Can Em All weapon upgrade order: what to buy first in a run

The Can Em All weapon upgrade order is melee first, guns second, money and creature multipliers last. Weapons are not bought from a shop with a fixed order — they unlock as nodes in the skill tree — and raw weapon damage turns out to be the least valuable upgrade per dollar. The numbers that pay for themselves are the ones that make every can worth more.

Can Em All weapon upgrade order, step by step

1. Knife and the bleed upgrades — free damage while you are still collecting bodies.
2. Pistol, then the rest of the guns — what you need to clear a full truck of around 250 creatures.
3. Money multipliers and creature upgrades — the upgrades that make the rest of the run pay for itself.

Take them in that order and you will never be short of cash at the exact moment you need a gun.

The weapon wheel and its nine slots

The weapon wheel sits on the right of the screen and holds nine slots. Slot 1 is your bare hands. Everything else is a weapon you have unlocked, and you switch between them with the wheel rather than a number row.

The unlock nodes you meet first are Knife and Pistol. The pistol is the first gun and it costs $3,000, which is why it arrives after the knife rather than before it.

The full release added the rest of the trailer weapons plus a chainsaw — flamethrower, shotgun, RPG/rocket launcher and AK-47 are all in the tree. The developer also promised knife upgrades that hit several enemies at once, which is the one knife upgrade worth saving for.

Step 1: the melee branch and the bleed upgrades

1. Unlock the Knife.
2. Buy Paper Cut ($60), which makes hits bleed creatures for 1 second.
3. Buy Open Wound ($500), which extends that bleed to 2 seconds.
4. Move on to the guns once the knife and both bleed nodes are owned.

Bleed is the cheapest damage in the game because it costs you nothing to trigger — you swing at something while collecting and it dies on its own. It is also the reason the knife branch matters for a hidden achievement, since a bleeding creature can die before it reaches the crusher.

Step 2: the pistol and the rest of the guns

1. Buy the Pistol unlock for $3,000.
2. Take the next gun node in the tree — flamethrower, shotgun, RPG or AK-47 — as soon as you can afford it.
3. Save the chainsaw for later; it is a close-quarters tool, not a truck-clearing one.

A full truck carries around 250 creatures, and no melee weapon clears that. The guns exist for exactly that job. Which purchases to make before the guns arrive is covered in the early game tips guide.

Step 3: multipliers before raw damage

Once the guns are online, stop buying damage and start buying multipliers.

1. Buy the money multipliers first.
2. Then the creature or animal upgrades, which make each creature worth more.
3. Treat raw weapon damage as the leftover purchase, not the goal.

The game values better animals and multiplication far more than raw damage, and the reason is arithmetic: a multiplier applies to every can you ship for the rest of the run, while a damage upgrade only makes one swing hit harder. The four levers that actually raise output are in the production guide.

What each weapon tier is for

• Knife — quiet, free damage while you collect bodies. Weak against a full truck.
• Pistol — the first real gun, and enough for the first few deliveries.
• Shotgun and flamethrower — area damage for a crowd on the floor.
• RPG/rocket launcher — the truck-clearing answer, and the point at which turrets stop being worth buying.
• AK-47 — sustained fire once a crowd is already broken up.
• Chainsaw — close quarters, high risk when ten creatures are on top of you.

Which of those you should be leaning on changes once turrets exist. The turrets guide covers what they cover for you and when they become redundant.