Spellbound & Shelved Upgrade Priority Tier List

The Spellbound & Shelved upgrade screen is a radial gold web. The header tells you how to live there: drag to pan, wheel to zoom, hover for details, Close (U). Late screenshots show a mandala of tiny nodes and a diamond counter that can look like a joke. Your first hour should not try to fill it.

This tier list ranks jobs the nodes do. Hover in-game for the real names and costs. Pair with the upgrade planner so each OPEN burst buys one job, not twelve random leaves.

S — Buy these jobs first

Gnome speed / sprint duration. Pep-talks are optional clicks; permanent speed is how CLOSED time actually deletes books. If hats waddle like they are late for a seminar, this is the bottleneck.

Carry and stack stability. The store fantasy is teetering stacks and bows. If gnomes trip over their own hauls, extra wings make it worse. Carry upgrades make every other purchase look smarter.

Filing accuracy / “right where it belongs” rate. The log loves to announce a book filed in the correct slot. Nodes that reduce wandering between the wrong glowing case and the right one are silent time saves.

The next chained wing you actually need. Technically a shelf wing purchase, but it sits in the same gold pool. One new rack cluster when current shelves overflow is S. Three speculative wings are not.

A — Strong in Phase 2

Reader throughput that you can survive. Faster visitors mean faster gold and faster vandalism. Buy these after speed/carry so OPEN fundraising does not bury the rugs. See reader ranking.

Idle comfort. Quality-of-life on the web (clearer highlights, less camera friction, longer tip lifetime if a node exists) is A once the floor is under control. It is not a Phase 1 purchase.

Staff mastery support. Anything that helps Fizzwick Mastered or Bramble Mastered land is A because those hats already work the log from minute one. Mastery is also an achievement you would earn anyway.

B — Situational

Tip-related nodes. Tips fade. There is even an achievement for letting one die. Spending a center-tree budget on coin magnets before you can CLOSE efficiently is backwards. Fine as a leaf later.

Achievement bait. Nodes that only exist to pop a trophy without helping the 6,655 count. Buy on a post-finale save.

Deep leaf clusters. The outer petals of the mandala look complete-ist. They are. Fill them when the floor is already a library.

C — Wait

Anything you cannot explain in one sentence. If hover text does not map to speed, carry, space, or survivable income, skip it. The web is designed to tempt completion.

Duplicate cosmetics. The room already has crystals, moons, and rugs. Your gnomes do not need a prettier idle if they cannot reach the far chained wall.

Shopping rhythm

1. CLOSED until the mosaic shows wood.
2. OPEN with a written job from S or A.
3. Hover the web, buy the cheapest node that does that job, CLOSE.
4. If two jobs compete, speed beats income. Income without speed is just a mess generator.

This is the same loop as the door-sign strategy with a shopping cart attached. The walkthrough tells you which phase you are in so you do not buy Phase 3 leaves during the blizzard.

needmoar.games will likely retune costs; when they do, jobs stay the same even if numbers move. Until then, hover, buy a job, flip the plaque.