Core Keeper gear levels: why the level of your gear matters as much as which gear it is

Gear in the Core Keeper data scales from its starting level up to level 20, and by level 20 a lot of swords end up with very similar base damage. A look at the numbers, plus how the planner adds everything up.

By MaxPublished 29 Oct 20263 min read

Data is from the Core Keeper Wiki (data labelled 1.2.0.7). The game has moved on to 1.3.x, so values may have changed. I haven't covered how an item gets to a given level, because I haven't verified it.

The first thing you notice in the Core Keeper item data is that nearly everything has a level, and nearly everything scales with it. A helm isn't "+13 armor", it's +2 armor at level 1 and +25 at level 20. That one fact explains most of how gear compares, so it's worth getting straight.

What a level does

Items in the data have a starting level and go up to 20. Each stat is listed at every level. Here are a plain helm, a slightly better one and a rare one:

Jewellery does the same. A Copper Cross Necklace gives +4% crit chance at its starting level 2 and +18% at level 20. A Blob Rosary Necklace goes from +15 to +62 max health. A Rusted Ring goes from +7 to +28 armor, and a Melting Crystal Ring from +5% to +15% dodge. A Ring of Stone gives +14 mining damage at level 3 and +276 at level 20.

There are around 500 pieces of equipment in the data, spread across 17 types. The biggest groups are helms (78), rings (76), chests (73), necklaces (64) and pants (61).

By level 20, a lot of swords look the same

This is the part I found most interesting. Here's the base damage of several swords at a few levels. A dash means the sword doesn't exist at that level yet:

At the same level, those swords are within a few points of each other, and by level 20 they sit between 341 and 350. The Iron Sword, the earliest, goes from 132 damage at level 7 to 347 at level 20, a rise of more than two and a half times from levelling alone. The later swords get to the same place faster, because they start higher.

In practice this means "this sword is later in the game" doesn't tell you much about base damage at a fixed level. What differs is what the sword also does. The Iron Sword has +9.9% melee attack speed, the Scarlet Sword +16% critical hit chance, the Galaxite Sword +47% critical hit damage, the Hydra Bone Sword +18% damage against bosses. There are outliers: the Slime Sword is lower at 298 at level 20 but slows its target, and the legendary Rune Song is higher at 388 and heals you on hit.

The planner lets you set any level on any item so you can compare them like for like. I haven't covered how a given piece gets to a given level in the game, so check that before you plan a build around level 20 gear.

How the planner adds it up

Coreplan takes every source and sums it: each equipped piece at its chosen level, any active set bonus, skill levels, talent points and food you enter. If two sources give the same stat, they're added. So 19.4% damage from a hat and 12.7% from a set bonus would show up as 32.1%.

That's an assumption. The wiki data lists the numbers but not how the game combines them, and I haven't confirmed that every stat adds up in a straight line without caps. For a weapon estimate it also assumes damage percentages add together (see the weapon guide). Treat the totals as a good comparison tool and not as a promise.