Ship Mastery
A ship's class ability is no longer something you buy. You earn it by flying that ship — waves and bosses feed its mastery, and its mastery is its ability level.
Class levels used to cost 20 × level² gold from the Upgrade menu. They do not cost gold any more — the menu has a full-width Ship Mastery row instead, reading Lv N / MAX over an XP bar, and the mobile upgrade bar’s ship cell shows the same. The four common upgrades (Stronger Bullets and friends) are unchanged and still bought with gold; see Upgrades.
Earning mastery
Mastery is XP per ship, earned only by the ship you are actually flying, and it is a lifetime total that never resets:
| What you did | Mastery XP |
|---|---|
| Clear a wave | +4 |
| Kill a boss | +20 |
| Kill an elite | +4, half the time |
Waves and bosses are flat, but elites are a share of every wave’s spawns, so a late wave holds far more of them — about 0.6 XP of elites per wave at wave 10, more than 5 by wave 100. That keeps late waves worth playing even where the square-root curve below flattens out.
A complete 100-wave run pays roughly 2,000 XP to whichever ship flew it. Dying at wave 40 still banks everything you earned on the way.
Only a kill counts. In co-op, an elite that reaches a player instead of dying drops no gold, no Stardust roll and no XP.
Mastery is your ability level
The ship’s class level is derived from its XP, on a deliberately front-loaded curve:
level = 1 + floor(√XP), capped at that ship’s class cap of 30 or 50.
| Mastery XP | Ability level | A fresh ship gets there |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 1 | Never flown |
| 25 | 6 | ≈ wave 5 |
| 100 | 11 | ≈ wave 12 |
| 225 | 16 | ≈ wave 22 |
| 400 | 21 | ≈ wave 34 |
| 841 | 30 — 30-cap max | ≈ wave 57 |
| 1,600 | 41 | ≈ wave 87 |
| 2,401 | 50 — 50-cap max | ≈ 1.2 full runs |
The square root front-loads it: level 10 by wave 10, and a fresh ship finishes its first full run at about level 45. A 30-cap ship maxes around wave 60 of that first run; a 50-cap ship needs a little over one full run.
The wave figures assume an average share of elites and no wave events, so a real run lands a few waves either side.
The ship re-stats the moment it levels, mid-run, with a level-up toast — you do not have to finish or restart to feel it. A long run gets progressively stronger on its own.
The seven ranks
Alongside the level, mastery XP fills a rank track shown on your Room player card and in Account. Each rank you gain pays 3 Stardust.
| Rank | Mastery XP | A fresh ship gets there | Stardust so far |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rookie | 0 | — | 0 |
| Bronze | 25 | ≈ wave 5 | 3 |
| Silver | 75 | ≈ wave 10 | 6 |
| Gold | 175 | ≈ wave 19 | 9 |
| Platinum | 350 | ≈ wave 30 | 12 |
| Diamond | 650 | ≈ wave 48 | 15 |
| Master | 1,100 | ≈ wave 68 | 18 |
So a ship reaches Master inside its first full run, around wave 70, paying 18 Stardust on the way — worth 1,800,000 gold at the standard rate. Every ship has its own ladder, which makes flying an unmastered ship one of the steadiest Stardust sources there is.
Levels you already bought
Class levels bought with gold before the change are kept. Mastery never lowers a level, so a ship you had pushed to 40 with coins stays at 40 while its XP catches up — and it keeps levelling normally once the earned level passes what you bought.