touches them. The power ceiling stays vanilla; what changes is which weapons get to reach it. That ceiling is the base progression — and when a weapon finally maxes it, Prestige (below) is the opt-in chase beyond.

How it works

• Use it to grow it — landing hits earns the equipped weapon XP (rate-normalized, so slow weapons aren't punished). Levels bring more damage, bigger magazines, longer-lasting durability.
• Melee too — swords, katanas, and clubs earn from landed swings just like guns earn from hits (katana swing-rate measured from real play).
• Every weapon has its own career — progress is per-INSTANCE. Your trusty first bow and a fresh copy level separately.
• Anchored to the real tech tree — a weapon starts at +0% at its unlock level and climbs a category ladder toward the endgame ceiling — never past it. Early weapons grow the most; endgame weapons are already there, so they gain little to nothing.
• No out-leveling yourself — a weapon can't exceed its wielder's level.
• Live progress panel — a panel beside the weapon scroll shows level, damage, magazine, and an XP bar filling in real time (via DarnToasts). By default it sleeps between fights and wipes back in on your next shot (tunable, or always-on). Level-ups pop a toast.
• Level on the weapon nameplate — the hotbar's weapon name band shows your level, an XP pip-bar, and the damage bonus: "58 · Old Revolver ■■■□□ +413%". Toggleable.

Prestige — grow past the cap

Bring a weapon to its cap and you can Prestige it: its level resets, and a permanent point banks into a stat you choose. It's the opt-in endgame chase that sits on top of the honest base curve.

• You steer the reward — +Base Damage, +% Damage (compounds as the weapon re-levels), +Magazine, +Durability, or +Level Cap % (lets it climb past its normal top). Every point is permanent.
• It self-paces — each banked point makes the next climb a little longer, so it never runs away. Prestige as often as you like; the grind grows with you.
• Only what fits — a weapon is offered only the stats that make sense for it (a bow never sees +Magazine).
• How far is your call — by default a weapon unlocks Prestige after climbing a set number of levels above its base; require true max level instead if you prefer, and every per-point value is tunable.

Do it from the Prestige panel in ESC > Mod Options (needs DarnMenu).

In-game menu — tune everything

ESC > Mod Options (via DarnMenu) is Living Arsenal's cockpit:

• Multipliers — damage bonus (0 = flat forever, 2 = double growth), XP rate, durability cap, magazine ceiling.
• XP curve shape — levels that rush in early then crawl late, or a flat steady grind. Your call.
• Progression scope — each physical weapon its own career, or every copy of a model sharing one.
• Toggles — the weapon panel, panel auto-hide (with idle timer), the nameplate info, level-up toasts, damage/magazine/durability scaling, the player-level cap, and fire-rate measurement logging.

Toasts styleable via DarnToasts.

The fine print

• Only YOUR hits earn XP (per-player progression by design).
• At the player-level cap, weapon XP is discarded — idling at cap earns nothing.
• Your progress lives in the shared mods folder and survives updates.
• High-tier weapons may show +0% damage for many levels (or forever) — that's the design working, not a bug: their natural power already sits at or above the ladder. The panel tells you the level growth starts, if it does.

Beta — numbers in flux

Living Arsenal works today, but the numbers are young. Progression curves are anchored to real tech-tree data, yet many fire rates are still estimates and a few weapons ride placeholder values until they're measured. As real data comes in, curves get repriced — your XP is never touched, only what a level is worth changes, so a weapon's bonuses may shift between updates. Expect balance to keep moving while the weapon library fills out. Weapon data and reports are genuinely welcome.

Known issues & help wanted

This is a WIP and the weapon library is still filling out — you can genuinely help shape it:

• A weapon that won't level? Please report it. Different weapons deliver their hits through different game systems — guns, bows, and melee each take a separate path — and a new or overlooked one can slip through and silently earn nothing. If you draw a weapon, land clean hits, and its XP bar never moves, that's a bug, not a slow grind: tell me which weapon and I'll wire it in. (This is exactly how bows got fixed in 1.4.1.)
• Untested weapons stay vanilla. By default the mod only scales weapons whose fire-rate was actually measured — untested ones are left completely alone rather than risk a bad guess (opt them in via the menu if you want). If a weapon you expected to level is sitting vanilla, that's this safety at work: tell me which and I'll measure it in.